Saying things that need to be said.
Signs of Sanity
BY LEE PITTS
Don’t look now but many Americans are starting to show symptoms of sanity. They’re rediscovering reality. In many ways it feels like we’re in some kind time warp and we’re back in the 1950’s and 1960’s when beef was the King of Meats, logging trucks were a common sight and our forests and grass lands weren’t burning to a crisp because our government back then subscribed to the teachings of revered conservationist Aldo Leopold who said there were five factors that sustained healthy grazing lands: the axe, the cow, the plow, the gun and the match.
why do people every 50 years or so have to relearn what they should have already known?
Rediscovering Great Tasting Beef
For example, take the kind of
American society seems be changing as well, back to our better days when Americans believed that borders were important, the less government the better, hard work was something to be proud of, eating beef was good for you, and people believed more in faith than they did the Internet.
In the immortal words of Jonathan Swift writing in the early 1700’s, “Everything old is new again.”
Which raises the question...
demanding. Like Prime beef. Suddenly it’s in vogue to eat beef as Americans are hungry for quality protein and it doesn’t seem to matter that beef prices are higher than they’ve ever been. Bring on the beef!
If you expect to follow the trail, you must do your sleepin’ in the winter.
cattle we’re raising these days. Look in any sale catalog and you’ll see the size and shape of good cattle have more in common with the belly draggers of the 1950’s than they do the meatless wonders of the 70’s and early 80’s. Today’s cattle are deep through the heart girth, more muscular, more structurally correct and are producing more of what the customer is
“When retail prices for any consumer product reach record high levels,” says CoBank, “the corresponding drop in demand usually materializes in short order. Beef appears to be among the few exceptions to that rule, having defied common expectations surrounding price elasticity. Retail grocery prices for beef skyrocketed in recent years and show no signs of descending any time soon. But surprisingly, demand has not softened –it’s actually edged upward. According to USDA data, the all-fresh retail beef de-
FWS Director to Colorado: No More Wolves from Canada Allowed
BY MARK HEINZ / COWBOY STATE DAILY
Colorado can’t bring in any more wolves from Canada as part of its reintroduction program, says former Wyoming Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik, now director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Trump administration.
An agreement between the FWS and Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) doesn’t authorize Colorado to get wolves from outside the Northern Rocky Mountain region, Nesvik says in an Oct. 10 letter to CPW Director Jeff Davis.
Greg Lopez, a former Colorado congressman and Republican running for governor of that state, told Cowboy State Daily that he blew the whistle on the apparent flaw in the wolf reintroduction plan. That prompted Nesvik’s letter, he said. There’s a concerted effort to delay and possibly shut down Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program, Lopez said. Opponents of the program are expected to show up in force at the CPW Commission’s next meeting, scheduled for Nov. 14 in Sterling, Colorado, he said. However, Colorado still has a legitimate agreement with Canadian officials to acquire wolves, CPW spokesman Travis Duncan said in an email to Cowboy State Daily.
Future of Colorado
Wolf Program In Doubt?
Nesvik’s move could cast doubt on the future
continued on page 4
by LEE PITTS
mand index in the second quarter climbed to its highest level in at least 25 years.”
Brian Earnest, lead animal protein economist with CoBank says,
“Retail per capita beef consumption is headed for 60 pounds this year. Consumers can’t seem to get enough protein these days, and among animal proteins beef remains king.”
Admittedly, we probably won’t be knocking chicken from its roost any time soon and it’s not the 95 pounds of beef we ate per year over 50 years ago, but at least we’re headed in the right direction again. Among the factors CoBank credits for beef’s current popularity are,
“The heightened interest in dietary protein, changing health perceptions surrounding beef, and the availability of restaurant-quality beef at retail grocery stores.”
continued on page 2
A Red Rock Legacy Under Threat
BY MEGAN JENKINS / PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION
When you ask Chris Heaton how he feels about the land he works on, his voice changes.
“It’s literally home,” he says simply. “It’s sacred.”
The Heaton family has been cattle ranching in the Red Rock desert region of the Utah-Arizona border for six generations. They raise calves every year and sell them in the fall.
Chris has worked the ranch since he was eight years old. Now he’s raising four kids there. The history of his family is all around him: Once, a couple of years ago, he stumbled on a rock that had his great-grandfather’s cattle brand on it.
“I showed it to my dad,” he remembers. “He didn’t even know it was there.”
When Chris rides down canyons and trails, he knows his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather did the same things — “pushing cows down the same trails, fixing the ponds, fixing the springs. It’s a pretty special place.”
