The RangeNet 2002 conference, presented last month in Boise by Western Watersheds Project, was a wonderful chance for my husband and me to see some familiar faces and meet others who until now had, names: Andy Kerr, George Wuerthner and Dr. Elizabeth Painter among many. Bob brought along a copy of George's compelling new book, "Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West" to be signed by the author.

After a trip over the mountains through the incredible fall colors between Idaho City and Lowman, we pulled into Boise just in time to catch the debate between Ed Marston, publisher of High Country News, and Jon Marvel, executive director of Western Watersheds Project.

I admit to a soft spot in my heart for Fd. Back in the early 1990s, Ed's wife, Betsy, then the paper's editor, essentially taught me how to write the taut, focused essays that are HCN's specialty. Best of all, she convinced me that the stories I had to tell about life in the West were worth telling.

The debate in the Student Union building at Boise State University was lively and entertaining, as both Jon and Ed are terrific storytellers and advocates for their points of view.

While Ed admits that ranchers must change or "destroy themselves," he sees creeping suburbanization as the greater threat. Jon, on the other hand, asks why the land and water and wildlife of the West must continue to suffer while we wait for the future to roll over the people that Wallace Stegner called "the lords of yesterday."

Ed sees us as "a suburban audience intent on suburbanizing the West," part of a larger effort to "push people off the land," an effort with elements of class warfare. I see a diverse group of people, many from small Western towns themselves, who belong to a growing Western rural culture that has nothing to do with cows.

For instance, 49 percent of the total income in Lemhi County, Idaho, where I live, comes from pensions, investments and government transfer payments.

Jon pointed out that subdivisions happen when ranchers choose to sell, and many ranchers choose to sell when the price is right. The way to prevent development of private land is through land-use planning and the purchase of development rights, not by keeping private cows on hundreds of millions of acres of land that belongs to the American public.

Ed worries (rightly) about coal-bed methane development, which threatens to engulf his adopted home town of Paonia, Colorado. He also notes (correctly) that "lawless" federal agencies have been no help at all in combating that threat.

To fight off the methane carpetbaggers from Florida, environmentalists have joined with ranchers, Ed said. Compared to that threat, "a couple of bucks an AUM is no big deal." So he doesn't see the point of antagonizing ranchers. "Why piss them off?" he asked.

"Because," Jon replied, "they have no land ethic. It's that simple."

Ed and Jon seemed to agree that in the arid lands of the West, ranching is not an economically viable activity. But Ed feels that it should continue for political and sociological reasons, while Jon is unwilling to overlook the widespread damage that cattle continue to cause.

So what's the solution? Public lands ranchers are a minority of a minority.

Four out of five Western ranchers don't have grazing permits, yet we subsidize the one-fifth who do at tremendous cost to our water, soil, fish and wildlife.

Andy Kerr and Mark Salvo, speaking next about the National Public

Lands Grazing Coalition's permit buyout proposal, presented a solution.

Ranching is a dying industry. But will it die soon enough to prevent the extinction of bull trout, sage grouse, the Chiricahua leopard frog, the Sonoran pronghorn? A voluntary buyout of grazing permits is a collaborative solution which recognizes that grazing permits have a private investment.

The West's 27,000 public lands permittees received a letter from the NPLGC this spring, describing the buyout proposal. Since then, many have written or phoned to say they're "on the ropes." They're growing old. They aren't making money. Their kids have left the ranch. Their return on investment is 1 percent to 3 percent -- in a good year. They go to more and more meetings with federal officials, who are being forced to pay attention to cattle damage.

Ironically, because they are already losing money, the nearly 50 percent of public lands ranchers who actually try to make a living from their operations literally can't afford to manage their livestock any better than they are doing now, nor can they afford to have their grazing cut. NPLGC's proposal would accelerate and smooth the inevitable transition.

But leaders of state cattlemen's associations have more to lose if the system ends. Already, the buyout idea has created tension between industry leadership and some of its members. Paying $ 175 per AUM -- four times market value -- for permits would make it harder for the leaders to buy out their neighbors. One state cattle association president, however, tells NPLGC that two-thirds of his members would jump at a buyout.

Where are the West's politicians on this? They understand that the West is the nation's most urbanized region. They want to protect their rancher allies, but they know ranchers are less and less relevant. So when environmentalists and ranchers show up wanting the same thing, that thing becomes politically powerful. At that point, money can appear.

NPLGC proposes to use a market to end a market. Buyout money could get ranchers clean with the banks, which are carrying many undercollateralized loans. Ranchers could buy more private land to raise their economy of scale. As a tool to remove livestock from public lands, a buyout is socially just and pragmatic. And it's voluntary.

The conference adjourned, but not all of the assembly parted company. Bob and I and many others headed from Boise to WWP's Greenfire Preserve on the East Fork of the Salmon River for the second annual Greenfire Revival.

The nights at Greenfire were clear and very cold. The temperature dropped to 11 degrees. But the days were sunny and warm, creating the perfect atmosphere for hiking, sightseeing, wildlife watching, field botany and visiting.

There were hikes to Railroad Ridge with its spectacular view, walks up the mile of the East Fork of the Salmon River that flows through the preserve, and time to relax on the deck in the autumn sunshine.

Louise Wagenknecht, a WWP board member, lives in Leadore, Idaho.