What should I tell this Con who's arguing with me on Facebook?

[465]

I am currently involved in a heated discussion with a Conservative at the moment. And this person thinks that rancher was in the right.

I think he's wrong.

How can I back up my claims?
Tortoises don't eat cow turds! They eat greens. The stuff that cattle are GRAZING.

[Rick]

Tell him the guy does't own that land and never has.


Yes they have USED that land since the 1870's but they never owned it.

[D. Lesser]

You shouldn't. The rancher's family has been on that land since the 1870's. The tortoise will survive.

[YB Logical]

It is a problem for liberals since the Obama Administration has yet to provide any talking points to them concerning the issue.
Maybe, you should e-mail the Obama OFA web site and ask for instructions.

[255]

"that rancher"

Do you mean the guy illegally grazing his cattle?

Ask him this question.

Who owned the land? The US government, i.e. the people.

So where does this guy get off stealing from the public commonwealth, when the same assets, that is cattle grazing, could be sold at a profit to cut taxes?

This man was merely demanding his "right" to suck on the public teat.


Public land does not exist to merely be despoiled by whoever gets their first.

[JYISGG]

Simple, he is right. The family farm has been grazing this territory for over 100 years. The Federal government is attesting that the livelihood of the Desert Tortoise is at st stake, however how can this be true? The cattle that have been grazing this area are just as indigenous to this area at this point, as the tortoise. Besides, the tortoise is actually thriving as a result of the increase in cattle, because it feeds off of the manure.

So far, the government has been granted the authority by a federal court to remove the cattle from the area, because the tortoise is on the endangered species list, even though this land is not federal property. This should actually make it a state matter, which the rancher has advised he is more than willing to work out a deal with the state of Nevada.

This is a clear case of an infringement on the Tenth Amendment rights of the state of Nevada, and it is a shame that the rancher is fighting this alone, and not with the state of Nevada behind him.

@ I see dead squirrels – The U.S. government does not own the land, the state of Nevada does. Besides, even if he were grazing on federal land, he has rights to do so under the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act just so long as he pays for the permit. The problem, is that the rancher has claimed that the federal government has been pushing ranchers out of the area by hiking up costs for the permit to graze. This is why he has since stopped paying for the permit because the federal government doesn’t even own the land, the state of Nevada does.

@ I see dead squirrels – The U.S. government does not own the land, the state of Nevada does. Besides, even if he were grazing on federal land, he has rights to do so under the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act just so long as he pays for the permit. The problem, is that the rancher has claimed that the federal government has been pushing ranchers out of the area by hiking up costs for the permit to graze. This is why he has since stopped paying for the permit because the federal government doesn’t even own the land, the state of Nevada does.

@ Will Will - From “The Desert Tortoise in Relation to Cattle Grazing, by Vernon Bostick

“The desert tortoise is well adapted for making use of cow dung. Four days elapse between meals. This allows plenty of time for the tortoise to complete the digestion that began in the cow's stomach.”

This is the part where you start feeling stupid.

[CM PUNK]

So you want him to be wrong, yet have no idea how to prove your own assertion...typical liberal.

[K8]

Cow turds are amazing fertilizer and will enhance the growth of the grass and other vegetation by a whole lot thus benefiting both the cows and the tortoise. Since they have co-existed for 100 years or so I think this is much ado about nothing.

[Summertime]

The truth...

[Mythbuster]

Your edit about Tortoise not eating cow dung is completely wrong so I would not use that argument if you do not want to sound uneducated.

Here is "evidence" disproving your statement. There was a study published in June 1990 by Vernon Bostwick called "The Desert Tortoise in Relation to Cattle Grazing" https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index....0776/10049


It shows that not only are cattle not harming the Desert Tortoise but in truth the Desert Tortoise needs bigger animals to eat and digest the range forage first so that they can get the nutrients and proteins from the forage that they cannot get from directly eating it themselves. As the cattle are decreased from an area the population of Tortoise decreases as well.

The report states clearly on page 2 of that report: (you should read it yourself for verification purposes)

"The toothless tortoise is ill equipped to harvest and masticate range forage. The tortoise can harvest only tender vegetation, and it can't masticate even that. The tortoise can't process enough bulky, low analysis forage fast enough to meet its nutritional requirements (Nagy & Medica 1986). They solved this problem long ago—they allow other animals to do it for them. Desert tortoises feed primarily on dung. The more animals using the range, the more dung, which makes more food available for tortoises.

In the millennia preceding the advent of domestic live- stock on the range, tortoises subsisted on pellets excret- ed by rabbits, deer, and bighorn and scats of predators. Tortoise populations adjusted to the amount of dung available; their numbers were low (Mollhausen 1854).

The Western Regional Extension Publication No. 39: By-products and Unusual Feedstuffs in Livestock Rations (Bath et al. 1980) states:". . . it is commonly estimated that 80% of the total nutrients in feeds are excreted by animals as manure." The desert tortoise is well adapted for mak- ing use of cow dung. Four days elapse between meals. This allows plenty of time for the tortoise to complete the digestion that began in the cow's stomach. The digested food moves slowly, ever so slowly, through tortoise intes- tines. This trip takes 17 days (Nagy and Medica 1986). It is a biological law that all organisms tend to increase to the limits of their food supply. Therefore, it is natural and to be expected that desert tortoise numbers and live- stock numbers peaked on the public domain at the same time.

It is also a natural law that if the food supply is dimin- ished for any population, that population will adjust to come in balance with the reduced food supply. For 50 years BLM has been reducing the numbers of livestock permitted on the Federal Range. For 50 years desert tor- toise populations have been declining."

It also says on Pg. 2:

"The intense competition for forage by livestock owners was halted by the Taylor Grazing act of 1934. The big reduction in grazing use in 1936 (about 50 percent) didn't bring about any noticeable range improvement, and another cut in authorized use was made by shortening the length of the grazing season. It was after this second cut that Woodbury and Hardy (1948) reported a desert tor- toise population density of 150 tortoises per square mile.

BLM made further cuts in grazing use in the early fifties and again in the sixties. In 1970 1,500 acres of tortoise habitat were fenced and closed to all grazing by livestock. Sheep use was eliminated. Four years later Coombs (1974) reported 39 tortoises per square mile. Between Hardy's census in 1948 and Coombs' census in 1974, livestock grazing was reduced 100 percent. There was a 74 percent reduction in tortoise density."
_____________________________________

Also before anyone runs to dispute this guy's bias or credentials here is a little background on Mr. Bostwick.

Vernon B. Bostic (Died last year) was born in Weston, Colo., Feb. 20, 1914, and had been a Las Vegas resident for over 50 years. Vernon received his BS in ecology in 1936 and had careers in the U.S. Forest Service, ecology and range management consultant and radiation protection technologist at the Nevada Test Site from 1961, retiring in 1981. He continued his education and received his MS in biology from UNLV in 1973. After retiring, he was very active in local environmental and conservation issues including the development of the Wetlands Park where several of its key features are named in his honor.

You can also read a notarized testimony of Vernon Bostwick's given to the State Of Nevada and Clark County that I found online talking about this very issue and the validity of the data that ppl are using to try to disprove the benefit of cattle to the desert tortoise. http://www.gardnerfiles.com/24-b%20Testi...ostick.pdf

Good luck with your argument but you might want to actually look the information up first instead of just regurgitating what you are hearing from MSM new sources. The best information to look at right off the bat is the US Constitution and the Nevada State Constitution.