The Wild Archives - Macska Moksha Press

The Travesty of Public Lands Ranching

December 9, 2025 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

An open range sign along the Interstate 10 (I-10) Frontage Road (AKA: Marsh Station Road) in eastern Pima County, Arizona. The “Three Bridges” area of the Cienega Creek Natural Preserve is in the distance. The Rincon Mountains are in the background. Credit: $1LENCE D00600D, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Only ~2% of beef production in the US is sourced from cows grazed on federal public lands, nearly all of it in the Western states. However, the ecological damage inflicted by the industry on these fragile, arid landscapes is obscenely disproportionate, with profoundly negative impacts on flora, fauna, water, soil and more. Ceasing this harmful practice would arguably benefit the natural environment of the Western US more than any other single action.

I also want to emphasize how few humans benefit from public lands ranching. Economically, its contribution to local communities is trivial and could be redressed through the same legislation that discontinues it. For consumers nationwide, beef availability and prices would be unaffected, so you can be a burger fan and oppose public lands ranching without worry.

In other words, eliminating ranching on public lands in the West would have immensely positive effects for the environment and virtually no negative effects for humans. In that way, it’s a total no-brainer.

Yet the subject flies below the radar, even for most environmentally-minded folks. I get why. I myself was unaware of these issues until 2012, when I read Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West in preparation for a trip to eastern Oregon. (This comprehensive and thoroughly researched book, edited by George Wuerthner, has been out of print for years but is now available as a free download!) We hear much more about other threats to public land like logging, mining and fossil fuel extraction, and I would never minimize those horrendous activities, but the ecological impacts of ranching are more widespread than all of those put together and are sorely under-rated. It’s a big subject, and in a short essay like this I can only summarize a few important points. For those readers wanting to dive deeper, I’ve included some sources at the end.

A Brush with Trophy Hunters

November 17, 2025 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Another recollection from my summer in Paonia, Colorado

Above is a photo of a five-point buck in the greenhouse at the farm where I worked this summer. (See “Cows, Coal and Peaches: My summer in Paonia, Colorado.”) This wasn’t the first time he or one of his brothers bedded down in the aisles. Why didn’t we chase them out? Because we were trying to keep them safe. Here’s the story.

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Checkerblooms, Globemallows, Beardtongues & more

November 11, 2025 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Favorite plant pics from my summer in Colorado

Western Blue Flag (Iris missouriensis), Ridgway, June 11th

As I mentioned in a recent post, I spent the summer working on a farm on Colorado’s Western Slope this year. I often went camping or hiking on my weekends (Wednesdays and Thursdays at my request, to avoid the crowds) and my primary interest was plants, especially whatever happened to be blooming at the moment.

If I try to do ID-to-species-level on the spot, I use an offline app that allows you to browse candidates by characteristic. If you know family or genus, you can also enter that to further narrow down your search. It’s basically a field guide in app form. Wildflower Search is the company that makes it, and they put out versions by state. It’s free and I highly recommend downloading the ones that apply to your region.

A Clear-cut is a Clear-cut

March 6, 2025 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

As regular readers know, critiquing the “invasive plant” narrative is one of my main themes here. The name of the Substack is, after all, “Speaking for the Trees, No Matter Where They’re From.” Usually I choose to approach the topic in of two ways: 1) scientifically, drawing on the peer-reviewed literature, often from the field of invasion biology itself, to bust popular myths, and 2) culturally, pointing out how the current and historic prejudices of our society shape our worldview, saddling us with mistaken impressions about how nature really works and how we should be relating to it. This is basically how I talk about “green” energy too.

I use those two approaches because I hope they might be effective at reaching people, and not because they’re the whole story for me personally. For me personally, emotions also play a part. Namely love; love for plants particularly and for all life on the planet more broadly. And rage; rage at those humans who kill things needlessly.

So no matter how I choose to communicate about these issues, love and rage are what motivate me, and they are intertwined. In the early 2000s, when I was involved in the forest defense movement in the Pacific Northwest, I was inspired by my love for the breathtakingly beautiful old growth trees I met, and by my rage for those who cut them down. Likewise, my opposition to lithium mining in the Great Basin (at Thacker Pass and elsewhere) is driven by my love for the Sage Brush Sea, and all its flora and fauna, and by my rage at the people and the industries that want to tear it up. Anywhere I go at any time, I feel love for the plants I see, regardless of their origins, and I feel rage for people who treat them like inanimate objects or like enemies to slay.

So when I focus on the science and the culture, I’m being diplomatic. More diplomatic than I want to be all the time, I will admit. Perhaps someday I will grow weary of this soft pedaling and take more direct action in defense of mother earth. We’ll see.

