Conservationists, ranchers seek
to forge alliance

By TIM HEARDEN

Capital Press

A half-dozen ranching and conservation groups are joining forces to promote and enhance ecologically friendly ranching in the West.

The new Coalition for Conservation through Ranching will attempt through legislation and outreach to stem the transition of Western land away from production agriculture, Family Farm Alliance President Pat O'Toole said.

While ranchers and environmentalists have sometimes been at odds, both groups tend to agree that grazing and other sustainable agriculture practices are better for preserving wildlife than development, said O'Toole, a Wyoming cattle and sheep rancher.

"People ... realize we need to be finding solutions rather than litigating and being in conflict all the time," O'Toole said.

"What this group's perspective is is to try and be out there lobbying and working for consensus on things we agree on," he said. "From my conversations with people who have heard about it on multiple levels, there seems to be some excitement that there's some positive direction out there."

Joining the Family Farm Alliance in forming the coalition are the Public Lands Council, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the National Association of Conservation Districts, the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Fund.

Other participating organizations will include the American Farmland Trust, the American Forage and Grassland Council, the California Farm Bureau Federation, the Society for Rangeland Management, the Wild Sheep Foundation and the Wilderness Society, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will advise the group.

The coalition has its roots in an event earlier this year in Salt Lake City, where more than 120 participants discussed public lands issues, ranching and the environment and concluded that there was a potential for the disparate groups to work together, according to a news release.

The coalition will help to increase the understanding of complex issues between ranching and conservation and will provide a forum to discuss how the two disciplines interact, the release stated.

A member of former President Bill Clinton's transition team, O'Toole recalled the animosity between many Western landowners and the U.S. Interior Department in the early '90s, and "nobody wants to revisit that because it was counterproductive," he said.

"I believe you can make a pretty good argument ... about the environmental benefits of (ranching) in the West," he said. "We're doing some river restoration right now with the Fish and Wildlife Service."

The Farm Alliance wrote an opinion on climate change and water a couple of years ago, O'Toole said. One of the group's assertions was that population growth in the West would have the same impacts as climate change in terms of an increased demand for water and increased pressures on private land, he said.

"The policy people who really get what's going on and, in the case of this coalition, the conservation groups that really know what's going on are saying this is too important to lose," he said.

"Whether you're a D or an R, if you love the land, you love the land," he said.

Staff writer Tim Hearden is based in Shasta Lake. E-mail: thearden@capitalpress.com.