Chris’s ranch includes a small farm in Kanab, Utah—where the family grows hay for horses— and about 50,000 acres of public land that is leased from the State and the federal government. Most of the ranch is in Arizona, where private water rights are tied to the right to graze on public lands. The Heatons have proof of their water rights in Arizona going all the way back to the 1800s.
But that doesn’t seem to matter now. In 2023, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that turned part of the Heatons’ ranch into a national monument.
continued on page 5
My Cowboy Christmas I
’ve read all the articles telling the unenlightened, like me, about all the money we’re leaving on the table by not weaning our calves for at least 45 days. I don’t blame the feeders and stocker operators who don’t want to put up with sickly bawling calves either but some of us run on leased land and don’t have the facilities to wean our calves. For two years I attempted to put a long wean on our calves and I still have bad dreams about it.
We gathered the herd, sorted off the calves and thus began the nightmare. At the time we were living in a trailer house on the ranch within a stone’s throw from our weaning pens so we got to listen to the cacophony of calves all night. Even the bottle calves that never tasted their mother’s milk were bawling for their mommas long since gone. I tried everything from ear plugs to Tylenol PM but I didn’t sleep a wink. So I woke up grouchy... who could sleep through an earthquake. Her naturally cheery outlook started getting on my frayed nerves and by the end of breakfast I was already madder than a rained on rooster, only to look outside to see there’d been a jailbreak and half the calves were already back with their moms.
The problem was that to reinforce a falling-down set of corrals where I intended to wean our calves I had bought a load of cheap panels that I swear were welded together with the school glue you used in kindergarten. Those calves and their mad mothers made quick work of those panels so we had to gather the entire herd again to sort off the jailbirds. That meant the noise on the second night was even worse. Even grouchy couldn’t sleep so she took that opportunity to announce she was going to visit her sister. This meant I had to feed and doctor the sick calves all by my lonesome. One thing all the articles fail to mention when weaning your calves are all the added costs involved. I’d already spent a small fortune on the panels and now I had to feed the calves 75-pound sacks of a starter ration I bought from a feed mill an hour from home. Then there
Volume 67 • No. 10
Keep in mind this increase in consumption is occurring at the same time that beef is selling at an all-time high.
“The all-fresh retail beef
prices surged by 9 percent for the year, hitting an astonishing $8.90 per pound!”
Even at those levels, prices have been unable to tame unyielding consumer interest in beef.
rooms across America.
Says Earnest,
lit Yes. Please subscribe me to the Livestock Market Digest for: □ 1 Year at $35 □ 2 Years at $45
“The U.S. beef industry is producing a much higher quality product today than it did 30 years ago. Recognizing quality issues in the 1980’s, cattle producers began selectively improving herd genetics to produce beef with higher fat marbling and better taste for improved customer experience. Those efforts have paid off as 95 percent of U.S. beef production is now grading Choice or higher!”
Back To Beef
Health conscience consumers are also rediscovering beef.
“Consumer perceptions surrounding the health aspects of eating beef have also improved in recent years,” says Earnest.
“Fitness-conscious consumers w ho laud protein content for muscle production often favor beef. The advent of GLP-1 medications for weight loss have also sparked more widespread consumer interest in increasing the amount of protein in their diets.”
The MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement is advocating for reform in industrial food systems and the rise of the Atkins Diet and others like it have also helped push many consumers back to being beef lovers. Politics has also played a role. According to Calley Means, an advisor to Robert Kennedy, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Service,
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“When consumers started demanding better food, and Trump’s team started calling them out, they actually listened.”
According to writer Cole Harrison, it’s not just consumers looking for real food and healthier alternatives,
“Something wild is happening in corporate board-
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Major food companies are dumping toxic ingredients left and right.”
It also helps that the global demand for meat, dairy and fish is projected to climb steadily over the next decade, driven by rising incomes and urbanization in middle-income countries.
To listen to the media, you’d think we’d turned into a nation of vegans but Fast Company commissioned a poll a few years ago in which 11,000 former and current vegans and vegetarians over the age of 17 were questioned. They found those consumers who choose to give up meat altogether struggled to keep up the habit. According to Jessica Leber of Fast Company, “They found that only one in five vegetarians and vegans maintains their diet; a full 84 percent eventually revert back to eating meat or other animal products!”
