Report: Desert Tortoise Greatly Benefits from Bundy’s Cattle Grazing

Historical record shows desert tortoises thrive when living near livestock
Adan Salazar
Prison Planet.com
April 15, 2014



The Bureau of Land Management’s ongoing dispute with cattle rancher Cliven Bundy has supposedly been waged over unpaid grazing fees. Bundy’s cattle is said to have grazed in protected areas regulated to preserve endangered species, chiefly the desert tortoise.

Later we learned the BLM had actually been euthanizing scores of endangered tortoises, as well as releasing some into the wild, in advance of closing the doors to the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, which they claim lacked funding.

Since the start of the conflict, Bundy has asserted that the cattle he grazes actually benefit the desert tortoise population. “I’ll never get it. If it weren’t for our cattle, there’d be more brush fires out here. The tortoises eat the cow manure, too. It’s filled with protein,” Bundy stated.

It turns out, he’s right, according to one range expert.

Writing for the journal Rangelands in 1990, range ecology expert Vernon Bostick made an outstanding case for the desert tortoise’s dependent relationship on grazing livestock. Beginning with the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, which reduced grazing land use by about 50 percent, the federal government’s increased regulation of grazing lands, Bostick argues, actually makes them directly culpable for the decline of the desert tortoise population.

The correlation, Bostick outlines in a short treatise entitled, “The Desert Tortoise in Relation to Cattle Grazing,” is evidenced by the historical record, and can essentially be summed up in six words, “the more cows, the more tortoises.”

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