But Lynn Jacobs says it's time to set aside the Cattlemen's litany and listen to the facts about cattle ranching's devastating effects on the environment. Although surrounded by plants and animals, I find it's the air that first draws my attention. It carries a complex, sweet odor rising from the soil's moist upper layer - a litter of decomposing grasses, leaves, twigs, and flowers. Insects buzz around the nearby plants, and when I listen carefully I can hear several different pitches at once. Delicate, many-hued wildflowers poke up from depressions in the dirt that have retained moisture.
Lizards scurry out of our way.
Describing an educational walk led by rangelands activist Lynn Jacobs through Page Experimental Ranch, a square-mile enclosure of ungrazed grassland near Tuscon, Arizona, Erik then leads the reader through adjacent land grazed and trampled by cattle.