I Got to Pretend I was a Beaver for a Day

August 15, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The teams came together to haul this big log down and put it into place.

One of my first stops after leaving the farm in Sonoma County (see the recent series: part 1 | part 2 | part 3) was at a remote location in Plumas County in the Sierra Nevada mountains for what I would call a Beaver work camp. Nikki Hill took me there to volunteer with a project run by Swift Water Design. Founded by Kevin Swift, the company implements beaver-based and process-based restoration projects to heal human-damaged watersheds.

As Kevin summarized it, watersheds in what is now the western US suffered massive deterioration through a series of events: the genocide of indigenous people and the end of their land management practices (which prevented the kinds of catastrophic wildfires we now experience); the near extinction through over-hunting of beavers (who were the original ecosystem engineers); the draining of wetlands in riparian areas (much of it encouraged by law); and relentless overgrazing by cattle and sheep (who further degraded water course structure and wiped out much original vegetation).

What we’re left with now are streams and rivers who are disconnected from their surrounding land, which has resultingly been transformed from wetlands to dry meadows and forests. Nothing against trees, but as they migrate into areas that were formerly marshy, they act like straws, drawing up the water and further depleting moisture. The water is still there, it’s just being held in a different way that is unsuitable for wetland ecology, with all the plants and animals who make their homes in such places.

There’s a lot of science behind all this and I won’t be going into the details here, but suffice it to say that we’ve studied these things enough to see much of what went wrong for such areas and some of what we could do to reverse the process. One solution is to reintroduce beavers, but short of that, we humans can imitate what beavers do, in part to kick-start the healing process, and in part to attract beavers back to the area on their own.

Postcard from the Grand Mesa

August 2, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

View west from the Grand Mesa

In mid-August, I met up with Nikki Hill at a trailhead on the Grand Mesa. She was there to scope out sites for the field course she’s teaching next week, on Human-Landscape Relationships, Ecology, & Ethnobotany. Summer wildflowers were blooming and berries were coming on. Within earshot of our camp, a fork of Kannah Creek was babbling over the rocks on its journey down into the valley below. Birds and chipmunks twittered and squeaked. No traffic noises except the occasional passing car on the nearby gravel road. No light pollution but a few twinkling lights on ranches in the valley. Fresh air, scattered clouds, and lovely overnight temps. A truly idyllic spot.

But the star of the show was the view. In the far distance were the peaks of the La Sals range, over 100 miles away as the crow flies, in Utah. Below was the Grand Valley, which is part desert, part irrigated agriculture. On the other side of the Valley, and extending to the horizon, were the tumbled ridges and deeply cleft canyons of the Uncompahgre Plateau. The vista is startling in its expansiveness, like little else I’ve seen before. The sense of space is so vast, it almost feels like being at the ocean.

The rough terrain of the Uncompahgre Plateau was especially evident in the morning light:

View of Uncompahgre Plateau from the Grand Mesa

Environmentalist & anti-war goals go hand-in-hand

April 3, 2024 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The remains of Japanese dead, equipment and caved-in bunkers on ‘Scraggy Hill’ which was captured by 10th Gurkha rifles in fierce fighting in the Shenam area during the Battle of Imphal, 1944.

I’ve been anti-war as long as I can remember. When I got a call from a military recruiter in high school, I already had the clarity of conviction to give him an unambiguous no, and he didn’t have any chance of budging me (although he tried). Everything I’ve learned about war since then only increased my dedication to the principle.

As the song goes: “War can’t give life. It can only take it away.”

I’ve also been a tree-hugger for as long as I remember and for me, my anti-war ethic resonates in harmony with my opposition to the needless killing of any living creature, including plants.

The human toll of warfare is tragic beyond accounting in lives brutally cut short, grievous injuries suffered, cultural heritage lost (museums, religious structures, libraries, schools) and to vital infrastructure destroyed (hospitals, power plants, reservoirs). War as now fought has been with us at least since the establishment of agriculture, and as technology has advanced, its devastating abilities have escalated. Last century was the bloodiest in human history and we must we must make sure that record stands. Armed conflict at that scale with the current arsenal would be nightmarish beyond reckoning.

Less spoken of, but gaining increasing attention, are war’s effects on the environment. Not just active war-making, but the consequences of all the industries, institutions and infrastructure that supports it; what we could put together under the heading of “militarism. Effects include the ruination of habitat and farmland by battle, the killing and disruption of wildlife, the release of lethal pollutants, the damaging processes of weapon manufacturing, and the large-scale release of carbon emissions. Over all this hangs the threat of a nuclear winter, the worst environmental disaster imaginable.

