Sheep Grazing in National Forest Wilderness Author(s): Barbara Brower Source: Mountain Research and Development, 20(2):126-129. Published By: International Mountain Society DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1659/0276-4741(2000)020[0126:SGINFW]2.0.CO;2 URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1659/0276-4741%282000%29020%5B0126%3ASGINFW %5D2.0.CO%3B2

BioOne (www.bioone.org) is a nonprofit, online aggregation of core research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences. BioOne provides a sustainable online platform for over 170 journals and books published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses. Your use of this PDF, the BioOne Web site, and all posted and associated content indicates your acceptance of BioOne’s Terms of Use, available at www.bioone.org/page/terms_of_use. Usage of BioOne content is strictly limited to personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial inquiries or rights and permissions requests should be directed to the individual publisher as copyright holder.

BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. Mountain Research and Development Vol 20 No 2 May 2000: 126–129 Barbara Brower Sheep Grazing in National Forest Wilderness 126 A New Look at an Old Fight

The Bridger Wilderness of Bridger-Teton struggled to direct the use of America’s National Forest takes up most of the west wildlands, and who compete to influence slope of the Wind River Mountains in west- the federal agency charged with administer- ern . Within the wilderness bound- ing this piece of public land (Figure 1). The ary lies the tallest of Wyoming’s mountains, livestock industry, environmentalists, and ; the Green River, a major trib- the US Forest Service are the players in utary of the Colorado, begins here. But this battle. And though this particular bat- Bridger Wilderness is more than big moun- tleground is shaped by uniquely American tains and important headwaters; it is a bat- institutions and history, the contest itself is tleground for old adversaries who have one that can be found around the globe.

FIGURE 1 , Wyoming, USA; Fremont and Jackson Peaks. Domestic sheep and recreation users compete for access to these mountains. (Ink drawing by Jan Olsen)

Settlement, ranching, 19th century initiated conflicts with the and the politics of national public-land states and with accustomed forest management users of formerly free-access resources. These conflicts persist today. The appro- The agency responsible for America’s priate use of these lands and resources is national forest resources is the US Forest one of the most contentious, divisive Service, itself part of the Department of issues in the American West. This debate Agriculture. Abiding agency policy was sets environmentalists against loggers and laid out in 1905 by Forest Service Chief ranchers, draws national environmental Gifford Pinchot: National forests were to and industrial groups to each side, places be administered to achieve “the greatest federal management agencies between good of the greatest number in the long these competitors and against one anoth- run.” Such policy notwithstanding, the er, drives politics and polarizes communi- Forest Service, like any federal agency, is ties, and has generated such heated antag- ultimately answerable to the US Congress, onisms over so many years that there is which authorizes its funding—and is itself small prospect of any resolution. Although beholden to special interests. And in the combatants often invoke science, his- much of the western US for most of the tory, and red-blooded American ideals in last 100 years, the range livestock industry service of their arguments (each side has been the dominant special interest. drawing from a different deck of these The shift from allocation to reserva- trump values), plain fact and verifiable tion of federal lands toward the end of the history and science are often hostage to Development

