Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
President Donald Trump recently reduced the size of a couple of national monuments in Utah.
This has the environmental community up in arms.
The environmentalists apparently think that opening this land to agricultural and industrial use will destroy the land.
Implicit in that argument is that hikers, campers, picnickers, photographers, movie-makers, and recreational vehicles have less impact.
I tend to disagree with that assessment.
That is based on my observations of northeastern New Mexico, which consists mostly of several million acres of open cattle-ranch land protected from general public use by hundreds of miles of barbed-wire fences.
One of the joys of riding a bicycle along Quay County roads when there’s no traffic, which is often, is uninterrupted views of mesas, rock, and grasslands populated only by cattle, herds of antelope and occasional deer.
And on a still day, when I stop, there is a silence that I have only experienced in the middle of a Southern California desert.
Traveling by car in northeastern New Mexico also offers miles and miles of open grasslands, mesas and canyons, interrupted only by herds of cattle and wildlife.
There is something to be said for having barbed-wire fences around to limit human contact with most of the land. Hunters and fishing enthusiasts can obtain permission to access these lands from private landowners, but that’s just a few people.
I think the lack of general public access might be a good thing overall, if one is interested in maintaining natural landscapes.
Yes, cattle feed on the landscape, but I have to believe that their impact is minimal. When it requires about 80 acres to maintain a single cow, it indicates the forage plants they munch on must be pretty few and far between.
How much impact could that have on the landscape in general?
If some land now set aside for national monuments can be sold to ranchers and drillers, the new owners are likely to protect their holdings with more barbed wire and limited public access.
If that happens, I think that will do more to protect the natural landscapes than opening this land to public use, despite the proclamations of environmentalists.
On the other hand, if by some magic a few hundred-thousand acres of mesa lands now behind barbed wire were to become a state park, I would be among the first to put on hiking boots and hit the trail.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:
stevenmhansen
@plateautel.net