Cowboys take their lumps, too, from the author's cultural demythologizing: to wit, the so-called rugged individualists of Catron County, New Mexico--a hotbed of antigovernment fervor--collect more federal subsidies than the national average. Why? Because they're trying to live off public land that has been abused for more than a century.

Donahue concludes that grazing's "ecological impacts are more widespread than those of any other human activity in the West, and elimination of grazing holds greater potential for benefiting biodiversity than any other single land use measure." That said, the "essential ingredient yet lacking is the political will to oppose a narrow, but powerful, interest group--the deeply entrenched western livestock industry." Whether or not you agree with Donahue's thesis, her controversial book will go a long way toward bringing this debate to a broader audience. --Langdon Cook

Product Description
Livestock grazing is the most widespread commercial use of federal public lands. The image of a herd grazing on Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Forest Service lands is so traditional that many view this use as central to the history and culture of the West. Yet the grazing program costs far more to administer than it generates in revenues, and grazing affects all other uses of public lands, causing potentially irreversible damage to native wildlife and vegetation.

THE WESTERN RANGE REVISITED proposes a landscape-level strategy for conserving native biological diversity on federal rangelands, a strategy based chiefly on removing livestock from large tracts of arid BLM lands in ten western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.

Drawing from range ecology, conservation biology, law, and economics, Debra L. Donahue examines the history of federal grazing policy and the current debate on federal multiple-use, sustained-yield policies and changing priorities for our public lands. Donahue, a lawyer and wildlife biologist, uses existing laws and regulations, historical documents, economic statistics, and current scientific thinking to make a strong case for a land-management strategy that has been, until now, "unthinkable."

A groundbreaking interdisciplinary work, THE WESTERN RANGE REVISITED demonstrates that conserving biodiversity by eliminating or reducing livestock grazing makes economic sense, is ecologically expedient, and can be achieved under current law.

Permit me to briefly tell you my story with respect to open range grazing.

While vacationing at my in-laws in Arizona in 1997, I went down to the San Pedro River with my daughter and some nephews. While the kids played in the water, I sat in the water watching - scratching some bug bites that I'd received the previous day. After several hours, I took a walk upstream about 100 yards, and discovered the body of a dead "open range" cow lying in the river.

Five days later, back in California, I awoke to a raging fever with rashes up both legs and a left thumb triple its normal size. After rushing to the hospital and beginning emergency antibiotic treatment, I was diagnosed with an infection by "flesh eating bacteria".

Let their be no doubt, my exposure to a antibiotic-doped-up range cow dead in the San Pedro River was the cause of my ailment.

After five days and 39 pints of antibiotics, I went home with a thumb joint that is fused and unusable. If not for the presently effective antibiotics still available to humans, I would have had my left hand amputated.

Debra's book touches upon the ecological destruction that is done on Western grazing lands for the sake of partially producting 3% of the U.S. beef production. (All these cows must be sent to a feed lot to be fed adequately for butchering.) You must read this book and you must act upon it -- it's for all our sake.


Terrible book   December 12, 2001
 1 out of 10 found this review helpful

This book is simply a polemic to eliminate livestock from the rangelands of the US and has no objective basis in fact. It has no merit whatsoever except as a guide to the limits to which anti-large mammal fanatics will go. I would have given it zero stars, but that is not one of the alternatives.


Missed some major points   February 21, 2001
 1 out of 14 found this review helpful

Debra Donahue lays out lots of stats but misses the key facts about the ownership of the "public lands" of the west. If you are looking for a book that says cattle are bad, this is it. If you are looking for some facts to broaden your knowledge of the west or the land, this is not it.


