Why Ranching Won’t Preclude Subdivisions

I recently received a comment on my The Wildlife News article, Audubon Society Embraces Ranching. The commentator suggested if we don’t accept ranching, we will have subdivisions everywhere.

I’ve written a lot about this.

It is one of the oldest arguments from livestock proponents and most mainstream conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy and others to deflect criticism of the ranching industry.

It is sometimes called the Condos vs Cows debate. However, most proponents of the livestock industry have many mistaken assumptions and do not fully account for livestock impacts.

There are five main points to consider, and I will expand on them below.

1. The physical footprint of the livestock industry is vastly more significant than that of all the urbanization in the country.
2. Subdivisions and urban growth are generally restricted to locations with high amenity values, so they are not a threat across most of the West.
3. Nearly all cities in the West are located on former ranch or farmlands. Ranching isn’t an effective means of precluding subdivisions.
4. Other more certain and effective means of precluding growth than ignoring the livestock industry’s ecological and environmental costs exist.
5. Not all subdivisions represent a loss of wildlife habitat. In many instances, they may improve wildlife habitat.

GEOGRAPHIC FOOTPRINT

Livestock grazing on public and private lands (including hay production and other forage crops grown to feed livestock) occupies about 70% of the lower 48 land area.

By comparison, all the urbanization and rural non-farm land in the lower 48 states, defined as highways, factories, subdivisions, cities, etc., occupies about 7% of the US land area.

However, even the 7% figure may understate livestock-influenced landscapes since large lots classed under rural housing could theoretically also be grazed or used to grow livestock forage.

Even if ranches were subdivided, livestock production’s physical and ecological footprint would be so much greater that there would be no comparison.

The amount of land under livestock production is even more an issue in the West, where so much of the land is public (thus cannot be subdivided but is still grazed).

For example, a GAP analysis (using air photos) found that 0.17% of Montana was urbanized. That’s 0.17, which may have increased slightly since the GAP analysis was done, but even if it had been doubled, it would have been insignificant overall. However, livestock production, including grazed public lands, occupies about 70% of Montana.

RANCHING DOESN’T PREVENT SUBDIVISION

The second fallacy is that if one doesn’t criticize ranching, it will preclude subdivisions. Do you want to show me where that has ever happened?

With few exceptions, every city in the West is carved from ranch or farmland. If Ag use was a good conservation strategy, would we have the Front Range Cities in Colorado, the Wasatch Front in Utah, Bozeman, Boise, Las Vegas, Reno, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque, or even Los Angeles?

All of these cities were built on former ranchlands. If being nice to ranchers is your best strategy for avoiding subdivisions, maybe it’s time to rethink it because it does not work.

HIGH AMENITY VALUES DRIVE SUBDIVISIONS

Third, most of the subdivided lands in the West are located in areas with high amenity values. They are not random. People flock to places with beautiful scenery, universities, ski resorts, good fishing, and other factors. Also, having good transportation links like jet service and Interstate highways is essential.

Jackson, Wyoming has the most expensive real estate in Wyoming and subdivision of ranchland is on-going, but in Jeffrey City, Wyoming near the southern end of the Wind River Range, houses are almost given away.

Most of the grazed West is not threatened by subdivisions because no one wants to live in most of these places. Why is Highway 50 in the middle of Nevada called the “loneliest road in America?

Most of Nevada outside of Reno and Las Vegas has some of the lowest populations in the West. Houses are cheap. Why aren’t people flocking to places like Austin, Winnemucca, Gerlach, and other Nevada towns?

How about Montana? We hear about the tremendous growth of counties like Gallatin (Bozeman), Missoula, and Flathead (Kalispell), but many parts of Montana have lost their populations. In the last census, 19 out of 56 counties in the state lost population, and another dozen barely held on as relatively stable. Why aren’t people chomping at the bite to move to Plentywood or Jordan, Montana?

What about Cortez or South Park or Aramosa, Colorado, not to mention all the towns on the plains of Colorado? There is no housing rush there. How about Reserve New Mexico next to the Gila Wilderness?

I could say the same for much of Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, North and South Dakota, Idaho, and Oregon.

Subdivisions are a threat in some local and regional parts of the West, but ranching doesn’t preclude it. The best way to deal with subdivisions is to enact good zoning laws like Oregon which has state-wide zoning and a rancher can’t simply subdivide his or her land. It’s not a threat. BTW, Oregon’s land use laws were passed by a Republican legislature with a Republican governor.

AG LANDS ARE OFTEN BIOLOGICAL DESERTS

Finally, subdivisions are not necessarily the worst thing that can happen to land (it depends, of course, on where they occur). However, much of the subdivisions occurring in Montana’s Gallatin Valley are in former hay or wheat fields, which are biological deserts. Most subdivisions, by comparison, typically have landscaping that provides more wildlife habitat per acre than a typical AG field.

My own city hosts where I have native and non-native shrubs and trees, at various times, is home or used by several dozen bird species, native ants, bees, butterflies, salamanders, frogs, snakes, rabbits, raccoons, mice, skunks, etc. up to deer (who unfortunately consumes my flowers in the spring). And my lot is in the middle of the city–not out on the fringes.

I challenge anyone to find as much diversity in a typical hay or wheat field.

Don’t get me wrong. I prefer wildlands. The choice is not ranching or subdivisions. In most parts of the West with high amenity values, once land values rise above where one can earn enough from Ag production to pay a mortgage, you wind up with one or two options.

Either a very wealthy individual will purchase the ranch as a “private estate,” which is common in the parts of the West with high amenity values, or a developer will buy the land and subdivide.

Even in California, which possesses the most valuable farm/ranch land in the West, rising land prices have led to changes in land use.

In any case, ranch land’s value in growing population centers has less to do with its potential agricultural value and more with its amenity value.

The most effective means of protecting land is through public acquisition where at least it is unlikely to be permanently developed (notwithstanding solar farms, oil wells, and the like) or regional-state comprehensive zoning that requires all development within urban growth boundaries, which directs growth to specific locations.