4-16 IAN Wally Policy

  Wally on rangeland policy.

 Wally Butler is the recently elected president of The Society For Range Management. I have known Wally and fought alongside Wally to assure the rights of beef producers to graze on public land. I had a phone conversation with him. “Tell me 2 things. Number 1 what see as the most significant challenge to your side of the equation meaning pro- beef producer who manages open range in Idaho and 2, what do you see as the greatest successes recently rendered? That is a great question. I think the biggest challenges are just like anything else we have today and that is budgeting and man power to do some of the work that needs to be done and we are such a litigious society that a lot of the work that has been done and still needs to be done out there, is stifled simply through the court system. The misuse of science or lack of science in some cases, the thing that I think is the  largest asset is that there is more  emphasis on the research going forward, not just for those  of us who have been on the land for years and years and knowing that things are progressing in the right direction, but getting it into a peer reviewed research form so that it will stand up in court.”