A Story About a Friend — Western Range Service Turns 45
I arrived in Vale in the fall of 1949. The Bureau of Land Management had been created just three years before as the successor to the Grazing Service. The Federal Government had decided to terminate the unsupervised grazing of the Western public lands and allocate the grazing use to near by private lands which provided the base for such grazing.
The Grazing Service began the allocation process which involved contests between applicants. The contest was a process much like litigation between competitors and a so-called “adjudicator” in the Grazing Service would make a decision based upon what he had heard.
The process endeavored to be fair and lawyers were sometimes involved on behalf of one or the other competitors. Because the concept was new and the process was somewhat ambiguous, there were not many lawyers who wanted to take the time. But, as a new lawyer with a very modest clientele, I drifted into this. At first, the activity was very sparse and there were only a few lawyers involved: one in Boise, another in Salt Lake, and me.
As the activity picked up, a couple of men who had been to college studying the beginning “science” of public land management put out their shingle as consultants. One, Harley McDowell in Boise, became the secretary of an area Grazing Board which was a group of livestock men who were selected to “advise” the federal employees tasked with the management of those grazing areas.
One of the ideas of the Grazing Service was to inventory the grazing capacity. The first and largest survey was conducted in Colorado with the participation of Fred Harris, a graduate of a Colorado school which had created an academic emphasis upon this new field of learning. Shortly afterward he opened up his consulting service in Elko, Nevada. I was engaged by Fred and Harley to represent owners of private lands dependent upon the public lands for summer grazing.
One day a young man who I soon learned was Al Steninger, showed up at my office in Vale, Oregon just as I was leaving for an out of town commitment. He introduced himself as having recently become a private consultant with his base in Lakeview and that Fred had suggested that he come in and visit with me. Being in a hurry, the visit was brief and we both left.
On my way, I stopped in Ontario, Oregon, about sixteen miles distant, for a quick sandwich. As I was eating, Al came in, sat down, and said that he followed me to say he was very serious about developing a consulting practice and wanted to spend a few minutes discussing that objective with me. I was very embarrassed that I had brushed off this intense young man. I relaxed from my intent to move on. We spend a good deal of time discussing the subject and it became obvious that he was intent upon developing the already considerable skills he had already accumulated in the academic, the government, and the ranching worlds.
This began a delightful friendship which has lasted for at least 45 years. Following is the announcement which he sent out this week.
Bill Schroeder
Today, July 1, 2013, was Western Range Service’s 45th Anniversary
On July 1, 1968, I was headed to Current, Nevada from my original base of operations, Lakeview, Oregon, in a 1962 3/4 ton International pickup. I was working for the Elko Sheep Group as my first range management consulting client. The sheepmen and the cowmen were fighting over an area of winter range north of the Duckwater Indian Reservation, in Nye County, Nevada.
Not long before I had become involved in the matter a cattleman by the name of Florio had shot a sheepman by the name of Carter in Florio’s lawyer’s office in Reno, Nevada. We were able to settle the issue without anybody else getting shot. Now the cowmen and what is left of the sheepmen are too busy struggling with the federal agents and the environmentalists to bicker much with each other.
Over the past 4 1/2 decades, we have won most of our livestock grazing battles with the federal grazing bureacracy for our many clients, but sure haven’t won the war.
I have enjoyed working for many outstanding cattlemen and sheepmen, had many loyal employees and associates, with Quinton Barr and Lamar Smith bearing with me the longest, and have had a rewarding, career-long, three-generation consultant/client/attorney relationship with the Schroeder family legal dynasty.
At this juncture, I don’t expect that we will ever win the grazing war for the range livestock ranchers, but will continue to fight their battles for the foreseeable future.
Al Steninger
