Since the discovery of North America, as throughout recorded history, man has shortsightedly used our planet's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands. The first European settlers saw the New World's abundance of grazing land, rich soil, and wildlife and believed them to be inexhaustible. This belief in inexhaustibly spread, and unfortunately, it persists, along with the wastefulness that it inspires, even in the face of signs that the abundance and quality of our country's rangelands are diminishing.

Along with our wastefulness, years of industrial development and a constant growing population are to blame for the declining abundance and quality of our country's rangelands. Over-exploitation of our country's most productive rangelands is straining once abundant rangeland resources to the limit and is destroying many of the natural balances, functions, and processes that are required to preserve the ecosystem goods and services upon which our lives, and the lives of those who will come after us, depend completely. Our technology and lifestyles consume increasing amounts of carbon energy, thus reducing the amount available in the future, while passing on to our children the ill effects of its overuse -- polluted air, long-term climate change, and an increase in global warming. To feed our large and growing population, we are forced to deplete the nutrient content and fertility of our country's rangeland soils, and thereby increasing the cost and decreasing the size of our country's future food supply. As our country's constantly growing population needs additional housing and employment, we are forced to cover more of our country's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands with buildings, concrete and asphalt, which further reduces the amount and quality of what's left for

• producing healthy food, natural fiber, and valuable by-products for human consumption
• providing habitat for grazing cultures, livestock, wildlife, and fish
• recharging below- and above-ground aquifers
• purifying water going into aquifers, streams, and rivers
• providing watershed protection and natural flood control
• maintaining soil and ecological buffering capacity
• regenerating soil and water fertility
• creating new soil and carbon storage capacity
• providing vascular structures for delivering soil and water nutrients to plants
• removing carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" emissions out of the air
• transmitting life-essential oxygen in the air
• sequestering carbon in below and above-ground biomass
• detoxifying and degrading waste materials and pollution
• climate change mitigation
• supporting bio-diversity in native flora and fauna
• providing natural control of pathogenic and parasitic organisms
• providing habitat for pollinators of cultivated and wild plants
• furnishing open-space for hunting, fishing, and other types of recreation
• providing a natural setting for cultural, social, and spiritual enrichment.

By ignoring the consequences -- agricultural, ecological, environmental, and social -- of our always needing more economic growth to meet the employment, infrastructure, and financial needs of our always growing population, we have created a genuine threat to America's survival. True, our constant effort to grow more economically is often well intended, and money and wealth in and of themselves are not evil. They do, for instance, provide means to pursue personal ambitions, solve technical problems, and temporarily improve people's living standards. But in our constant effort to advance economically -- to produce more, develop more, build more, consume more, earn more money, create more jobs -- we have lost sight of what really keeps us alive. We forget that our food does not come from the supermarket, "nor" does our water and energy come from the utility company. By thinking of soil, water, air, plants, animals, and energy solely in economic terms, as mere commodities or raw materials used in the production of industrial and consumer goods, we have blinded ourselves to their real value. And in treating them as such, we are diminishing their ability to sustain human life. Whether we're aware of it or not, our constant necessity to expand economically, graze more livestock, subdivide more rangeland, build more freeways, develop more subdivisions, build more and larger houses, and sell more products is leading us to the edge of self-destruction. If we don't begin thinking about the consequences of our constantly needing more economic growth, more employment, and more man-made products has on the natural ecosystems and natural resources that sustain us, the quality of life in America will slowly but surely fall into an apocalyptic "hellhole".

To prevent America's constant ambition to produce more, develop more, build more, consume more from causing a devastating quality of life demising catastrophe, it is imperative that we rethink the way we use our country's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands and our country's valuable rangeland resources. We need to stop wasting time and money on programs that do not effectively address the root causes of our country's ecological, environmental, and food security problems. We need to focus our attention on developing programs that offer our country's working ranchers a financial incentive to conserve our country's rangelands, and maintain them in optimum agricultural and ecological condition. We need programs that demonstrate how human activities, such as livestock grazing, can coexist with our country's soil, water, vegetation, and wildlife resources rather than destroying them. We also need programs that help our representatives in government, students, and people in general understand the importance of maintaining healthy rangelands and the role they play in providing ecosystem goods and services needed for human survival.

