They met a similar level of opposition to the railroad as they did in Lame Deer as ranchers whose land would be crossed by the proposed Tongue River Railroad, ranchers who already have a railroad on their land and citizens worried about increased rail traffic stood up and told the STB staff that they were against the Tongue River Railroad. Citizens laid out a litany of issues that the STB must analyze in the Environmental Impact Statement. Over 20 people stood up and spoke out against the rail line with only one person speaking in favor of it.

Clint and Wally McRae, ranchers whose land would be crossed by the Tongue River Railroad. Photo courtesy Sierra Club

Ranching for dummies

How do you explain to a non-rancher why trains and cows don’t mix? It’s not as easy as you’d think. Take for instance the Tongue River Railroad Company’s original proposal to the ranchers along the route for cattle crossings. Instead of an overpass, they proposed metal culverts about 11 feet wide running underneath the rail line.

Cows and tin tubes

Culvert – photo courtesy Federal Highway Administration

“A cows not the smartest animal in the world. And she looks at the tin culvert and thinks, I might fit in this side but that far side is only about this big (Wally put his hands up in a tiny circle) and I’m not gonna fit in it, (crowd laughs) and if she finally decides that she can make it through there, her calf is smarter than she is and he/she won’t go….”

Wally then explained to the STB that he had tried to tell this to their Office of Environmental Analysis years ago when he was trying to protect his ranch. He wanted them to put in a bridge and wrote the STB. The STB wrote him back and said,

“Cattle will learn to go through a cattle pass.”

Wally wrote them back and said,

“Apparently you aren’t acquainted with our cattle, the first time you try to mash Rocker 6 cows through a tin tube, that they don’t think is big enough, I want you all to show up on your best horse to help us because we are going to need all the help we can get.”

Wally got no response. Either they don’t have very good cow horses out there at STB Headquarters or they don’t have a sense of humor, or maybe both.

Cows on the train tracks

Cow standing on train tracks – courtesy photo

“[Union Pacific] would rather pay for dead cows than maintain the fences,” Topham tells us. “It’s an economic decision.”

As all ranchers know, fencing is one of the largest expenses they have. One mile of fence is costing around $8,000/ mile. So, although the Tongue River Railroad company maintains that they would put a fence up along the entire route to keep livestock from hanging out on the tracks, we know that it is inevitable that fences will fail and cows will be killed. It will be cheaper for them to pay for dead cows than to maintain expensive fence. It is 83 miles of rough and rugged country, with many places having no access. How often will the TRR Co check the fence line to make sure it is ok?

There are more examples of trains hitting cows here and the whole train derailed, and here, and here.

Wildlife concerns raised

Besides the litany of issues related to ranching and trains that the public brought up, ranchers also brought up wildlife issues.

Bull Elk – photo courtesy USFWS

“The river bottom is the restaurant, the hills are the motel”

He pointed out that the train would go right between the restaurant and the motel, preventing the elk, deer and myriads of other critters from having an undisturbed migratory path. He was extremely concerned about how the rail line would impact the wildlife on his ranch that he works to protect and conserve. He told the STB that the Tongue River is one of the most pristine river valleys in the United States and is the most rich wildlife ecosystems in Montana.

He went on,

“There are a lot of jobs in the construction, manufacturing, marketing and distribution of the poison pill that will kill America. That poison pill is the export of our natural resources. The state of Montana, Arch Coal, and BNSF will all make a lot of money, but it will be at the expense of the best places we have left.”

A Public Good?

One of the most consistent themes of the night from almost every person that spoke was that a private corporation is asking to condemn and confiscate private property for corporate profits and yet the railroad company is trying to portray this a “public good.”

In order for the Tongue River Railroad to be granted the powers of eminent domain by the government and be able to take private property for their coal train they have to show that what they are proposing to do is in the interest of the the public.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think a coal company making billions of dollars in profit, condemning land and shipping Montana’s coal to Asian countries is a “public good.”

Is the STB willing to actually consider the “no action” alternative?

At the end of the evening, after listening to two hours of people telling the STB staff what impacts they will see on their land, their health and their communities, I decided to stand up and ask them one question that I think all of us deserve to know the answer to.

Is the STB willing to say no to the Tongue River Railroad Company? What amount of environmental impacts do they need to see and hear about before they are willing to say, you know what, this railroad has too many problems, will destroy too much land, will harm too much wildlife, will cause too much destruction,  and we aren’t going to give the Tongue River Railroad Company a permit to do this damage.

Are we just going through the motions or will the three members of the Surface Transportation Board have the political courage to say no?

Longhorn cattle descended from livestock brought to Mexico and Texas by earlier Spanish stockgrowers reverted to half-wild behavior and could be dangerous to a person on foot.