No, we are not turning into a nation of vegetarians as Hollywood actors and environmentalists with ulterior motives would have us believe. Plant burgers are not going to rid the world of ranchers. The news that Americans have rediscovered the great taste of beef is refreshing but perhaps even more important, only 2.8 percent of consumers are saying they will eat less beef for environmental reasons! This proves that the greenies have failed miserably in their efforts to turn burger and steak eaters into Beyond Beef customers.
Free Market Magic
When we bought this newspaper from the Livestock Marketing Association over 40 years ago, the first issue we printed featured a front page story about Allan Savory, a man I’d just met who made a deep impression. Along with his wife, the former Rhodesian politician was the co-founder of the Savory Institute. Savory originated Holistic Resource Management, a systems thinking approach to managing resources. We shared offices and employees with Savory and he even married one of them. Now 40 years later the entire world has rediscovered what we wrote about four decades ago. They may have changed the terminology but make no mistake, this “regenerative agriculture movement” you’re hearing about is nothing more than the teachings of Allan Savory. Even big business has rediscovered Holistic Resource Management as McDonalds recently announced a $200 million commitment to American ranchers and farmers to help them adopt regenerative ag.
According to an article in the Daily Wire written by Cole Harrison, “McDonald’s USA announced that they’d be pouring $200 million into regenerative farm practices. The move has been hailed as a win for the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, since these practices enhance soil health and make synthetic chemicals and fertilizers far less necessary.” Said Harrison, “Regenerative farming is just fancy talk for farming the way your grandparents did—working with nature instead of poisoning it with chemicals.”
Robert Kennedy hailed McDonald’s move and said, “Thank you McDonald’s, for committing a record $200 million investment into regenerative ag-
riculture. This is a big win for regenerative grazing practices, habitat restoration, water and wildlife conservation.”
“Here’s what really matters though,” wrote Harrison. “This money goes straight to American cattle ranchers. Not some environmental nonprofit. Not foreign suppliers. American ranchers. They’ll get cash payments, new tools, and actual help improving their land. No strings attached.”
“McDonald’s brought in heavy hitters for this deal. Cargill, Golden State Foods, Lopez Foods—all the big suppliers are on board. Even Coca-Cola is kicking in money. The best part? This is all voluntary. First round of money goes out in January 2026. Real ranchers will get real support for doing what they do best—raising cattle the right way.”
“Let me tell you what’s really going on here,” said Harrison. “This isn’t happening because of some law Congress passed. It’s not Biden’s doing. This is pure free-market magic, sparked by Trump’s team actually understanding how business works.”
“Here’s what the media won’t tell you about this McDonald’s deal. That $200 million isn’t going to consultants or diversity officers,” said Harrison. “It’s going to real American farmers who’ve been getting screwed for decades. These ranchers have dealt with insane regulations. Rising costs. Foreign competition. Now finally someone’s helping them instead of hurting them. They’ll get money to fix fences and water systems. Support for protecting their land. Training on farming methods that actually work.”
“The monitoring part is genius too. Private companies—Kateri and Carbon Yield—will track the results. Not the EPA. Not some government agency that takes five years to file a report.”
It’s Not The Cow, It’s the How In the 1980s, the Rodale Institute coined the term “regenerative agriculture” but this whole regenerative ag thing isn’t a new concept; it’s been around since Allan Savory came to America. Come to think of it, Native and Indigenous communities in this country have been practicing regenerative ag for centuries, like burning grasslands and chasing buffalo on to fresh grass.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, regenerative agriculture is defined as a process aimed “at the preservation and/or rehabilitation of food and farming systems for sustainable production. It focuses on strengthening the health and vitality of soil, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, contributing to carbon sequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and the social and economic well-being of communities.”
Caitlan Word, a livestock consultant at the Noble Research Institute, has done a great job explaining the concept in her paper, “What is the Role of Cattle in Regenerative Agriculture?”
Word has visited with countless cattlemen and says, “With all of their differences, one
similarity stands out, ranch to ranch: their goals. They almost always boil down to these two: They want to be profitable. They want to leave the land better than they found it.”
“Almost everyone who makes a living off of the land has an inherent respect and reverence for it, as well as for the ecosystems that provide for the wildlife, the livestock and the people who steward the land. That respect and reverence have existed for centuries — for as long as the land has been providing. There is a belief, however, that a producer can’t achieve both goals — profitability, and benefiting/ improving the land — at the same time. Regenerative agriculture not only challenges that maxim, but when implemented strategically, disproves it.”
