Where are the cows coming from?
“We don’t want cows on the river either, that’s the thing. It’s not like that’s the problem. When you do get cows on the river, you can’t find them because it’s so thick and so dense. So if we have a cow that’s getting out on the river, that cow is gone because we can’t afford to go look for them every two months.”
-Lance Clawson, SPRNCA allotment holder
Hundreds of trespass cows have been documented in the SPRNCA over the last couple of years. But where are they all coming from? There isn’t one answer to this question. Realistically, the cows are probably coming from many different places.
While there are only four grazing allotments in the SPRNCA, the entire NCA is surrounded by other grazing allotments. Cows are likely coming from both places along with occasional feral cows and Mexican cows wandering north when the floodgates are open along the San Pedro River.
Some of the allotment holders have admitted their cattle occasionally get into the river. Lance Clawson, the lessee for the Lucky Hills allotment, admitted that he spent a week riding the river searching for two of his bulls.
He said that once the bulls were returned to the ranch, he took one of them to auction because he doesn’t want to have to deal with an animal that is constantly getting into the river. In general, he feels like the allotment holders in the SPRNCA are being unfairly singled out over the issue of trespass cattle.
“What’s sad is we’re getting a bad reputation for cattle that aren’t even ours,” said Clawson.
Clawson claims that he and his neighbor, Jim Lindsey, the lessee for the Brunckow Hills allotment in the SPRNCA, are good responsible allotment holders. He said that they both are diligent about maintaining their fences and keeping their cows gentle so that they don’t test the fences.
“We are doing what we can to keep the fences up in the water gaps and keeping them in good repair,” said Clawson. “And a big part of it is just having good, gentle cattle. Cattle that don’t run, cattle that you can work with. And that’s what we have.”
“Even if you have a good fence up, if you have wild cattle, they’re going to go through any fence,” said Clawson. “It doesn’t matter how nice the fence is.”
Clawson thinks that a majority of the trespass cows in the river are coming from allotments outside of the SPRNCA. He said that a majority of the cattle in the river are from ranches north and south of him.
“To me, it’s extremely biased because there are allotments up and down from the Mexican border all the way north of Benson,” said Clawson. “So why these? Why are these four being singled out? The problem isn’t coming from our ranches.”
A lot of the trespass cattle are probably coming in from allotments that border the SPRNCA. Most of the cows that are documented in the trespass complaints are branded or tagged. They belong to someone in Cochise County.
While groups like the Center for Biological Diversity think there is no place for cattle on public lands in the arid West and are suing the have the allotments in the SPRNCA shut down, they don’t have a legal nexus to sue over the allotments bordering the SPRNCA. The lands surrounding the SPRNCA are a checkerboard of private, state and federal lands, most of which are used for some form of grazing.
Grazing is one of the most pervasive uses on public lands. More than 250 million acres of public lands are used for grazing every year. So if cows keep getting in from these allotments, revoking grazing permits from the allotments in the SPRNCA won’t solve the problem of trespass cattle. Instead, better management from the BLM will be required to keep cows out of the preserve.
The entirety of the SPRNCA is supposed to be fenced off so that cattle cannot get into the river, but the BLM has admitted that it is understaffed and underfunded. The Center for Biological Diversity is suing them over the inability to maintain the area's boundary fence. So the lack of fence maintenance by the BLM is probably the culprit behind a lot of the trespass cattle in the river.
Silver thinks that the cows are getting in from everywhere. He said at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where the cows are coming from. They’re destroying the riparian area.
“We’ve got how many, some 80 complaints in? So do you think that all those cows are from Mexico? That’s a lie,” said Silver. “Are they only from the allotments that are non-NCA allotments? That’s a lie. They’re from all of the allotments everywhere there.”
Silver claims that this is no accident. He believes that ranching in the arid West is a tough business and it motivates the ranchers to cheat by allowing their cows to get fat in the river. He claims that the BLM knows this and is just turning a blind-eye to it.
“You cannot economically survive as a rancher in the arid West, unless you take advantage of riparian vegetation,” said Silver. “So they have to cheat. They’re motivated to cheat, and they do cheat. And the management agencies know it, but they just turn the other way and let it go.”
Keeping cows out of the river is hard work. And complaints over the BLM’s lack of fence-maintenance in the SPRNCA are not only coming from the environmentalists.
John Ladd, the Chairman of the NRCD, said that he has put a lot of work into maintaining the SPRNCA’s boundary fence that borders his private property. He said this is technically the BLM’s job, but they don’t have the manpower to do it and if it doesn’t get done, his cows will end up in the river.
Clawson said that it would be nice if the BLM could send fencing crews to help out periodically. He said that in a lot of the areas where his boundary fence is with the river, you can’t even drive equipment in. It’s too rugged and there are no established roads, so they end up packing in equipment for miles sometimes.
“It would be nice if they could send a fencing crew out periodically to assess the fences and help maintain them,” said Clawson. “Especially in the areas that are pretty remote.”
The BLM is providing the allotment holders with fencing material. Clawson is appreciative of this because fencing is expansive. But the BLM doesn’t appear to be making good on its promise to help more with the actual maintenance of the fences.
Cyndi Tuell, the southwest programs director for Western Watershed Project, thinks this is because the BLM doesn’t have the manpower to make good on its promises. She said that they don’t have procurement staff right now, so they can’t even hire people to do the work.
“It’s not that they don’t have the money to do vegetation treatments and fence building projects. They don’t have the people,” said Tuell.
She claims that the reality is they’re not going to do any of the things they say they’re going to do because they’re understaffed and underfunded. This is perpetuating the issue of trespass cattle in the river.