Republican welfare ranchers are driving the desertification of the West

If livestock grazing is the key to preventing wildfires why is ranch country still suffering from near daily extreme grassland fire danger indices? Because Republicans are evil.

None of the studies that promote grazing to reduce fuels considers the unavoidable ecological impacts that accompany grazing. These include water pollution, soil compaction, trampling of biological soil crusts, the spread of weeds (as with cheatgrass), the social displacement of wildlife (like elk), and the loss of forage wildlife and insects, and costs. While targeted grazing and the ecological impacts that result might be acceptable for small areas, say to reduce vegetation around a home or some other limited area, it is not effective or acceptable on a landscape scale. As such, it cannot aid in reducing large wildfires. [Targeted Livestock Grazing Won’t Preclude Large Wildfires]

Just 150 years ago bison would be clearing the grasses that drive large wildfires. Indigenous peoples set at least 47% of fires in the Interior West between 1776 and 1900 because smoke from Indigenous cultural fire has been long-applied to control tree pests. Today, restoring and rewilding American ecosystems are parts of the Green New Deal.

The Anthropocene is now and time to rewild some of the American West eventually becoming part of a Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell in Montana along the Missouri River through North Dakota to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through eastern Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, western Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. 

Clear the second growth conifers and restore aspen habitat, prescribe burns, begin extensive Pleistocene rewilding using bison and cervids, empower tribes, lease private land for wildlife corridors, turn feral horses from Bureau of Land Management pastures onto other public land to control exotic grasses and buy out the welfare ranchers Tony Dean warned us about.