“In nature,” continues Word, “before the involvement of man, ruminants such as bison coexisted with and complemented our grasslands as they roamed in huge mobs. Native grass species thrived under short-duration, high-intensity grazing, and reaped the benefits of nutrient cycling as residual forage was trodden into the ground along with nutrient-rich manure. Lengthy rest times allowed the plants to recover as the bison made their way through millions of acres of grasslands, always moving on to seek the fresh, nutrient-dense growth that came to life after a grassfire and to maintain a rich and species-diverse diet. This mutually beneficial relationship was healthy and sustainable for both parties: the animal and the land. Neither suffered for the benefit of the other back then. So why should either have to now?” Word asks.
“As fences went up and cattle traveled less, pasture rest time and grazing intensity also decreased. Grass monocultures became the norm, eradicating the species diversity that fed both the cattle and the soil. The natural systems that evolved together crumbled. And, as man typically does, we began to patch things up with our own solutions. Where forage quality suffered, we supplemented. Where soil quality was lacking, we fertilized. Where grass became overtaken with weeds and brush, we sprayed.”
From Word’s perspective, cattle are a tool — an input. “You grow grass, and you use cattle to harvest the grass. As they harvest, they trample biomass into thatch to help cover and protect the soil. The nutrients not utilized by the digestive system are deposited back onto the same land to help feed the soil biology, and in turn, grow more grass.”
“Can cattle be regenerative?” My answer is yes, they can. And that’s not just my answer; the regenerative community has been chanting for years now, “it’s not the cow, it’s the how,” said Word.
“Are livestock critical to healthy grasslands? Yes.”
“By fostering healthy
grasslands and soil that’s alive with roots and microbes continually drawing carbon out of the atmosphere, regenerative beef creates a carbon drawdown greater than the amount of methane being produced by the cattle themselves. Contrary to popular opinion,” says Word, “it is very possible to be an environmentally-conscientious meat eater.”
If this return to normalcy keeps up we wouldn’t be surprised when after the first urban kid is killed by a pack of wolves there will again be a nationwide hunting season for the killing machines. The BLM will remember its multi-use mandate and the Forest Service and BLM will rediscover the benefits of using cattle, goats and sheep more strategically to revitalize our grasslands and our forests. Timber harvesting and thinning will again be implemented to cut down on the number of record setting fires that destroy communities and ranches. All because what goes around, comes around.
Looking back it bears repeating: Everything old will be new again. ▫
New Texas Heritage Hall of Honor Recipients Inducted by State Fair of Texas
BY STATE FAIR OF TEXAS
With agriculture as a tenet of our organization, the State Fair of Texas is proud to induct Minnie Lou Bradley and Jim S. Williams into the Texas Heritage Hall of Honor.
Established in 1992 to recognize leaders who have made significant contributions to the agricultural heritage of Texas, the Texas Heritage Hall of Honor celebrates the accomplishments of these farmers, ranchers, drovers, inventors, educators, innovators, authors,
legislators, and preservationists. Their achievements span more than 170 years, reaching back to the birth of the Texas Republic and extending out to a limitless future.
Considered annually, both living and deceased nominees are eligible to be inducted into the Heritage Hall of Honor.
This year, Minnie Lou Bradley and Jim Williams join more than 75 men and women previously receiving this honor.
In early October Minnie Lou Bradley and Jim Williams were inducted into the Texas Heritage Hall of Honor, located in the Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center. The induction celebrates achievements and contributions that helped establish Texas as a premier agricultural leader in the nation.
Minnie Lou Bradley broke barriers in agriculture as the first woman in Oklahoma State’s Animal Husbandry program and on the Livestock Judging Team. A pioneering rancher, she led the American Angus Association and championed youth education and community service. Her legacy
lives on through her mentorship, innovation in cattle production, and lifelong dedication to the livestock industry.
Jim S. Williams, a sixth-generation rancher, manages the renowned V8 Ranch, leading global Brahman genetics. A Texas A&M graduate, he blends traditional stockmanship with innovation. An accomplished judge and industry leader, he’s earned top honors, including Induction into the Saddle & Sirloin Club. Williams’ legacy spans champion cattle, youth mentorship, and international impact in the livestock industry.
The State Fair of Texas is a celebration of all things Texan. There is no better way to learn about agriculture and Texas heritage than by walking through the livestock barns or the Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center during the State Fair. Be sure to stop by the Heritage Hall of Honor, located on the second floor of the Briscoe Carpenter Livestock Center, or visit BigTex.com/ HeritageHall to view all of the inductees and learn more about the program. ▫
of Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program.
