-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.defenders.org/fbp03.html {{<Begin>}} Farm Bureau vs. Nature by Vicki Monks Fall 1998 Part 3 Vicki Monks, a freelance writer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reports frequently on wildlife and environmental issues. Dye's friend Rolf Cristen has been active in the Sullivan County Farm Bureau for the last decade. Cristen says he firmly believes in the bureau's mission and in working to influence its policies from the inside. The Farm Bureau has so much clout in Missouri, he says, that it is important to have the bureau on your side. On the hog issue, however, Cristen has been getting more help lately from the Sierra Club. "If you would have told me six years ago that I would have a meeting with the Sierra Club, I would have said you are totally off your rocker." "I would suspect this is causing some concern for the Farm Bureau," the Sierra Club's Ken Midkiff says. "When family farmers start aligning with the Sierra Club, that should be sending up some kind of signal." At a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hearing in Bethany, Missouri, last January, Farm Bureau lobbyist Dan Cassidy showed up to testify against a proposal to add the Topeka shiner to the endangered species list. This minnow can live only in cool, clear-running streams and cannot tolerate pollution. Listing the Topeka shiner could require farmers to take special care to keep sediments and pollutants out of the water. The Farm Bureau had alerted its members to the hearing, and dozens of farmers showed up. "Cassidy had this big old Cheshire-cat grin on his face when he saw all of these farmers come filing into the room," recalls another man who was there. Cassidy testified first, arguing against the listing. But then farmer after farmer got up to say that the Farm Bureau did not speak for the farmer. According to a head count taken by the Sierra Club, 69 of 87 people present disagreed with Cassidy and supported listing the shiner. Nearly all of those at the meeting were farmers and rural people. Martha Stevens, who has farmed for 45 years and is nearing retirement, says she is proud that Topeka shiners still survive in northern Missouri streams. "It means we've been doing something right," she says. "If the water kills the fish, it can't be good for us. The Topeka shiner is a darn good indication of when your water is polluted, and I believe we ought to be able to coexist and not pollute to the point that it destroys them and eventually destroys us." Stevens and her husband dropped their Farm Bureau membership a decade ago. "It's been our feeling that they do not represent the grassroots people," she says. Over the years, the Farm Bureau has regularly opposed plans to benefit wildlife, regardless of the impact on agriculture. AFBF was instrumental in keeping the U.S. Senate from ratifying the global biodiversity treaty approved in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. As a result, the United States remains the only major nation in the world that has not done so. The Idaho Farm Bureau opposed designation of the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, which protects habitat of the densest concentration of raptors in North America. The Wyoming Farm Bureau staked out a position against reintroduction of endangered black-footed ferrets. AFBF lobbyist Jon Doggett acknowledges that the Farm Bureau was instrumental in reversing a funding cut for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services (formerly called Animal Damage Control), whose agents kill predators on behalf of ranchers. The House of Representatives voted in June to cut $10 million from the Wildlife Services appropriation. The next day, after heavy lobbying by Farm Bureau representatives in several states, the House reversed its decision. In the Southwest in the last five years, Wildlife Services has killed or trapped mountain lions, black bears, coyotes and foxes even in designated federal wilderness areas, including the Santa Teresa Wilderness in Arizona and the Apache Kid Wilderness in New Mexico. Ranchers had complained that these predators had attacked their calves. "You'd think if there was one place that should be predator-friendly it would be the wilderness," says John Horning of Forest Guardians. "It boggles the mind that on the cusp of the 21st century we are paying federal employees to kill predators on federal land for the benefit of a handful of people." By the 1970s, government agents and ranchers had wiped out the Southwest's wolves. Now that a few are back, the Farm Bureau is arguing that they pose an unreasonable threat. So far, however, most of the danger has been to the wolves. Last April, a Tucson man who had set up camp within a mile of where a group of wolves had been released shot and killed a male. According to news accounts, the camper at first said he shot the wolf because it had attacked his dog (the dog recovered and is doing fine), then changed his story, saying he shot because the wolf had come within 50 feet of his wife and children. FWS decided not to prosecute. The wolves are getting blamed for more than frightening campers. To hear Farm Bureau officials tell it, these predators will destroy the ranching economy. "Our membership really wonders why the federal government is spending millions of dollars putting predators into rural areas where farm and ranch families are having a real difficult time hanging on to the family ranch," says AFBF lobbyist Jon Doggett. Although Defenders of Wildlife in the last decade has paid ranchers some $60,000 for livestock losses to wolves, Doggett says ranchers do not believe they can always prove, or even know for sure, that a calf has been killed by a wolf. But according to Defenders' Northern Rockies Representative Hank Fischer, determining whether livestock has been killed by wolves is not difficult. "Wolf kills are way down on the list of things that harm livestock, way below being struck by lightning or hit by automobiles," Fischer says. "We are talking about a small level of predation, and if that's enough to tip the livestock industry over the edge, it has a pretty uncertain future anyway." Other factors are playing a much more important role in the troubles of cattle country. These days, people are eating less beef. A lot of ranch land has been damaged by overgrazing and other abuse and cannot sustain as many cattle as in the past. On top of that, the beef market is controlled by near-monopolies. Ranchers are in trouble, says Rocky Mountain Farmers Union President Dave Carter, but not because of wolves. "We do have some concerns about the wolf reintroduction, but on the whole we're more concerned about the wolves in the marketplace than the wolves up in Yellowstone," he declares. The National Farmers Union competes directly with the Farm Bureau but is smaller and takes a much different approach to agricultural and environmental issues. The Farmers Union is heir to an agrarian populist tradition that began around the turn of the century as a fight against usurious banking practices, unscrupulous grain dealers and market speculators. In the 1920s Farm Bureau leaders railed against the "radicalism" of these populists and pledged to work against any policies that might help them. Some of that old enmity still lingers. Rocky Mountain Farmers Union legislative coordinator Melissa Elliott says she's been disappointed that the Farm Bureau has not helped more with issues that make a real difference in the West. "The market is definitely a bigger problem because every independent producer is affected, and it's literally driving people out of business," Elliott says. "The wolf isn't doing that. Unfortunately we're always on opposite sides of the coin [from the Farm Bureau], and I wish that weren't so. We're all in the same boat. We need to be rowing in the same direction." {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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