Look closer   January 25, 2001
 6 out of 11 found this review helpful

Debra Donahue is a University of Wyoming law professor with a background in range and wildlife biology. She is motivated by a striking concern for the Western landscape. In The Western Range Revisited, Donahue makes a factual, thoughtful, but unconvincing case for ending livestock grazing on public lands. After laying an impressive foundation, Donahue stumbles badly in Chapter 8 - "The Socio-Economic Landscape." She states the two main arguments against her thesis: "Public land grazing is important to the economic base of the local community, if not the region, and the ranching way of life merits preservation both for its own sake and as a means of preserving the West's open spaces (p 229)." If we do away with these arguments, "no warrant should remain for leaving livestock on arid public lands (ibid)." She fails to do so. Many statistics are used but not fully explored. Only 2% of all livestock are produced by federal lease lands. Perhaps, but what of the local economies? About 70% of ranchers do not rely on federal leases (p 253). But what of the 30% who do? Large operations (those running 151 Animal Units or more) generate 75% or more of their income from cows; small operations (150 Animal Units or less) generate only 39% of their income from stock .(p 240). Donahue states that 300 units is a break-even operation - yet argues at the same time that eliminating leases would matter little since ranchers could, 1) intensify use of their private lands, or, 2) reduce herd size. Intensification of private lands would create severe overgrazing, water pollution from runoff, and destroy wildlife habitat (since 75% of the big game winter range alone is found on private lands in the Rockies). Reducing herd size would drop more ranches below her own definition of "breaking even" which would lead ultimately to subdivision and development. Ranching is already economically tenuous - "only a 1-3% return on capital investment" (p 260). Donahue wants to make it worse. We cannot argue away geographic certainties with a dither of statistics. I have worked with The Nature Conservancy, the Montana Land Reliance, and other trusts for 24 years. I have done biological inventories on scores of ranches and designed nearly 100 conservation easements. A profound, simple fact has emerged - overall, ranchers do a good job as land stewards on both land they own and land they lease. If they did not, why do so many ranches meet the qualification criteria of groups formed to protect biological diversity? I have designed conservation easements on ranches that protect wolves, grizzly bears, black-footed ferrets, bald eagles, and an array of endemic non-game organisms ranging from a rare rockcress to a globally endangered freshwater sponge. Many ranchers are conservationists and to make sweeping condemnations is insulting and plain silly. Donahue does not understand ranchers and makes little attempt to. The two major books on ranching culture were missing from her bibliography: Paul Starrs' Let the Cowboy Ride: Cattle Ranching in the American West (1998) and Terry Jordan's North American Cattle Ranching Frontiers (1993). The author also does not understand land regulation and conservation, making mis-statements about conservation easements and land trusts, and falling back on ineffective, politically untenable tools such as zoning as a way to stop development. None of the literature on these critical subjects was used (see, for example: Saving American Farmland: What Works by the American Farmland Trust, 1997). That is a glaring omission given the stakes here. Debra Donahue reached too far with The Western Range Revisited. She argues that ranching is much like mining and logging - an environmentally destructive, economically misguided use of public lands (see, The Economic Pursuit of Quality by Thomas Power, 1988). In fact, the landscape ecology of ranches is much different - they serve as habitat corridors for species movement and as buffers between development and wild lands. If Donahue had persuaded us of the need to revise or eliminate riparian grazing, increase protection for Heritage caliber biota, and revoke the permits of poor livestock managers, this book would have made a valuable contribution. Instead, she chose to attack and alienate an entire group of people who are worthy of being understood and respected. The Western culture wars continue. John B. Wright, Department of Geography, New Mexico State University


Rachel Carson Redux   November 30, 2000
 5 out of 8 found this review helpful

After reading Debra Donahue's powerful book on the misuse and abuse of western grazing lands, I'm of the opinion that she might be as well remebered in the future as Rachel Carson is today. She has vividly pointed to a problem that has broad negative implications on everyone living in the U.S. today.

Permit me to briefly tell you my story with respect to open range grazing.

While vacationing at my in-laws in Arizona in 1997, I went down to the San Pedro River with my daughter and some nephews. While the kids played in the water, I sat in the water watching - scratching some bug bites that I'd received the previous day. After several hours, I took a walk upstream about 100 yards, and discovered the body of a dead "open range" cow lying in the river.

Five days later, back in California, I awoke to a ranging fever with rashes up both legs and a left thumb triple its normal size. After rushing to the hospital and beginning emergency antibiotic treatment, I was diagnosed with "flesh eating bacteria".

Let their be no doubt, my exposure to a antibiotic-doped-up range cow dead in the San Pedro River was the cause of my ailment.

After five days and 39 pints of antibiotics, I went home with a thumb joint that is fused and unusable. If not for modern antibiotics, I would have had my left hand amputated.

Debra's book touches upon the ecological destruction that is done on Western grazing lands for the sake of partially producting 3% of the U.S. beef production. (All these cows must be sent to a feed lot to be fed adequately for butchering.) You must read this book and you must act upon it -- it's for all our sake.