Jon points to this Jonathan Adler post at The Commons about a story in The New York Times which chronicles the efforts of Republican state representative from southern Utah, Michael E. Noel, a former Bureau of Land Management employee, to stop an Arizona environmental group, Grand Canyon Trust, from buying out local rancher's grazing allotments on the Colorado plateau in Utah. Noel says:

. . . the loss of the grazing allotments would hurt ranching, which would in turn deprive the area's young people of the character-building chance to work on the land.

"Yes, it's a free market to buy and sell," Mr. Noel said recently. "But if you buy it, you use it."

By retiring the lands, he said, the trust is reneging on an implicit agreement, and "if we allow that to occur, we go down the path of eliminating all grazing on public lands."

Adler protests:

Perhaps so, but this is a change being brought about by the marketplace, rather than government fiat. That's how markets work. If a given land-use is less desirable, the land will be purchased and devoted to higher valued uses. In the past, this meant that much land was devoted to grazing and resource extraction. Yet as the nation gets wealthier, people are willing to spend more money to purchase enviornmental amenities on tha same lands -- if the government lets it happen. Mr. Noel is seeking to put a legal halt to the Trust's efforts.

It looks to me like groups of soldiers firing their guns in random directions. They all have nice guns but they are shooting up any innocent bystanders foolish enough to be in the vicinity rather than each other. More's the pity.

Why does the pseudo-environmental group want to eliminate grazing in the first place? What business does a group from Arizona have interfering in Utah?

The grass is thin and dry. The soil, the same. How fat could a cow get? . . .

Pointing to the soil's crust, a mat splotched with bacterial growths that replenish soil nitrogen, Mr. Hedden said grazing left both grass and crust in tatters.

"We don't know how long this land takes to heal," he said.

Ranchers aren't trying to get cows fat. Cows are fully grown. They produce calves not fat and in most cases lose weight when put on dryland grazing. That's expected. A dry cow has far less nutritional needs than a growing or lactating animal and loses body condition, lives off its back fat during gestation to a large extent rather than the limited forage available at that time. The same thing happens with wild ruminants such as bison and deer, and their calves come when spring forage comes so that they have the energy to produce milk and gain back some fat to get into the next breeding cycle.

The soil crust is another matter. Such soil, known as cryptobiotic soil, isn't obviously alive, it just seems crusty, as if had been a little wet and then dried hard.

Cryptobiotic soil is found throughout the world. In arid regions, these living soil crusts are dominated by cyanobacteria, and also include soil lichens, mosses, green algae, microfungi and bacteria. These crusts play an important role in the ecosystems in which they occur. In the high deserts of the Colorado Plateau (which includes parts of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico), these knobby black crusts are extraordinarily well-developed, and may represent 70 to 80 percent of the living ground cover...

When moistened, cyanobacteria become active, moving through the soil and leaving a trail of sticky material behind. The sheath material sticks to surfaces such as rock or soil particles, forming an intricate web of fibers throughout the soil. In this way, loose soil particles are joined together, and an otherwise unstable surface becomes very resistant to both wind and water erosion.

The soil-binding action is not dependent on the presence of living filaments. Layers of abandoned sheaths, built up over long periods of time, can still be found clinging tenaciously to soil particles, providing cohesion and stability in sandy soils at depths up to 10cm.

Nitrogen fixation is another significant capability of cyanobacteria. Vascular plants are unable to utilize nitrogen as it occurs in the atmosphere. Cyanobacteria are able to convert atmospheric nitrogen to a form plants can use. This is especially important in desert ecosystems, where nitrogen levels are low and often limiting to plant productivity.

Just walking on cryptobiotic soil breaks the crust and exposes soil to wind erosion. It isn't just cows - people wreck it too, especially in vehicles but just their boots are enough. But the grass is sparse and there are very few animals. They don't hang around and trample areas except near water. They pass through following game trials, cow paths, paths of least resistance that change elevation the least and are easy walking. Cryptobiotic soils are fragile and a purist argument could be made that all access to such areas is harmful. Hikers are as bad as cattle. But if they all stay on the paths the harm is small. Of the two, cows and humans, the cows are better disciplined. They're too lazy to york about screwing up the soil. If they were a problem there would no longer be any cryptobiotic soil since they've been there a long time. People on the other hand are more of a novelty. It isn't just a cowboy or two rounding up a few scattered cattle, it's people with lots more money and leisure time than sense.

Adler's market argument is a simplification and misuse of sensible market principles. When Los Angeles bought the water rights from Owens Valley ranchers and shipped the water over the hill to town it destroyed communities and created an alkalai desert. Clearly the fact that a transaction between willing adults was consumated is not enough to justify that act. Markets aren't things to worship, they are useful mechanisms for some things but not all.

