Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire letter to the editor, another side of the Bundy story

The western public-land livestock industry provides a context for
examining three separate but interrelated aspects of the broad concept
�capture�: the legal rule of capture, as it relates to property rights, the
capture thesis of interest-group liberalism, and the phenomenon by
which the �cowboy� myth has captured so many facets of American life
and culture. This article�s objective is to outline and explore a �capture
metaphor,� which incorporates, or is informed by, all three aspects. The
three concepts share similar threads and together go a long way toward
explaining why our unwise public-land grazing policies have continued
to the present. The article begins with a brief critique of public-land
grazing policy. It then describes how ranchers acquired and maintain
their hold on the range, despite lacking any property interest in public
lands and despite the severe ecological consequences of livestock
grazing in arid environments. The paper outlines the chief beliefs (all
derived from the cowboy myth) that drive current range policies�that
public-land ranching is a culture worth preserving, supports small
communities, and is vital to maintaining open space�and it argues that
these myths lack legal, historical, or scientific legitimacy. The paper
concludes that, unless checked, continued operation of the capture
metaphor is likely to be disastrous for the pubic lands.