We need to understand that spending huge amounts of time and money on programs that do not correct the many imbalances and problems -- both economic, agricultural, ecological, and social -- that people have created by, for example,

• overstocking the range with livestock and wildlife
  
  
• plowing and cultivating ecologically valuable rangeland
  
  
• increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by decreasing the amount of above and below-ground bio-mass
  
  
• converting large areas of agriculturally and ecologically important rangeland into small hobby ranches, industrial farming, roads, houses, churches, schools, factories, and other types of human activities and development endeavors.
  
  
• suppressing natural fire regimes in an attempt to protect get-away housing and other types of personal property in and around native rangeland areas
  
  
• altering natural ecosystem functions and processes by using products of technology to put out natural wildfires, and by prohibiting the use of prescribed burns
  
  
• depleting and polluting below and above-ground water aquifers, streams, and rivers
  
  
• replacing native range flora and fauna with exotic plants and animals, tame pastures, and mono-culture crops
  
  
• exterminating predators that keep rabbits, rats, mice, rats, and other prey animals under control
  
  
• reducing the nutrient content and fertility of rangeland soils by plowing and cultivating the land, and harvesting and hauling away plant matter.
  
  
• using agriculturally and ecologically important rangeland for ethanol and other types of bio-energy production.

Rethinking our approach to preserving our country's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands will also require understanding that government programs designed to help immediate problems are usually like band aids on much larger wounds, and often do more harm in the long term than is justified by any quick short-term relief that they can provide. Moreover, designing and implementing quick "Band-Aid" programs take away time, energy, and funding from long-term solutions, which hold more promise for America's survival.

Another requirement for America's survival is that we abandon the idea that our country's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands are inexhaustible and that we begin using them in ways and amounts that can be sustained over an indefinite period of time. We cannot continue using our country's most productive rangelands in ways that turn them into hobby ranches, industrial farms, roads, highways, subdivisions, parking lots, manufacturing plants, industrial pollution, and other types of human activities and development endeavors. We cannot continue using our country's most productive rangelands in ways that reduce the quality and sustainability of our country's food supply, and in ways that causes a changed climate and an accelerating increase in global warming. We cannot continue pumping water out of underground aquifers like they are inexhaustible and will never run dry. And we cannot expect America to survive long if we wait until our country's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands are so degraded, fragmented, and polluted that they can no longer provide life-supporting goods and services before we learn how to use them.

Lucky for us, there are people, such as professor of range science Jerry Holechek and environmental economist Lester Brown, to name a few, who are working to educate us about the devastating disaster we are creating with our wastefulness and shortsightedness. Their work brings to our attention important matters such as

• long-term agricultural and energy planning
• natural resource conservation
• native rangeland preservation
• population growth
• urban sprawl
• globalization
• climate change
• global warming.

Their work is telling us that how well our representatives in government deal with the above important matters will determine whether America self-destructs economically, agriculturally, ecologically and socially, and consequently condemns future generations to a life of poverty, malnutrition, disease, famine, hunger, lawlessness, immigration, and fighting for existence.

Their work is trying to make us understand that saving America from the devastating effects of our non-concern, unawareness, selfishness, and greed is going to be

• a race against time and ignorance
• a struggle against powerful forces that are only interested in growing economically, making more money, increasing their financial wealth, and gaining more political power
• a battle against individuals, groups, and organizations that are unconcerned about the dangers our misguided use of our country's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands, and our country's soil, water, vegetative, and wildlife resources pose to America's survival.

Hopefully America will begin listening to what Holechek, Brown, and others are telling us before all chances to save America from self-destruction runs out. We can only hope that America's shortsighted use of our country's agriculturally and ecologically important rangelands, and our country's rangeland resources doesn't demonstrate the "very best" America can do.

America's survival as well as the survival of peace-loving people in our country and around the world will definitely depend on it!

Date of first copyright was June 1995.

The author, Nol Ward, is a retired small independent rancher, professional ranch manager, and beef cattle consultant. His e-mail address is: nol@consolidated.net

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