Grass in a cow's belly isn't there for wildlife either. Show me someplace where there is actually "good management practices" and I'll show you 20 places that don't have any management practices at all. Public lands ranching is a cancer and does nothing more than provide welfare for people who engage in it. They rarely ever meet the standards that they are required to, they destroy habitat for hundreds of species, and they make the land less productive. It's wrong.

I've seen places where cows have destroyed every living thing and, yes, that land doesn't burn.

If all livestock grazing on public lands went away it wouldn't even be noticed by the market. Besides, I thought you Republican types wanted free markets. I guess only for the people who work at Wal-Mart or McDonalds.

I don't think it is humane to raise so many cattle on a piece of land with just medusa head grass that they won't eat, no shade, and hardly any water. All of the places where there is water is left as just a big bunch of mud and B.S. and there is nothing left for anything else. How is that humane? Tell me?

Add the fact that we subsidize it without our consent just so somebody can claim to be a rugged cowboy while their hired hand, often times an undocumented or immigrant worker, gets paid 1000 bucks a month to do an impossible job.

I'd wager that land left ungrazed by cattle would produce more wildlife than these inefficient critters that evolved somewhere with more water and that wildlife would be able to feed more people in a sustainable fashion than cattle ever could.

It is important to note that, in addition to finding that reduced livestock grazing was not a significant contributing factor to the severity and size of the Murphy complex wildfire, the USGS study further concluded that "[c]hanges in grazing management aimed at managing fuel loads are not appropriate for homogenous application across large landscapes and multiple management units" (p. 32). The livestock industry may still argue that "targeted" grazing can reduce fire fuel load, but how effective are limited grazing applications when entire landscapes are going up in smoke? BLM would have to authorize high levels of grazing across huge expanses to affect fire at a landscape level, and, as the report notes, "[s]uch application of grazing across entire landscapes at rates necessary to reduce fuel loads and affect fire behavior...could have negative effects on livestock production and habitat goals" (p. 32).

The USGS report reminds me of anther bit of research by McAdoo et al. (unpubl.) regarding the use of livestock to control cheatgrass. The researchers surmised that, assuming livestock grazing could control cheatgrass--and notwithstanding the multiple negative impacts of grazing on soil, ecosystems, and watersheds--there are simply not enough livestock available to graze at the preferred locations, at the preferred intensity, at the preferred times during the year, to control cheatgrass at a landscape-level in Nevada and the Great Basin.

You disagree with Fite.

What would you have me do ignore grazing critics views? The report suggests grazing could have a role but managing grazing to manage fire might not fit ranchers' other goals. For one thing we would want ranchers to graze cheatgrass areas heavily in the spring then pull their cattle, sheep or goats off.

The report, I assume you read suggested the dangerous infernos would have burned whether the lands were grazed or not.

By the way, I have said repeatedly I don't agree that we should remove cattle from public lands.