The Ranchers
The local ranchers aren’t fans of “environmentalists” but they also all expressed a desire to work together to take care of the land. They also pointed out that they had to be conservationists because if they destroyed their land, they wouldn’t be able to graze anymore and would go out of business.
They pointed out that ranchers were one of the best partners for managing the public lands because they are the only ones out there everyday managing the land. A lot of them expressed a desire to use this partnership as a way to protect the river.
“I have a really good relationship with the BLM,” said Lance Clawson, the Lucky Hills allotment holder. “And I’ve had good cordial conversations with some of the other organizations. And honestly at the end of the day I feel like we’re all striving for the same goal. We just need to work together.”
Clawson recognizes that the environmentalists and the ranchers don’t always see eye to eye on what the best way to protect the land is, but he hopes that they can find some common ground to work together.
Two of the allotment holders, Lance Clawson and Jim Lindsey, are supervisors for the Hereford NRCD. While the NRCD has come under fire from some of the environmental groups suing the BLM for influencing the BLM’s decisions, its mission is rooted in conservation too.
The NRCD’s mission is “to provide assistance to achieve conservation of natural resources by promoting policies and practices that are economically feasible and environmentally responsible.”
The Hereford NRCD isn’t the only natural resource conservation district. They can be found all across rural areas of the country. They were initially started as a response to the dust bowl in the 1930s when farmers and ranchers needed to find a way to prevent another environmental disaster like this.
Clawson said that he's done a lot of conservation work on his land and through the NRCD.
“Since we’ve been on this allotment, we’ve done a ton of work from fencing to waters to the spike treatments to the maintenance of the roads,” said Clawson. “We’ve just done a lot of good out here I feel like.”
For the local ranchers, ranching isn’t just a profession, it’s a way of life and an identity. They also feel like they’re on the defensive because the public perception of them has become increasingly negative.
All of the allotment holders in the SPRNCA I was able to speak with had either been ranching for their entire lives, or grew up ranching and were finally able to make their dreams of owning a ranch a reality.
The ranchers with allotments in the SPRNCA feel like they’re being singled out for a problem that they’re not causing. And although their entire ranches are not within the SPRNCA, they feel like their livelihoods are being threatened by the proposals to eliminate grazing from the preserve.
“There’s no benefit to adjusting the allotment,” said Lance Clawson, the Lucky Hills allotment holder. “You’re not going to gain anything, at least not by shutting ours down. The problem isn’t coming from our ranches.”
“I just wonder when enough is gonna be enough for these people,” said Matt Ford, a lessee for the Babocomari allotment. “You know, they don’t care that they’re ruining somebody’s livelihood, you know? I’m not trying to say anything bad. But they got all the money in the world backing them and two dummies like him and I go in debt ranching the first year and they’re trying to jerk our leases out of there.”
The defensive feeling goes beyond the ranchers in the SPRNCA. More generally, the ranchers in Southeastern Arizona feel like they’re receiving a bad reputation from the general public. When I was reporting this story, John Ladd asked if I would sit down with him and his close friend, Bill Brake. Bill wanted to speak with me because he wanted to show that ranchers weren’t bad people.
Both John and Bill felt like there had been a major shift in public opinion towards ranchers over the course of their lives. They feel like the industry is on the defensive now when it used to be on the offensive. Bill was concerned for the future of the industry. He said that no one in their right mind would want to go into ranching these days.
Despite the hardships of ranching in the modern world and the bad reputation he thinks ranchers are getting, Bill still says he is proud to be a rancher. He has a sign posted at the front of his ranch saying “this ranch feeds 1640 American families.”
All of the ranchers I spoke with while reporting shared this sentiment. They were proud to be feeding people. Clawson said that at the end of the day his main goal was to feed people, and most people eat beef.