Water developments for cows are beaten back-

Water developments on public lands may sound good, but the reality is they are almost always intended to increase grazing of livestock.

These encasements, troughs, tanks, and pipelines do not benefit wildlife. Instead they often turn a spring, or an area of small springs or seeps, full of wildlife, into manure-mud, disgusting ponds that are surrounded solely by cattle.

Story in the Western Watersheds Blog. Win for the Whetstones.
Map of the Whetstone Mountains

About The Author

Ralph Maughan

Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.

One Response to Western Watersheds Project beats plan to increase grazing in Arizona's Whetstone Mtns.

  1. vickif says:

    I have actually been to this area. I am glad that the big “no” happened. Having grown up in Arizona, I can still remember the huge tanks that were surrounded by a bogg of manure. THere was often a stench that drowned outthe smell of the plants in the area.
    We should keep in mind that those plants and the wildlife in Arizona’s desert landscape, and even it’s mountains, are long since evolved to live in the dry climate. To act as though we would be helping the natural flora and fauna by putting in troughs etc., is a very obvious ploy to water cows (which have not evolved or adapted).
    Way to go WWW Project

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Quote

‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey

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