Modern livestock grazing has comparatively little environmental impact. Nevertheless, many environmentalists simply want all ranchers off the public lands. Some two dozen U.S. environmental groups have signed on to the Wildlands Project , a plan to create a reserve stretching from Central America to the Arctic Circle, in order to protect biodiversity. Vast landscapes without roads, dams, motorized vehicles, powerlines, overflights, or other artifacts of civilization. The appeal for many is the idea of restoring the West to its natural condition.
Researchers call it an unscientific and unrealistic standard.
Although it might seem logical to say that because domestic livestock were introduced, they are inherently undesirable, longtime observers of range ecology have discovered otherwise. In recent years wildlife biologists at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks have returned cattle to wildlife management areas as part of a cooperative arrangement with local ranchers. They have observed that when cattle remove rank vegetation, in the fall, they enhance spring fodder for geese, elk, and antelope. The capacity of cattle to revegetate has proved useful, too, for reclaiming mining sites in Arizona that have resisted reclamation by other means. Efforts to remove all cattle from wildlife areas have proved in some instances to be misguided.