Once upon a time I was a happy consulting ecologist interested in camping, hiking, bow-hunting and fishing in my local national forest, which I had always bypassed for more exotic locations. As I began to explore the Wasatch-Cache National Forest in northern Utah I discovered a dysfunctional landscape with denuded and eroding watersheds; trampled, eroding and silted streams; and dry, barren, dusty forest understory lacking green vegetation.

All the springs and seeps that I scouted for spots to set up a stand were trampled into mud holes. Every aspen grove or forested area I scoped out for a campsite was barren of grass and littered with cow dung or sheep dung, or both. In the summer, the feedlot smell obliterated all others, but then, there were no wildflowers to smell in any event.

And there were the flies, millions of flies. Flies in your face, on your lunch, in your cup, freshly hatched from the vast piles of cow dung that lay everywhere. Flies: the Australian national bird, as the late Ed Abbey called them. Perhaps Utah should consider them its state bird.

My last campsite was in an old, dried out, barren clearcut far from water and seemingly safe from livestock intrusion. Wrong! Early into the first morning of hunting, a cattle truck backed up in front of our camp and unloaded a truckload of cattle. They tore up our tent camp, defecated on everything in sight and generally had a ball. They finished off the two bales of straw we used for a target as an aperitif! We packed up and went home, never to hunt again.

From that day forward, I decided the only way to enjoy our national forests was to document the degradation caused by livestock and work to get rid of these hooved locusts on public lands. I set up a monitoring program to collect data on watershed condition and photograph the damage. Surely, I thought, when the U.S. Forest Service sees this information, they will do something about it.

Setting up monitoring locations was difficult, because there were no large ungrazed areas for comparison. Diligent searching located a few small places that were inaccessible to livestock because of topography or were in fenced, highway rights-of way. These ungrazed spots would serve as controls.

Our data showed that grazed areas were mostly bare ground and eroding, while the ungrazed areas had almost 100 percent vegetative ground cover. This compelling evidence, documented by hundreds of photographs of destroyed streams, springs and wetlands and weed infested uplands, would surely effect change. Or so I believed.

Other ecologists and I presented our case to the Forest Service through numerous letters and reports. Meetings were held in which we were told we didn't know the difference between use and abuse. Tours with district rangers and range conservationists (the term itself an oxymoron) led to denial. The damage, they said, owed to that long-ago era when "there were too many cows." I thought: When was this, last summer? Or they blamed wildlife. "The damage was caused by elk," always with the empty reassurance that "we are on an improving trend towards desired future condition.

Then, too, there were the ranchers who claimed that "we take half and leave half" and "we love, respect and understand the land and its wildlife; we are the true conservationists." Yes, they take the half that's above the ground.

Thousands of hours of monitoring, reading and talking with experts taught me what agency scientists had learned but conveniently forgot or ignored. Range management texts talked about stocking rates based on the amount of vegetation present while allowing for wildlife and watershed protection. They noted how allowances must be made for reduced vegetative production during dry years. They cited unstable soils, damage to riparian areas, the effects of water location, the unsuitability of grazing on steep slopes and so on.

This knowledge is apparently considered a tool of the devil, like Galileo's telescope. We who insist on consideration of these principles are subversives; since 9/11 we have been called terrorists by many in the ranching community.

The agencies say they don't have the staff or budget to monitor public lands intensively. Freedom of Information Act requests showed me that they had apparently lacked the budget or staff to monitor since the early 1960s. Determinations of stocking rates had never been made. The livestock were still there and the resource was on an "improving trend" even though the forest ecologist related that nearly two feet of topsoil had been lost due to livestock. But he's a scientist, not a range con, so his knowledge doesn't matter.

And what range con in his right mind is going to admit that, under his watch, the range is on a downward trend? So the self protecting, unchecked bias of range cons leads to claims that the resource is on a "stable" or an "improving trend." Improving toward what? A desert?

Perhaps this is how the Sahel, Sahara and San Rafael deserts found their destiny.

Tell that to the goshawk, lynx, sage grouse, pygmy rabbit, cutthroat trout, owl, neotropical migrant bird and other wildlife who depend on public lands for food and habitat. Tell it to the irrigators and dam builders whose works are filling with silt from eroding watersheds -- a just fate in my view. Tell it to the public water suppliers who have to filter and treat to remove sediment and bacteria.

I decided that in order to make a difference, I needed to establish a nonprofit group to obtain funding and do this full time. In 1996, Willow Creek Ecology was established to use science and our research to educate local environmental organizations and the public.