CPW in January released 15 wolves flown in from British Columbia, Canada, in the second stage of its wolf reintroduction program. The plan is to bring in more wolves from British Columbia later this year or in early 2026.
But Nesvik’s letter states that would be in violation of an agreement between CPW and the FWS. Also, it goes against the 10(j) rule.
That rule designates Colorado wolves as a nonessential experimental population under the Endangered Species Act.
Oregon provided the first batch of wolves reintroduced to Colorado in December 2023.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon flatly refused to send wolves to Colorado.
Nesvik: No More Wolves From Canada
In his letter, Nesvik states that wolves can be obtained from the “Northern Rocky Mountain Area” (NRM).
That includes Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, eastern third of Oregon, eastern third of Washington and northcentral Utah.
“We have reason to believe that CPW may be seeking to capture, transport and/or release one or more wolves from areas outside of the specified
NRM Areas outlined in the 10(j) rule,” Nesvik states in the letter.
“To the extent that these reports are true, such actions are violative of the 10(j) rule,” he adds. “If CPW is currently engaged in such activities, CPW must immediately cease and desist any and all efforts related to the capture, transport and/or release of gray wolves not obtained from those NRM Areas.”
CPW Might Still Move Forward
CPW is taking Nesvik’s letter under consideration and is evaluating “all options” for moving forward with plans to release more wolves, Duncan said in his email to Cowboy State Daily.
“CPW is currently evaluating recent FWS communication regarding available sources for gray wolves from the delisted NRM population areas,” he said. Prior to Nesvik sending his letter, agreements were drawn up between CPW, FWS and Canadian officials, he added.
“CPW has a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and a recently signed contract with British Columbia’s Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship,” Duncan said. “This MOU and contract allow CPW to translocate 10 to 15 wolves this winter in partnership with British Columbia.
“This MOU, as well as last year’s partnership, were based
on consultations with FWS and were signed before the letter from USFWS was received.” Wolves in western Canada, like those in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, are not under ESA protection, Duncan noted. “The provisions of the U.S. Endangered Species Act do not apply to these unlisted populations,” he said.
‘A Failed Experiment’
Lopez said he started looking into the wolf reintroduction program in June, at the prompting of some rural Colorado residents. He said he noticed what he thought was a discrepancy in the process — that wolves were only supposed to come from the aforementioned states. There was no mention of Canada as a legitimate source.
Lopez said he sent letters to Nesvik and FWS Regional Director Matt Hogan in September. At the end of the month, a response came, essentially stating the agency couldn’t do anything, he said. So, he had a conversation with Hogan, and in a “matter of days,” Nesvik sent the letter, he said.
Lopez said that as far as he and others questioning the reintroduction program are concerned, the wolves from British
Columbia are in Colorado illegally. They should either be sent back to Canada or placed in a sanctuary, he said. As for the rest of the wolves now in Colorado, ranchers should have the right to shoot them if they are “harassing or stalking” livestock, Lopez said.
He added that he would like to form a committee to oversee Colorado wolf management, including himself, members of the public and representatives from FWS and CPW. In light of Nesvik’s letter, he’s optimistic that any further planned releases of wolves can be shut down.
Colorado’s wolf reintroduction program was poorly conceived from the start, Lopez said, adding that, “I think this experiment has been tried. It failed, and it’s time to stop the experiment.” A coalition has formed, calling for a halt to wolf reintroduction, he added. It includes the Colorado Outfitters Association, The Colorado Wool Growers Association, the Gunnison County Stockgrowers Association, the Southwestern Colorado Livestock Association, The Colorado Conservation Alliance, and the Colorado Mule Deer Association, he said. ▫
UC Davis Launches the New Disease BioPortal
BY TOM HINDS
The University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine has launched a new version of the Disease BioPortal, an online platform designed to help veterinarians, ranchers, farmers, and diagnostic labs make faster, data-driven health and biosecurity decisions.
The Disease BioPortal makes it easier to track important livestock health issues, spot disease trends early, and make informed decisions to protect animals and operations.
Developed by the Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance under the leadership of Dr. Beatriz Martínez-López, Disease BioPortal integrates diagnostic and field data from multiple sources and delivers interactive maps, dashboards, and predictive modeling in real time. The result: improved outbreak detection, reduced response times, and better farm management strategies.
“The adoption by some of the top swine industry producers, large pharma companies and veterinary clinics demonstrates the trust and impact of this platform,” said Dr. Martínez-López, professor of epidemiology and disease modeling at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “As we expand to additional sectors, our goal is to provide the same level of support and insight to help safeguard animal health, food systems, and ultimately public health.
