Cattle graze public lands for $1.35 cents a cow, degrading and polluting river banks, streams and meadows. Taxpayers pay $445 million to this program that does nothing to benefit the public, in favor of benefiting a small number of ranchers.
Why is this important?
On a recent hike to Kennedy Meadows, instead of the pristine trout creek we expected, Kennedy Creek was lined with thousands of steaming piles of cow dung, swarms of black flies, cow-trampled banks and waterways and green algae-filled water. Instead of what should have been lush, wildflower-strewn meadows at Kennedy Lake, we sunk into a green quagmire of muck created by a steady stream of cows cooling themselves in the shallows. Backpackers we met made the same complaint. This is no way to run a public forest.