Guest post: Botany as Archaeology

March 13, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

GUEST POST: This is Nikki Hill’s GoFundMe campaign for her “Lithium Lands Fellowship,” a month-long botanical survey she will be undertaking with young ecologists in places where lithium mining is proposed. The fellowship is being co-sponsored by Groundwork, the non-profit I will be working with this year in Paonia, Colorado. I encourage everyone who can to donate to this campaign.

For an in-depth description of a survey like this she did at Thacker Pass last year, see her article at The Esperanza Project: “Botany as archaeology, to save a sacred site from a lithium mine.”

Nikki Hill and Groundwork are seeking funding for a Lithium Lands Fellowship happening this April, 2023. This month-long immersion camp in far southeast Oregon is an endeavor in observation, documentation and storytelling centered on the ecological relationships and cultural heritage which are threatened by the proposed McDermitt Lithium Project.

The northern edge of the McDermitt Caldera has recently garnered attention for containing the largest lithium deposits in the US. The caldera lies within the vast sagebrush sea, which is one of the largest continuous landscape types in North America, but also one of the most at-risk, with only 5% receiving protection at the federal level. This sea connects all the peaks of the intermountain west in a mosaic of habitats and diverse floral communities.

Meaningful recognition of generational tribal caretaking, critical habitat zones and the ecological integrity sustained by their safekeeping are purposefully omitted from the promotion of these large mining projects. The goal of the Lithium Lands Fellowship is to provide baseline data and collaborative inspiration in support of further research and exploration of the living story of this place, as part of a larger effort to protect it.

Invasion Biology & Invasion Ideology: A theory and a dogma, at odds & overlapping

March 6, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum), Mendocino county pasture, 2019. Photo by author.

St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum), as observed in a Mendocino County pasture, 2019. Photo by author.

(The following is a draft of the Introduction for the book-in-progress that Nikki Hill & I are working on, tentatively entitled, “Stop Blaming the Messengers: A critical look at ‘invasive plant’ theory and dogma.”)

The two of us are plant lovers. We love all plants, wild and domestic, ancient and ephemeral, native and introduced. We have dedicated years of our lives to propagating and protecting botanical life as farmers, wildtenders and advocates.

We are deeply saddened by civilization’s war against the earth: the pillaging of the forests for logging, the mountains for mining, the valleys for agriculture, the steppes for ranching, the rivers for irrigation and power, the oceans for over-fishing, and now the deserts for “green energy” infrastructure.

We have witnessed brutal clear-cuts, cow-trampled wild food gardens, and hellish open-pit mines. We have also slept under old growth Fir and Cedar, sown the seeds of Yampah and Biscuitroot, and hiked back country among Mesquite and Prickly Pear. The joys of fragrant foliage, vibrant flowers, juicy berries and starchy roots, ripe seeds, exuberant seedlings, and furrowed bark are unparalleled by anything from a factory.

Botany as Archaeology, to Stop a Lithium Mine

August 11, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

GUEST POST, by NIKKI HILL

Photo 1: Thacker Pass, all photos by Nikki Hill

“Sagebrush sea” is an endearing term that describes the vast high desert steppe lands of western North America. Rolling hills enveloped in silver green shimmer and sparkle like waves in the mid-day sun. This sea that spans the wide valleys and crests over plateaus connects the peaks and ridges from the shores of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada to the Greater Rocky Mountains. It is vast, indeed like an ocean. Nowhere does it ripple more like a sea than in the Great Basin, which coverrs most of Nevada and half of Utah, held by the Wasatch range to the east and the Sierra Nevada to the West, spilling out into the Mojave to the south and well into eastern Oregon in the north.

Many of the desert plants do indeed resemble ocean creatures: coral-like cactus and urchin-like succulents. Although it is commonly thought of as desolate and emptiness, the high desert steppe is incredibly abundant and alive. 350 species of wildlife and insects depend just on sagebrush herself.

The sagebrush sea is one of the largest continuous landscape types in North America, but only 5% of the area receives protection at the federal level, making it the least protected landscape in the USA.

This sea has been speaking to me for some time now. Calling me back, holding my attention, inviting me to see the patterns within it. In 2009, I was first introduced to the various First Food plants of the high desert, the traditional staple-food plants, and the reciprocal relationships that have fostered them for thousands of years. I have dedicated the majority of my time to following these plants since 2013, spending time camping and interacting with them, learning how to tend them, gathering and planting their seeds and picking up their stories as I wander. I have become endeared to them, bonded to their continuance in heart and hand.

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Favorite plant pics from my summer in Colorado