Producers and veterinarians already using the platform say it has transformed the way they manage animal health data:
■ Dr. Brandi Burton, Suidae Health & Production Veterinary Clinic Veterinarian:
continued on page 5
was the chiropractor bill I paid to realign my back after lifting a truckload of 75-pound sacks all by myself because my wife was still at her sister’s place.
For some reason my calves have always been dumber than a fence post. They didn’t even know what a water trough was because they’d been drinking out of a creek their entire lives so I had to dig an artificial river through the weaning pens and run water through it from a water truck I had to rent. Then one day I had a brainstorm; I put on my swim trunks and frolicked in a water trough splashing water on the noses of the stupid calves until they figured out there was water in them there troughs. Then there’s the cost of all the vaccines my vet said my calves would need to satisfy the buyers and reap the big rewards. Add it all up over the 45 days that separates the premiums from the discounts and I think I’d have been better off if half the calves had died the day we kidnapped them from their mothers.
The next year we tried something called fence-line-weaning that must have been invented by someone with w-a-a-ay better fences than mine because after every jailbreak of fence crawlers I had to spend three days fixing fence all by my lonesome because my wife was on her now-annual visit to see her sister.
During the National Finals Rodeo every year in addition to all the rodeo action there are big trade shows they call Cowboy Christmas which I absolutely love. I mention it here only to say that my Cowboy Christmas occurred instead on the 45th day of weaning when I said good riddance to those little hell-raisers with not a tear in my eye.
And that’s why we went back to weaning our calves the same day we sent them to the auction market. It was either that or my wonderful wife was going to go stay with her sister on a more permanent basis. ▫
The Disease BioPortal diagnostic demonstration screens.
“Disease BioPortal has allowed me to serve our clients better by analyzing sequence data in real time and communicating it quickly. The mapping components are especially powerful for tracking how strains spread geographically. It’s a database that continues to grow and provide insights, which helps producers make timely decisions.”
■ Dr. Rebecca Robbins, PIC Health Assurance Veterinarian:
“The Disease BioPortal team recognizes the promise of Big Data for veterinary medicine. Their dashboards bring complex data directly to field veterinarians. It’s an amazing feat of execution because the data we work with lacks the structure of those pipelines available from human health care or manufacturing sectors.”
■ Dr. Sebastian Figueras Gourgues, Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinarian:
“Disease BioPortal can be used as an epidemiological tool to identify biosecurity failures in given geographic areas. It is also useful to discriminate lateral infections or field strains, internal recirculation, or vaccine-like strain detections to apply different management strategies according to those findings.”
■ Dr. Maria Jose Clavijo, Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Hospital:
“Disease BioPortal helps us turn diagnostic data into surveillance insights. Whole-genome sequencing integration
continued on page 6
RED ROCK cont. from page 1
Ancestral Footprints
The Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument now stretches over 900,000 acres of land in Arizona. Anyone who “appropriates” or “removes” any feature of the monument—including mud and silt—is subject to fines and criminal penalties, including up to 90 days’ imprisonment.
What gives the president sweeping authority to set aside nearly a million acres of land?
The Antiquities Act of 1906, which Congress passed so President Theodore Roosevelt could act quickly to protect Native American artifacts and other historic objects that were being pillaged by looters moving West.
Chris Heaton has no interest in disturbing Native American artifacts. “I don’t want those to get destroyed,” he says. “That’s history.”
Biden’s proclamation does list legitimate objects of historic significance, including cliff houses, storage sites, granaries, pictographs, and pottery from ancient villages, as objects to be protected. But the monument proclamation also protects common wildlife, like elk and mule deer, and plants like sagebrush, saltbush, native grass lands, and juniper woodlands.
“My cows eat those plants,” Chris Heaton told me.
Even the drainages on the property are now considered protected objects.
“They named all of the drainages—every wash and canyon in the Kanab Creek Basin—as objects,” Chris says. “They say that you can’t disrupt or disturb any of the objects. This is where I have a hard time with it.” What if he cleans a pond or repairs a dike after a flood? “Am I subject to criminal penalties like it says in the proclamation?”
Land management officials at the Department of the Interior can’t give him a straight answer. When he asks whether he will be prosecuted for his
cattle eating a protected plant, officials tell him it will depend on the current administration’s interpretation of the rules. That doesn’t provide much comfort to Chris.
“I don’t want to play politics with different administrations,” he says.
He just wants to keep working his ranch.
