Nine Circles of Shell

On Ranching and Public Land

I found this via Reddit. Puts into words something I've felt about the west for a while. I think in Nevada the blame gets shifted pretty effectively to the wild horses, which is probably partially true but probably is overstated to take the heat off the cattle industry for their devestation of habitat. The issue with wolves really upsets me too. When you think about it, we've all just decided that one industry gets to drive a species to the brink of extinction so they can profit. It's psychotic. Ranchers truly are welfare queens.

Then there's mining of course. People talk about the environmental devestation mining has wrought on Appalachia, but Nevada and the rest of the west gets overlooked because it already looked like shit to most people. Perhaps because of the cattle.