Ranching without Reason
![handle is hein.journals/gpnat5 and id is 161 raw text is: BOOK REVIEW
RANCHING WITHOUT REASON
STEPHANIE PARENTt
THE WESTERN RANGE REVISITED: REMOVING LIVESTOCK FROM
PUBLIC LANDS TO CONSERVE BIODIVERSITY. By Debra L.
Donahue! Norman, Oklahoma: Univ. of Oklahoma Press (1999).
Debra L. Donahue confirms that livestock grazing is the 'most insidious
and pervasive threat to biodiversity on rangelands' in The Western Range
Revisited: Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native
Biodiversity (hereafter The Western Range Revisited).' In response, she
proposes the unthinkable, a biodiversity conservation strategy to remove
livestock from public lands that receive less than 12 inches average annual
precipitation. Who better to pose a solution than Donahue, a professor of law
who also has a masters degree in wildlife biology, as well as experience
working in government, industry, academia, and the nonprofit, public interest
sectors. It is because her contentions are indisputable that Donahue's book
has raised the ire of the livestock industry and its supporters
Donahue posits that some might think her strategy too radical or naive to
succeed. However, based on her comprehensive and well-supported
arguments, her strategy is highly persuasive, and, importantly, well within the
law and authority governing the federal land management agencies. Donahue
concludes that [w]e can no longer afford to sit back and wait for [the federal
government] to act or for agriculture to reform itself.' I propose legal action
is the most expedient method to enforce the existing legal standards Congress
intended to ameliorate the distressing impacts grazing causes to these lands.
Whether you are relatively new to the public lands grazing debate, or a
t Stephanie Parent, Staff Attorney, Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center, the environmental
law clinic at Northwestern School of Law, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon.
'Professor, University of Wyoming School of Law
1. DEBRA L. DONAHUE. THE WESTERN RANGE REvIsITED: REMOVING LIVESTOCK
FROM PUBLIC LANDS TO CONSERVE BIODIVERSrrY. (1999), (quoting Noss and Cooperrider,
Saving Nature's Legacy (1994)).
2. Critics called for the dissolution of the University of Wyoming College of Law, where
Donahue teaches, in retaliation for the heresy contained in her book. See Steve Gloss, In
Wyoming, academic freedom is an endangered species, 32 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS, Feb. 28, 2000
at 9.
3. DONAHUE, supra note 1 at 290.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/gpnat5&div=16&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Ranching without Reason
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