‘Vast and Amorphous Expanses’
According to the Antiquities Act, the president is supposed to designate the “smallest area compatible” when protecting artifacts or objects. Early monuments were relatively small, with boundaries drawn around specific historical objects to be protected. President Theodore Roosevelt designated only 1,153 acres in 1906 to protect Devils Tower in Wyoming.
But since the 1970s, presidents have used the Antiquities Act to set aside massive monuments with arbitrary borders. President Obama designated a cool 3.2 million acres of the Atlantic Ocean as “the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument”—an underwater expanse of restricted space that has frustrated and baffled fishermen.
In other words, the federal government is now using the Antiquities Act to withdraw land and water from productive use, shutting out Americans who, for over a century, have harnessed natural resources to make human life better.
Pacific Legal Foundation represented Massachusetts lobstermen in a 2017 lawsuit challenging the Northeast Canyons designation. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, but Chief Justice John Roberts weighed in.
The Antiquities Act “has ceased to pose any meaningful restraint,” the Chief Justice wrote.
“A statute permitting the President in his sole discretion to designate as monuments ‘landmarks,’ ‘struc-
tures,’ and ‘objects’—along with the smallest area of land compatible with their management—has been transformed into a power without any discernible limit to set aside vast and amorphous expanses of terrain above and below the sea.”
The Future of the Ranch
Cattle ranching is not an easy life.
“People think it’s this romantic thing — cowboys and cowgirls riding their horses into the sunset,” Chris tells me. “But ranching is hard work. It’s no joke — a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.”
Grazing on federal land doesn’t mean getting a handout. The federal government owns half of all land in the West. Ranchers like Chris often have no choice but to work on land that’s not theirs.
“A lot of people don’t understand grazing on federal land,” Chris says. “A lot of people think we’re getting it all for free. When I do improvements on my ranch, I’m putting personal money on improvements on federally owned land. That doesn’t make sense as a business. Who would invest infrastructure on land they don’t own?”
The ranch is a business, he emphasizes: He’s in the business of putting food on people’s tables. “And you can fail at the business. And you’ll lose everything.”
It’s been a year and a half since the land became a national monument. Chris is still looking for answers from the government. “They’ve really given us no direction one way or another. So, we’re in limbo.”
Every layer of restriction— the possible fines and imprisonment, the uncertainty—casts a dark cloud over the future of the Heatons’ ranch.
“Ranching is a way of life for us,” Chris says. “I wanted to raise my kids in the life I grew
up in.”
Across America, people like Chris are working to turn America’s abundant natural resources into life-improving food, timber, and energy. In Arizona alone there are 19,000 ranches and farms. But the federal government is making it increasingly difficult for these families to keep going.
Pacific Legal Foundation represents Chris in a federal lawsuit.
“The President’s actions raise highly political and economic issues and transcend any discernible limit on his authority under the Antiquities Act,” we argue in our complaint.
“Congress did not, and could not, intend to grant the President this unheralded and unbounded power over public land use.”
Chris hopes to leave his ranch to his children someday, continuing the heritage of working in the dirt and the hills and the valleys.
“Sometimes I’ll work on fixing something that I know my grandfather built, or my great-grandfather built,” Chris says. “It makes you wonder, who was the last one to fix this fence?”
Our hope is Chris’s great-grandchildren will one day wonder the same thing. ▫
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Interior Cancels Largest Solar Project in North America
BY SCOTT STREATER / POLITICO
The Trump administration’s cancellation of what would have been one of the world’s largest solar power projects has some industry observers fretting over the future of renewable energy on public lands.
They predicted the Esmeralda 7 project — by far the largest solar project that had moved through the permitting process under former President Joe Biden’s Interior Department — won’t be the last major project in the pipeline to be pulled. It was one of a number of Nevada desert solar projects that had been steadily advancing through regulatory review by the Biden administration.
Scott Sklar, sustainable energy director at George Washington University’s Environment & Energy Management Institute, said the Trump administration had set up a “multitude of regulatory barriers and delays.” These delays, he added, have placed financial strain on the renewable energy companies with projects waiting for review and could lead to others walking away from pending projects.
“The administration wants to stop these projects, period, so there is no chance for approval,” he said.
Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, agreed. “As the Trump administration continues to take actions hostile to renewable energy projects, that may not be the last solar project on federal land to cancel,” he said.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) updated its planning website for the Esmeralda 7 project to note that the environmental review of the project was “cancelled.”