Domestication

Scientists study the origin of domestic animals by looking at bones dug up at sites of early human settlements. The main problem: Telling a wild animal from an early domestic one isn’t easy. True, in the confines of captivity, animals change. They may become less robust; for example, their teeth may become smaller. But when looking at a 10,000-year-old Middle Eastern farm site, archaeologists may find the bones of wild species so early in the domestication process that they had not yet changed into the currently recognized domestic forms. So, are the bones of wild sheep found at an early farming site the remains of animals killed in the wild and eaten at home, or are they early domestics born and raised in a corral?

Despite this difficulty, scientists have used DNA analysis and other methods to begin figuring out quite a bit about domestic animals. Recent studies suggest domestication may occur relatively fast. For example, researchers in Russia who selectively bred formerly wild silver foxes in captivity found that by choosing only naturally tame animals, the little canines took on the look of doggy domestication in just 20 years, including such traits a floppy ears, variable fur color, changes in breeding cycles, friendliness and tail wagging.

Now let’s look at the origins of creatures we might think of as table domestics.

Chicken

Colonel Sanders’ fried bird of choice is descended from Asia’s red jungle fowl, a colorful wild chicken that looks much like some barnyard hens or roosters. In fact, the domestic chicken is considered the same species as the red jungle fowl. The domestic chicken is likely descended from wild birds in Thailand and nearby regions. Domestication in Vietnam can be traced back 10,000 years. Travelers carried the domestic chicken to China by 6000 B.C. and to India and eastern Europe by 3000 B.C. Egypt had them by 1400 B.C. but used them mainly for cockfighting. However, in Greece the tradition of eating them was well established by 400 B.C. Today, some 50 billion chickens are produced yearly worldwide, making the chicken the most numerous bird on the planet.

A wild tom (male) turkey struts his stuff, showing what he's made of in an effort to catch a hen's eye.

Turkey

Here’s an all-American bird, first domesticated about 2,000 years ago in southern Mexico and in what today is the U.S. Southwest. Spanish explorers in the 1500s found the big birds—they can weigh upwards of 20 pounds in the wild—being kept by the Aztecs in what is now Mexico City. The Spaniards took turkeys to Europe, where they were raised in captivity and became a popular food. These domestic birds were later brought back to the eastern United States by colonists. Though the turkey did well as a domestic, it fared poorly in the wild. In the era of uncontrolled hunting, it was shot nearly to extinction throughout much of its original range, which ran from New England woods all the way into the Far West. Restoration programs by state wildlife agencies, beginning in the 1920s, saved the bird, which is now common in many areas where it had been exterminated.

A red river sow and piglet take a nap.

Pigs

Archeological finds indicate that pigs were domesticated at several times at several places in Europe and Asia. Some evidence suggests that domestic pigs were first brought to Europe from the Middle East. Later, however, wild hogs native to Europe were domesticated and became the ancestors of today’s European domestic pigs. Domestic hogs number about 2 billion worldwide, making them the most numerous of the world’s 13 pig species. Interesting facts: Pigs lack sweat glands and so seek water to keep cool; they also use a coating of mud to prevent sunburn.

Sheep

The sheep was one of the first domesticated animals, dating to between 9,000 and 11,000 years ago and descended from Mesopotamia’s wild mouflon sheep, which looks like North America’s bighorn sheep. Mouflon were a good choice for early domestication because even in the wild they tend to follow leaders and are not aggressive. These two factors made them easy to tame and control. Domestic sheep number about 1 billion today, far more than all five wild sheep species combined. 

A Hereford cow in North Carolina. Meat breeds like the Hereford are descended from wild European cattle.

Cattle

The origin of beefsteak and hamburger is murky. Evidence suggests that farmers in the Near East domesticated cattle about 8,000 years ago. These animals later reached Europe and Africa, where people crossbred them with native wild species to give rise to European and African domestic cattle breeds. Domestication of yet another species of wild cattle in Asia more than 7,000 years ago produced the humped species of that region, collectively called zebu and seen in rodeos as Brahma bulls.

Agriculture for things like cattle ranching and increasingly palm oil production have been the drivers for this calamity, and people like NWF’s Barbara Bramble are working to ensure an international climate treaty reduces deforestation.

Brazilian cattle ranching is incredibly carbon intensive, with a steak from a Brazil having a far higher carbon impact in contrast to a steak produced in the U.S. The same concept applies to leather. Meanwhile, demand for oils is increasing, as is the pressure to ramp up production in Brazil. 

Barbara works to get more sustainable production, and she and her colleagues have made great progress over the years. Deforestation is on a downward trajectory, and with progress at Cancun expected this week, more headway will be made to monitor forests and slaughterhouses, and ensure enforcement. 

Barbara took a few moments to talk about progress and concerns on these issues just before her ‘side event’ with scientists at the Cancun talks.  Video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.