Words from Pixie Herbert
I live a stone’s throw from Shoshone National Forest outside of Dubois, WY; it’s a beautiful patchwork quilt of old ranches, new cabins, state blocks, and federal lands. It’s dense with wildlife, one of the primary reasons I live here.
It’s first light, and I am watching a few hundred elk slowly trickle off of the private ranch that sprawls across the next valley over. They slip into the trees, ghostly, to pick their way through the invisible lines of safety between them and the ridge where they like to sleep during the day. I like that they have places of respite from the whizzing bullets and roaring UTVs. Wapiti are wily, but after a series of late-season fire closures, the hunting pressure is high as every hunter in a three-county zone with an unfilled cow tag seems to be crawling the ridgelines around my home, myself included. A few shots ring out, and a few elk drop, and the rest of the herd slips from the state block onto the next ranch over. A brief haven of safety.
In my little corner of Wyoming, there is something special that still exists. Neighbors are kind, no matter what sort of bumper stickers you have. Public land is everywhere, and wildlife is abundant. More often than not, knocking on doors and asking for permission to cross or hunt private land is met with a yes. People know each other, and despite the most active gossip mill I have ever encountered, genuinely show up for one another. Freezers and hearts are full. It’s a seemingly impossible state of being, if you listen to the news, but it’s real. I grew up this way, but between adolescence and settled adulthood, I lived in many places where public land hardly exists, and old family ranches are slowly turned into subdivisions. My own family’s farm is a subdivision now. It’s lonely, being so disconnected from the land.
I was raised as a 5th generation cattle rancher and farmer. My love of the land is the blood of my veins and the breath in my lungs. I feel grateful to wake up every day on a little piece of land that I own, and to care for that land to the best of my ability. Most ranchers wake up the same way. Private land, especially agricultural land, can be a bastion against development, and a haven for wildlife. It can hurt watching a massive bull strut across an inaccessible field, but I’d rather hike further and longer to fill my tag, if it means those acres will stay wide open spaces, instead of an endless sea of vacation rentals. It cannot be us, public land advocates, against them, private landowners. It must be we, the people, against outside interests.
Public lands are precious beyond measure. No matter who you are, you can wake up, and love the land, and let the land love you back. Once public land is lost, it’s gone forever. There is no getting it back. If the intrinsic value of public lands is not enough, think on this. Outdoor recreation, largely occurring on public lands, accounts for over $2 billion of the state’s economy. Hunting and fishing license sales generate over $33 million per year. We are one of the fastest growing outdoor economies in the country. Changing that for uncertainty and private interests is madness.
Wyoming is wild and beautiful, and will not stay that way unless we keep our public lands safe, and reduce the infighting. Fostering real relationships with our neighbors, even if they never let us hunt the back forty, is how we keep Wyoming intact.
Right now, there are three bills that threaten this beautiful patchwork quilt that we live in. SJ0002 - Resolution Demanding Equal Footing, SF0105- An Act to Preserve State Territorial Sovereignty, and HB0118- Limitations on Net Gains for Federal Lands.
Each one of these bills is an attack on our most precious resource, by legislators who are ignoring their constituents. Please contact your state Senators and tell them to vote NO on SJ0002, SF0105, and HB0118.
Pixie Herbert is an avid hunter and outdoorswoman who lives, loves, and works in Northwest Wyoming. She is a professional photographer, a backcountry first responder, and makes a mean cinnamon roll.