127 myth and the momentum of arguments ity to steer federal grazing policy, as a crafted and refined over generations. Wyoming example will show. This unresolved conflict continues to The range sheep industry and the For- influence the management of the national est Service share a long history in the forests. Many people are familiar with the Wind River Mountains of southwestern battle over trees in the national forests, Wyoming, which became part of Yellow- particularly in the Northwest’s old-growth stone Timberland Reserve in 1891, just a forest remnants, where big trees grow. Yet decade after the first sheep bands were in most of the intermountain West, big driven into the mountains to graze. The In 1905, Forest Service trees do not grow: only ragged forests of beginnings of federal jurisdiction coincid- Chief Gifford Pinchot low-value lodgepole pine and slow-growing ed with the Wyoming range sheep indus- spruce and fir cloak the mountains that try’s boom period: The state’s sheep busi- stated that the goal of delineate national forests in the region ness grew sevenfold between 1895 and administering national (Figure 2). But this has not kept the 140 1910—from 700,000 to 5,400,000 animals. forests was to achieve million acres of these national forests free Sheep supplanted cattle as Wyoming’s “the greatest good of the of conflicts over use and protection. most valuable commodity, and their own- greatest number in the ers assumed some of the cattlemen’s for- mer role in the social, economic, and long run.” Such policy Wyoming ranchers and notwithstanding, the US forest grazing policy political life of the state. One function of the livestock industry Forest Service, like any Forage, not trees, has historically been in this era was to guide the infant Forest federal agency, is ulti- the important commodity harvested from Service as it undertook to manage grazing mately answerable to the national forests of the arid West. on the national forests. The agency’s first the US Congress, which Returns from the fees charged graziers Chief of Grazing, sheepman Albert Potter, for their use of this range consistently collaborated with Chief Forester Gifford authorizes its funding— exceeded timber income on most forests Pinchot in developing Forest Service and is itself beholden to over much of the 20th century. The planning guidelines intended to be special interests. economies of such states as Wyoming, responsive to local needs. Established Montana, Colorado, and Idaho have long stockmen were invited to share in deci- depended heavily on ranching, and the sion-making about forest grazing and took summer range supplied by the national the opportunity to entrench themselves The shift from alloca- forests is critical to many ranchers. (It while excluding less influential competi- tion to reservation of surprises many, including native western- tors. Thus, recent immigrants and, often, federal lands toward the ers, to learn that, despite the widely disenfranchised Native and Mexican end of the 19th century embraced image of the West as the cattle- Americans who depended on itinerant initiated conflicts with man’s kingdom and home of the cowboy, bands of sheep trailed through publicly the public-land states it was sheep ranching that often figured owned rangelands were the losers. Federal prominently in the developing agency and dominant industry cooperated and with accustomed economies and societies of western to produce a system of national forest for- users of formerly free- states.) This has meant that the dispro- age allocation and grazing management access resources. These portionate influence of the western states that shaped the administration of other conflicts persist today. in matters of national resource policy has public lands, ensured a strong voice for been turned to the advantage of western affluent, influential stockmen, and livestock producers, whose wealth and remains in effect today. social importance placed them in posi- As part of the initially established for- tions of power in the range states. But as est reserve, Bridger-Teton National Forest rancher influence has waned (with the has experienced the whole history of For- reduced importance of the American est Service administration. Throughout farm sector in general and western live- vicissitudes in administrative policy, sheep stock in particular and with increasing have continued summer grazing in the competition for the attention of western Wind River Mountains. Changing fortunes politicians from other constituencies, in the livestock industry and its adver- especially environmentalists), the range saries have been reflected in subtle varia- livestock industry has lost its command- tions in Forest Service policies on grazing, ing voice—without entirely losing its abil- as the following case demonstrates. Barbara Brower

FIGURE 2 Bunion Creek Allotment, looking north toward Cirque of Towers. As in most of the intermountain West, the forest is only low-value lodge- FIGURE 4 Deep Lake, East pole pine and slow-growing Temple, and Steeple Peaks, an 128 spruce and fir. (Photo by area most attractive to Barbara Brower) climbers. (Photo by Jan Olsen)

grazing means environmental calamity. For- est grazing is particularly destructive, and sheep grazing does the most damage. There is a history of overgrazing in the western United States to justify concern and a ten- dency of managing agencies to see grazing effects through the grazier’s—not the ecol- ogist’s—eyes. But better management and far fewer animals today have reduced many of the problems of an earlier period. One Sheep and Deep Lake/Bunion Creek hundred thousand sheep grazed in the The Bunion Creek allotment, 11,000 acres Wind River Range 100 years ago, at serious of alpine forest, meadow, and mostly rock, ecological cost; today there are fewer than is one of the southernmost allotments with- 10,000. But the perception of negative in the Bridger Wilderness (Figures 2 and impacts remains widespread, especially FIGURE 3 Grazing allotments 3). Its scenic heart is a set of peaks and among climbers and other wilderness visi- in the Bridger Wilderness. small lakes centered on and tors (Figure 5). Their continuing virulent known to climbers, who revere its spectacu- complaints about sheep encounters near lar granite walls, as Deep Lake (Figure 4). Deep Lake led the Forest Service to redirect The family of French Basque descent that the sheep to another part of the wilderness. uses the allotment is part of a 100-year his- Ironically, though climbers were thus tory of grazing here. Though the Forest spared exposure to “hoofed locusts” and Service labels it a barren allotment, the the Forest Service escaped their complaints, permittees who run sheep here from July the less visited but more fragile alpine envi- to September use experienced ewes and ronment to which the sheep were con- conscientious herders to move sheep signed has proven less resistant to grazing through the dispersed grazing within the impacts. Aesthetics and expectations of allotment and call it one of their best. recreational visitors have trumped the For- But climbers and other visitors to the est Service’s mandate to protect the Bridger Wilderness, drawn to Deep Lake by resource, or so it appears. In this contest, the promise of wildness and solitude the sheepmen themselves were inconve- expected in federally designated nienced but accommodated: the Forest Ser- Wilderness, are appalled and dis- vice stayed true to its history in the region gusted when they meet 2000 bleat- and made room in the forest for the sheep ing sheep. Although the Wilder- of a well-connected Wyoming ranch fami- ness Act of 1964 permits domes- ly—one of only two families still in the tic livestock to graze in sheep business there. Wilderness areas, this political- A more recent contest may displace ly mandated concession to the domestic sheep permanently from Bunion livestock industry was bitterly Creek and perhaps all of the Bridger resisted and remains controversial. Wilderness. Two endangered species Widespread among environmentalists since endemic to this part of Wyoming have John Muir is the unshakable conviction that stronger friends than even the livestock

