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| This image provided by the Kolka family July 6, 2012 shows Justin Madsen walking up a hillside littered with dead cattle after the Ash Creek Fire burned through forest land near Volborg, Mont. (KOLKA FAMILY |Associated Press) |
VOLBORG, Mont. — Cecil and Delores Kolka
thought they escaped the worst of the Ash Creek Fire when the 390-square-mile
blaze spared their home and several pastures as it ripped through the couple's
Montana cattle ranch.
But when the family went to round up their
livestock they encountered carnage — the charred and bloated bodies of an
estimated 400 cows and calves killed as the fire torched a series of narrow,
thickly forested draws on the nearby Custer National Forest.
Some surviving animals were burned so badly
that their hides were peeling. The worst off were shot in mercy killings.
Others now limp by on burnt hooves, and less than half the family's herd
remains.
"Before we found our cattle we said at
least we've got our homes and are all safe," Delores Kolka said. "In
truth, we would have rather lost everything here except our cattle."
Across the West, major wildfires are wreaking
havoc this summer on the region's economically fragile livestock industry. In
areas such as remote Powder River County, Mont., ranchers said they could be
grappling with the devastation for years to come.
Hay is in short supply. Hundreds of miles of
fence and numerous corrals and water tanks must be rebuilt. Thousands of head
of displaced livestock are being shipped to temporary pastures.
Similar scenes are playing out in Oregon, New
Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho. Including Montana, the value of the six
states' cattle industries approaches $9 billion annually.
Hundreds of thousands of acres of grazing
land have burned so far — with months to go in the annual fire season.
The number of fires and total acreage burned
in the West this summer is roughly within range of the past decade's average.
What's different is where those fires are burning, as major blazes erupt on
grasslands and brush where livestock can be more prevalent, said Jennifer Smith
with the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
And that's all set against a backdrop of a
crushing drought that has set in for much of the region. If the dry conditions
persist, the recovery of burned areas could stall, forcing cattle owners to
sell their animals or seek more lasting alternatives to the private pastures
and public lands they've run livestock on for generations.
Perhaps 200 cattle have been killed in
Wyoming and about 225 in Oregon, ranchers and officials in those states said.
The numbers are growing as cattle die from injuries, illness and stress.
In remote southeastern Oregon, ranchers Rich
and Jeanette Yturriondobeitia lost a third of their 300-head cow-calf
operation. Rich Yturriondobeitia had to shoot six cows at one watering trough.
"I can talk about it now and not
cry," said Jeanette. "My husband still can't talk about it. The
cattle, oh crud we even had some of them named."
She said her husband "found a bunch of
them that tried to outrun the fire and couldn't. He won't let me go see it. It
was pretty bad."
In Montana, as the Ash Creek fire approached
earlier this month, Cecil Kolka and others cut barbed-wire fences and opened
gates to give livestock a chance to escape over rock-strewn ridgelines that
dominate the landscape.
How so many cattle were killed remains
uncertain. Several dead deer and a dead coyote found among the burned cattle
suggest the fire simply outran them.
Like others, the Kolkas said they likely
won't know the full extent of their losses for months.
"We're still finding dead ones, and we
haven't been able to account for quite a few of them," Cecil Kolka said as
he drove through the sprawling ranch he runs with his son and daughter-in-law,
Dean and Jill Kolka.
Near a water tank where surviving animals
were taken to recover, calves with burnt hooves limped painfully through the
mud. Numerous cows had blackened teats on their udders. One mother cow stood
vigil over a dying calf that could barely lift its head. Kolka said the animal
likely would have to be put down.
The overall fatalities are tiny compared to
30 million beef cattle nationwide. That means the fires will have minimal
effect on beef prices, which already were high due to a drought-related spike
in feed costs and demand from export markets, said Dave Bohnert with the Oregon
State University Extension Service.
But within rural economies, the impacts are
magnified.
Oregon's Harney County, for example, is wide
open country where some ranchers drive 120 miles for groceries. Its 71,000
cattle outnumber the people nearly 10 to one.
Though not one house there was lost to the
870-square-mile Long Draw Fire, it destroyed the food for tens of thousands of
cattle, and left half a dozen ranching families wondering if they will be able
to send their kids to college or even stay on the land they love.
Some ranchers say the federal government
didn't do enough to stop the spread of fires that have burned more than 3,000
square miles of range and forest in the West so far this summer. They contend
that restrictions on logging and grazing allowed too much fuel to accumulate in
forests and on the prairies, and that limits on road construction hindered
access to fire areas.
Environmentalists cite warming temperatures
due to climate change as a major culprit. They also argue grazing spreads
non-native plants that are quick to burn.
Regardless, the most immediate problem for
ranchers who saved their cattle is how to feed them.
The drought already has driven up hay and
corn prices. Pasture is at a premium. And emergency grazing lands released by
the U.S. Department of Agriculture can be hundreds of miles away, leaving
ranchers wondering how they could ever pay shipping costs.
A Wyoming fire that burned through 153 square
miles of remote pine forest and meadows in Medicine Bow National Forest
displaced as many as 10,000 cattle.
Meanwhile, disaster programs ranchers
normally look to are not available until Congress enacts a new Farm Bill.
"What it does for so many is turn an
already slim profit margin into a negative margin," said Wyatt Prescott,
executive director of the Idaho Cattle Association.
Ranchers depend heavily on federal grazing
allotments, which sell for $1.35 for the right to graze a cow and her calf for
a month. But after the ranchers foot the bill for fences and water
improvements, the cost is more like $30, said Stacy Davies, manager of the
Roaring Springs Ranch outside Frenchglen, Ore.
That is a fraction of the cost of feeding a
cow on hay, which runs around $90 to $100 a month since the drought has driven
up hay prices, he added.
Ranchers won't be able to graze burned
allotments for two years after they burn, unless federal policy changes.
Next door to the Kolka ranch, Marian Hanson
says the fire destroyed up to 85 percent of the grazing land on ranches she
runs with her daughter and grandson. She has transferred several hundred cattle
to locations scattered across Montana.
Her grown grandsons, Blaine and Bob, have
been spending their days pulling up burned fence posts, coiling ruined barbed
wire and sawing down burned trees.
"There's not enough here for cows to
eat," Bob Hanson said as he worked in a stand of blackened pine trees.
"We lost a bunch of buildings, too, but it ain't nothing like Cecil and
Dean (Kolka). That's heartbreaking."
_
Contributions from Todd Dvorak in Boise,
Idaho; Nigel Dura in Portland, Ore.; Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyo. and Susan
Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M. Barnard reported from Grants Pass, Ore.
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