Obviously this is a hot topic. Hey, why not add to the fire. smile
There are several places that I go backpacking that are heavily used by cattle. One place I like to go because it is close to home (think less than 2 miles) and very few people. It is private land that is owned by a co-op of many people. I have talked to a few of them for permission (in case you were wondering). Pretty much every time I go there, I run into a large herd. They also seem to like my favorite place to camp. One time we came to our favorite spot, and there was a large herd. They scootched over a tad and let us set up camp. Then they bedded down for the night right next to us. Very early in the morning they got up and left. This is all private land, not BLM or NF. Because it is private, it gets very little people disturbance. So far, the cow disturbance is not as bad as the human disturbance.
I do think that we need to change the way we manage cattle in this country. I have been listening/following Joel Salatin recently, trying to understand his method. He believes in trying to mimic nature with regard to herbivores. That means "mobing/mowing/moving". You have to keep them in tight groups (mobing), then let them eat a specific spot of grass enough (mowing), and then move them to a new area and don't let them touch that same spot again for another year (moving). This keeps the grass healthy, builds soil, increases the amount of water that the soil can hold (less soil runoff), decreases disease, and a bunch of other stuff. His method would be difficult to do on National Forest or BLM land, because it is labor intensive.

To add to that, I would say that your website saying cows are evil is a little misleading. You could use the same logic and say that crops are evil because it takes a lot of fuel to grow them and that gives off greenhouse gases, plus crops have GMO's in them, and the use of pesticide and herbicide is destroying our environment and the natural population of animals in the area. So, now you can't eat meat or vegetables. Cows aren't the problem, it is how we raise them that is.


Edited by finallyME (09/23/15 01:53 PM)
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