Mountain Research and Development Vol 20 No 2 May 2000 Development

FIGURE 5 Climber approaching Deep Lake, with Temple Peak in 129 the background. (Photo by Jan Olsen) industry—at least so far. Protecting endan- gered grizzly bears as required by the Endangered Species Act creates a threat to the marginal economics of sheep ranching. Grizzlies are widening their range within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and one or two have started snacking on sheep in the north end of the Bridger Wilderness. Given present trends, it is only a matter of time before the bears move south. But because of a reintroduction program for the native bighorn sheep, the grizzlies may find only wild sheep at Bunion Creek. Bighorn were all but eliminated from their • Last year, the Forest Service banned, native ranges in the West, mostly because for a time, the use of mechanical of disease brought in by their domestic devices, including climbing hardware, cousins. A remnant herd on the east side of in the wilderness. A reinstatement of the Wind River range falls within the juris- such a ban could exclude climbers and diction of another forest, in a different For- mute that antisheep voice. est Service region. The east-side forest’s • Perhaps the US range livestock industry biologists initiated a program to expand will fail entirely in the face of global- the numbers and range of their bighorn ized competition. herd, apparently unaware that domestic • Or perhaps the increasingly common sheep still grazed west-side allotments. practice of participatory decision-mak- Wide-ranging young bighorn males mixing ing will change the terms of debate and with domestic sheep may contract Pasturella reduce the influence of national inter- or other afflictions fatal to wild sheep, then ests on local resource users. This reac- return to their bands, spreading death. tion to top-down conservation and The solution is to eliminate such encoun- development, more and more often put ters—which would end domestic sheep to use in the developing world, has grazing in the Bridger Wilderness. begun to be applied to public-land planning in the rather different social- Prospects historical context of the United States. Management of public lands in the western • Or could it be that environmentalists United States is highly politicized and and ranchers find common cause? In changeable, involving many players and an settling the interior West, ranchers AUTHOR array of issues. The outcome of the contests fenced and irrigated hay meadows that Barbara Brower in the Bridger Wilderness is yet to be decid- are now the picturesque foreground to Geography Department, Portland State ed, for it rests on a number of uncertainties: the region’s big mountains and a criti- University, Portland, OR 97207, USA. cal habitat for important wildlife. Nei- [email protected] Barbara Brower is Associate Professor • The Endangered Species Act that cre- ther combatant is happy with the con- of Geography at Portland State University, ates the current grazing conflict is version of the open pastoral fore- with a Ph.D. from the University of Califor- under attack and may be revised, reduc- ground to condominiums and the nia, Berkeley. Her research interests cover the fields of resource policy, mountain ing its threat to the range livestock “trophy homes” of the New West—a peoples and environments, pastoralism, industry. Though the livestock industry landscape now accommodating itself to highland Asia, the American West and cul- is weaker than it used to be, it shares its telecommuters and media stars rather tural ecology. She is the author of The Sherpa of Khumbu and editor of the positions on environmental law and than stockmen. Himalayan Research Bulletin. policy with other, still significant con- stituencies such as developers and the So the future of wilderness manage- FURTHER READING

mining industry. And ranchers benefit, ment in the Bridger Wilderness of the Brower B. Forthcoming. Sheep on the too, from important American myths, Wind Rivers remains open, the forces act- Forest: Power and Policy in the Bridger particularly the idea of the Western ing on it in flux, and the prospects for Wilderness. Austin: University of Texas Frontier and romantic visions of the grazing uncertain. Also uncertain for some Press. Kelsey J. 1980. Climbing and Hiking in cowboy: many see ranching as an essen- of us, in a situation of such muddled per- the Wind River Mountains. San Francisco: tial part of the American landscape. ception and policy, is whose side to be on. Sierra Club.