Needless to say, more monitoring, more thousands of hours and more public involvement by the groups we educated led to the same response by the Forest Service. We didn't know the difference between use and abuse, and there are less livestock now than at the turn of the century and so on. Today, the Forest Service in the Intermountain Region has "dumbed down" ecological interpretations in our area to include cows and sheep as part of the ecosystem so they no longer must be addressed as causing damage.

In 1998, the Logan Ranger District of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest released an EA for the Bear Hodges Analysis Area. This is an area in the critical wildlife corridor in the Bear River Range that connects the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to the southern Rockies sometimes known as the "Utah Gap." The Forest Service claimed that, decades of logging, livestock grazing and fire suppression had degraded and fragmented the forest to a point where resiliency and sustainability were threatened. They then arrived at a decision that refused to address livestock grazing and fire suppression. Instead they would clearcut and selectively log 2,000 acres of mature lodgepole and old growth fir to save them from insects and fire.

This "solution" was passed off as "research" into silvicultural methods and a "forest health treatment." The 7 million board feet to be logged were not addressed as a timber sale or any economic analysis performed. The timber was just an incidental benefit derived from "saving the forest."

We have seen dozens of these "forest health treatments" come out in the Intermountain Region to deal with fire hysteria. Claims of dysfunctional forest and sagebrush habitat condition are used to justify prescribed fire and timber sales without addressing the true causes of this degradation: livestock.

Other examples of agency denial and obfuscation come from Western Watersheds Project's recent appeals of livestock grazing permit renewals on more than 1.5 million acres of BLM land in northern Utah and northwestern Colorado. In the Utah example, the BLM claimed that of the 208 springs and 16 streams on BLM land in Box Elder County, 124 springs and all 16 streams were damaged, degraded and in danger of being dewatered and lost due to livestock grazing and trampling. Sixteen years later, in 2001, numerous EAs were released that claimed there would be no significant impact from reissuing the permits. Nor did the EAs address the degraded condition of these riparian and wetland areas. Water quality in all three counties addressed in our appeal of these 176 permits was claimed by BLM to meet "Beneficial Use Standards" because the streams were not on the state's 303(d) list. No monitoring data was presented to justify this conclusion and these streams are not monitored by the state.

Here, BLM used the absence of any data as evidence that the water is not polluted. This in the face of BLM admissions that livestock degrade water quality and destroy springs and streams. Go figure. Of course, the evidence is clearly seen in feces-laden springs and streams, siltation, destroyed stream banks, erosion and lack of riparian vegetation.

Then there is the Colorado example. Range surveys in the early 1980s documented that the BLM lands in Moffatt County were overstocked with livestock. This was followed by a range management plan that emphasized the need for monitoring and adjustment of livestock numbers.

In 2001, nearly 20 years later, an EA was issued to renew the permits that affect the headwaters of three rivers occupied by several threatened or endangered species of fish. Eroding watersheds, silt-laden waters and salinity problems were described. Livestock were considered a threat to archeological resources. In fact, they were considered to constitute an irreversible and irretrievable commitment of archeological resources.

Yet, the EA found no significant impacts and justified the decision to reauthorize grazing based on future monitoring proposed to correct and adjust livestock management. No description was provided of the monitoring, its goals and corrective actions. The same was promised in the range management plan more than a decade earlier.

We all remember the great Rangeland Reform movement in the early 1990s. What started with a bang of increased grazing fees ended with nearly free grazing and regulations requiring BLM to emphasize watershed protection, water quality, riparian function and native species.

When problems are identified, they must be corrected by management changes prior to the next grazing season. BLM has figured out how to work around these regulations. If they don't monitor, no problems are identified, so no changes need be made. So far what we see coming from Rangeland Reform are proposed solutions to livestock grazing problems that themselves have been the cause of much grazing damage. Water developments that destroy springs or fences that fragment wildlife habitat are trumpeted; common-sense requirements that ranchers "manage" their livestock are not. The result of rangeland reform has been prostituted by BLM to mean little more than a change from brown cows to white cows.

The bottom line is that the Forest Service and the BLM are unwilling to address the ecological and economic impacts of livestock grazing. They engage in denial and obfuscation, claiming they will do better in the future -- in essence, fiddling while Rome burns.

The entire basis of consensus as used by the agencies involves that trap for the uninformed and naive, baited with the promise they will be accepted by the ranchers and all will be well if they just "trust us" and keep quiet. The clear evidence is that these agencies lack the will to enforce standards. It is clear the only way to save our public lands from this pestilence is to remove livestock permanently.

Dr. John Carter is Utah director of operations for Western Watersheds Project. He also serves on WWP's board of directors.