The decision to cancel the programmatic environmental impact statement was described by a federal government official with knowledge of the situation, who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, as a mutual decision by BLM and the handful of companies that had proposed the seven individual solar power projects that would have comprised Esmeralda 7.
The Interior Department in a statement said that the solar developers and BLM had “agreed to change their approach for the Esmeralda 7 Solar Project in Nevada. Instead of pursuing a programmatic level environmental analysis, the applicants will now have the option to submit individual project proposals to the BLM to more effectively analyze potential impacts.”
Representatives with the energy companies involved in developing the seven individual solar power plants that collectively comprised the Esmeralda 7 project did not respond to requests for comment.
The Trump administration has made its skepticism of the solar build-out in Nevada clear in recent months, with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and
other officials saying solar is an “intermittent” technology that doesn’t provide reliable energy. But some conservationists alarmed by the proposed rollout of large solar projects in Nevada and other Western states celebrated the demise of Esmeralda 7, saying as designed it took up far too much land.
“Friends of Nevada Wilderness is thrilled that this poorly sited project is dead,” said Shaaron Netherton, the group’s executive director.
“In the push to get this particular project through, the BLM ignored the importance of this region’s cultural significance, biological significance and the fact that it is one of the most intact landscapes remaining in Nevada,” Netherton added.
BLM in July 2024 issued a draft programmatic environmental impact statement for the project and had originally planned to issue a final review document in April.
At least 35 commercial-scale solar power projects that were under at least preliminary review by BLM when President Donald Trump took office still await action.
That includes final EISs for the 700-megawatt capacity Copper Rays Solar Project, the 400-MW Purple Sage Solar Project and the 300-MW Bonanza Solar Project, all in Nevada.
What’s more, two major solar projects that were issued records of decision in the final weeks of the Biden administration have since sat in limbo — the Jove Solar Project in southwest Arizona and the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project in southern Nevada, with a combined capacity to power 350,000 homes.
Burgum and his department have increasingly tightened the restrictions on solar and wind projects. Burgum signed a secretarial order that directed the agency, among other things, to eliminate policies granting “preferential treatment” for wind and solar development on federal lands and waters. The department also issued guidance to agency leaders that Burgum and Deputy Secretary Kate MacGregor would need to review a long list of procedural decisions for those projects.
Burgum in August also signed an order that requires Interior to consider “capacity density” when evaluating solar and wind projects, which could hinder them because they tend to take up more land than other kinds of energy development.
The Solar Energy Industries Association did not respond to requests for comment.
But Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president and CEO, sent a letter to Burgum in August asking to meet with him to discuss his agency’s moves to restrict permit approvals for renewable energy.
Interior informally declined the meeting request, according to an industry official granted anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Concerns about project’s size
The Esmeralda 7 project was ambitious by most any measure. It included seven individual solar projects and would have covered about 63,000 acres of BLM rangelands. If built as imagined, it could have produced about 5,350 MW of elec-
tricity — enough to power nearly 2 million homes.
Among the individual proposed projects is the 1,500-MW Gold Dust Solar Project, which would cover more than 17,000 acres and rank among the world’s largest solar projects in terms of energy output.
On the surface, at least, the project appeared to be proposed in an ideal spot in Esmeralda County.
The federal government controls 98 percent of the county’s 2.2 million acres, and BLM accounts for the vast majority of that — managing 2.1 million acres there.
There’s not a single incorporated town, and only about 729 residents, ranking it among the 20 least populated counties in the nation, with the nation’s second-lowest population density of residents per square mile.
But the project had garnered concerns about its sheer size and the potential for it to disturb migratory patterns for wildlife.
Conservation advocates, local government leaders and nearby residents have expressed concerns about the cumulative environmental impacts of the proposed Esmeralda 7 project, which in addition to covering a huge swath of desert lands would have also included miles of roads and associated transmission lines.
They have argued for placing onshore utility-scale projects on previously disturbed sites and expanding the use of rooftop solar.
The Esmeralda 7 project “would have destroyed significant archaeology sites, rare plants, bighorn sheep habitat and wilderness quality lands,” said Kevin Emmerich, a co-founder of Nevada-based Basin and Range Watch.
The cancellation of the project “will give us a chance to protect the tremendous resources of the area, including beautiful and wild mountain ranges and valleys, rare plant populations, and bighorn sheep,” said Laura Cunningham, a biologist with Western Watersheds Project.
“Paleontological fossil beds [the Esmeralda Formation] here were formative to understanding the geological history of the Great Basin,” Cunningham added. “This is good news for recreationists and for conservation efforts of an amazing landscape.” ▫
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