It is the particulars of this situation that determine useful approaches. The generalized loathing for cattle and grazing of the Grand Canyon Trust is childish and mistaken. It has done environmental harm in some cases rather than helping. The generalized market worship of Adler is equally mistaken. Markets are our tools not our masters.

The actions of Grand Canyon Trust are predatory, like the Los Angeles water District story, in that they do not seek to improve a locality on its own terms. They don't know the land, the people or their community. And what's more they don't give a fig.

The issue is water. Cattle have to go to water or die. People want to play near water. If the Grand Canyon Trust actually wanted to help - rather than just indulge a childish fetish with donated money - they'd help set up watering facilities away from natural water in areas the cattle would really rather be anyway so they wouldn't have to walk away from feed to water. The tourists may never even see a cow if this was done, the cattle would be better off and so would the ranchers. It would be cheaper and preserve the character of the community except for the degradation of tourists and that's getting to be unavoidable.

It may seem to be a small thing - few cattle and even fewer people are affected - and the NYT article goes out of its way to paint Noel as a lunatic and repeat every false idea about cattle. But it is a big deal in principle. We are emerging from a few decades of bad environmentalism where city kids who knew nothing at all about ecology, educated by biologists and ecologists who knew nothing about ecology, had invaded western communities and done great harm to the very environments that they claimed to care for. Little by little better knowledge is creeping in over the obdurate objections of reactionary environmentalists, and sincere people are coming to better understand the role of grazing in environmental restoration and preservation.

Groups like Grand Canyon Trust are slow to reform and ultimately bad for the environment. They could be useful if they got some education and began to use that loose money to imporve grazing practices rather than eliminate it entirely. The idea above about distributed water facilities to reduce riparian traffic is one technique they could fund. There are many others that would improve the environment, the cattle and the ranchers but are not affordable in the current catttle market.

The market is not a god that must be obeyed. Distortions in one segment, such as grain subsidies, ripple through the whole system and create problems. The environment, which isn't yet valued usefully by markets, further distances good sense from market imperatives.

Real environmentalists will pick these threads apart and intervene where the most good can be done for the least effort. If that means subverting the market will, then so be it. Noel may be only half right, and it may be for the wrong reasons (he is after all a Republican devil, probably a Mormon too!), but he has a point and Grand Canyon Trust does not seem to be acting for the environment's benefit.

I've vacationed in that area - way off the beaten path where no other tourists came - and marvelled at the visual beauty and biological secrets such as the cryptobiotic soil. I did see a cow or two but never saw a hoof print much less a cow path. The animals are wide spread and always have been. They didn't seem to be doing much damage except at water. That's just an anecdote, no substitute for a real study, but it makes the Grand Canyon Trust position seem very weak to me. They don't seem to have a good reason for their actions, they just want to do it and they have the money, they have the leverage of the city over rural areas and so can impose their will on locals. I find that distasteful, an "ugly American" sort of story though the peasants being disrespected and abused are Americans too.

Lastly, Trusts are not about markets, certainly not about free markets. They are tax loopholes exploited by the wealthy to control ever greater segments of land for their pleasure, but not necessarily for the good of the environment and often to the detriment of people and communities. They can't be defended in an intellectually honest way on those grounds. The best that can be said is that they stole it fair, square and legal like so that someone else with equal or greater contempt for environments and communities, such as a developer, can't control things for their pleasure. We don't yet have true free markets, and if we did they wouldn't be particularly useful since so many of the attributes of such environments have no established market values or even the means to measure and value them. Faith in markets is just that - faith.

I don't get off on faith. It's a cheap buzz in my book. It will be difficult, time consuming, contentious and frustrating for all concerned to develop sensible approaches to environments as pressures increase due to devlopment and population growth. But it ought to be done. Simply allowing the deepest pockets or the strongest arms to determine outcomes seems foolish. There's no way to compel the wealthy and strong - markets and governments - but there is a duty to reason publicly about these issues. Perhaps even these people can be swayed by consideration of long term consequences on large scales. Perhaps just a little doubt will weaken their faith enough for them to begin to reason about these things.

The facts are that grazing benefits most environments but it isn't profitable enough to be done in the most beneficial ways. Part of the problem is distortion in existing markets for the products, and part is immaturity in markets for ecosystem services broadly understood to include the full attributes of healthy ecosystems. A good rancher gets little for his products and nothing at all for his stewardship though all of society benefits. His lot is made worse by ignorant environmentalists who don't understand ecology, political opportunists who exploit the ignorance of environmentalists to gain power, and wealthy individuals and groups who prey on the weakness of others, ready to pounce when a bad year comes along or an old man dies. There are good answers and easy answers, but no good easy answers.