homes on the range: COOPERATIVE CONSERVATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE ON CALIFORNIA'S PRIVATELY OWNED HARDWOOD RANGELANDS

Environmental History, Apr 2008 by Alagona, Peter S

Clearing oaks thus emerged as one aspect of an intelligent, and even enlightened, land management program in which government sponsored conservation and free market capitalism were inextricably linked. As early as 1949, the National Livestock Association's president, A. A. Smith, proclaimed that the rancher, "by nature and necessity, is a true conservationist. He would no more deliberately ruin the property on which he depends for his livelihood ... than the manufacturer would deliberately tear down the plant in which he operates."32 This notion of the farm as a "factory" has played an important role in the history of American agriculture.33 By the 1960s, it had emerged as a key principle in the management of California's hardwood rangelands, where conservation had become increasingly redefined as a mode of efficiency in industrial commodity production.

Well into the 1970s, research at Hopland continued to demonstrate that eliminating "weed trees" could result in tangible economic benefits. County farm advisers, including Monty Bell, continued to promote the idea that eliminating oaks could as much as double the carrying capacity of the land.34 Ranchers in the region continued to believe that a surplus of oaks hindered livestock production and reduced runoff. And the university continued to coordinate oak removal programs endorsed by the state, sponsored by industry, paid for by the federal government, and implemented with the help of local cattlemen's associations on private lands owned by individual ranchers. Between 1951 and 1973, cooperative range improvement programs resulted in the clearance of approximately 900,000 acres, or 10 percent, of the state's oak woodlands.35 Most everyone involved saw this as a positive development because an overabundance of oak trees posed a threat to conservation.

During their first two decades of work, researchers at the Hopland Field Station developed a new vision of hardwood rangeland conservation. Arthur Sampson had understood maximum use as an intrinsic property of the natural vegetation. Al Murphy and others now viewed maximum use as an ideal state of efficiency to be achieved through intensive scientific management and landscape transformation. When Hopland faculty and staff looked at the hardwood rangelands they saw a system that tended toward decadence and required human labor in order to bear fruit. The optimistic notion of improvement informed their understanding of the landscape, and they cultivated partnerships with ranchers, businessmen, and government officials sympathetic to this progressivist narrative. The potential drawbacks of large-scale tree clearance programs, such as increased rates of soil erosion and loss of wildlife habitat, became apparent almost immediately.36 Nevertheless, optimism and a sense of purpose prevailed among those who sought to replace California's hardscrabble foothill rangelands with verdant pastures, and fill its dusty creek beds with perennially flowing streams.37

NATIVE OAK PROTECTION