🚀 go-pugleaf

Doug Bashford (Doug.Bashford%ow@salata.com) wrote:
:  Jr1>  They like having the water sources we provide and the
:  Jr1> mineral. 
:  
:    And prey tell, what did they do before cattle?

And where does this water come from.  If it is made available in a stock 
pond at given location, the water is removed from . . . where?
:    perhaps not the major part.  But I did learn that cattle make 
:    small streams move underground, and fencing will cause them
:    to pop back out in a few years.  And many other things.

Cattle also cause substantial widening of stream beds.  For example, the 
creek that runs through Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico, was only a couple of 
feet wide when the Spaniards entered the area.  After a few decades of 
running cattle in the area, however, it became a broad, deep, gully more 
than twenty times its original width in most places.  The change is 
attributed primarily to cattle crawling in and out of the stream bed.  
Closing the area to cattle for years has not allowed the open swath to 
return to flat grassland, of course.  Similar impacts are common in other 
streams in the west that cattle are allowed to use as part of their 
grazing range.

: ...  False economic assumptions are the root of all environmental problems

Hmmm.  And here I was pissed off with the wetherman for all that flooding 
we had this year.  Never would have guessed and economist was to blame. <G>