Federally Owned Rangelands: Are There New Grounds for Common Ground?

Today, we have recreated the range wars, using less violent, twentyfirst century means, but involving equally passionate views and similarly implacable foes. While some advocates vigorously defend a historic land use, others argue with increasing vehemence for sharp reductions-or even a complete cessation-of such uses, dismissing an entire lifestyle as nihilistic. In the face of such apparently intractable antagonism, some have predicted, with unseemly enthusiasm, the eventual sunset of federal land grazing. Others have advanced the seemingly enlightened idea of buying federal grazing leases as a better approach to improving publicly-owned range habitats