Give me a break, cattle growers. You’ve been on government dole for decades, running your stock all over our national forests and Bureau of Land Management public lands.

Vicious government, subsidized predator control policy has been your ally for too long. Now you’re whining about the “bad wolves” again.

My family was in the cattle business as growers and meat packers in Wisconsin. Assuredly, being in the Midwest, we paid for our grazing/farm land. It was a cost incurred like any other business or producers. We did not have free or pennies-on-the-dollar public land to run our livestock.

Is it not time to say “no” to any producer receiving government welfare to enhance their bottom line? Growing up “cowboy,” I could never square the independent freedom-loving nature of the Western ethos and ranchers with the acceptance that subsidized grazing on public lands was a fit for the expressed “freedom” narrative.

You want to be free, buy a darn ranch. Leave our public lands for the public.

Brian Lange

Durango