Mr. Toad's Wilderness Lawsuit: Part I

When I worked at Frontier Pack Train, George Hay and I spent a good amount of my time putting up ugly electric fences in mountain meadows to protects the Yosemite Toad from our grazing livestock. Any spots in our grazing pastures that were wet had to be surrounded by the gaudy white electric tape so that our horses and mules wouldn't skoosh them. I wasn't defacing the back country because I love the look of electric fencing. A court had found that our livestock were smooshing the life out of these endangered toads, and so we had to take steps to save these poor toads. Eventually the court forced the Forest Service to stop issuing grazing permits, because that would save the toads from the hooves of death.

The court said that there was "sufficient evidence to link commercial packstock to... a reduction in the population" of these wretched toads. The only problem with this statement by the 9th Circuit is that there was no evidence at all that grazing livestock were causing a decline in the number of these toads. It would be about five years before the results of any study on the effect of livestock on toads would be published, and that study said that the toads were unaffected. The toads weren't being skooshed, smooshed, or even frightened to death by grazing animals. The study points out that the toads and livestock weren't even hanging out in the same places. The toads, being toads, hang out in the wet parts of High Sierra Meadows. Grazing livestock, animals that get all their calories from grazing off of grass, were eating the more nutritious grass from the drier parts of the meadow.

The Ninth Circuit, in all their wisdom, needed no study to show what effect the grazing animals were having on the toads. It was enough for them that the toads were in the meadow, the livestock were in the meadow, and the toad numbers were declining. They didn't need evidence, they simply knew what was happening in the High Sierra. As a result they totally stopped grazing in the High Sierra. This decision cost the packers in that area an untold amount of money because they had to pack in feed. And it put more animals on the back country trails because they needed to pack in that feed, or it forced the packers to take fewer trips because they needed more animals for each trip. This kind of arrogance is what distances the court from normal people, and in this case an environmentalist court was willing to believe whatever it was told without any proof, and without considering what the results of its actions would be.

My next post will examine what I think should happen next.