[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 58 (Monday, May 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3019-H3021]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO JIM ANDERSON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentlewoman from Idaho (Mrs. Chenoweth) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Speaker, I lost a very good friend a little while 
ago, in a very, very tragic accident. Jim Anderson was a man that I 
have known for about 25 years. He was a good man, a good father to his 
two children, a good husband, a good steward of the land, and a heck of 
a horseman.
  It was my honor to have known Jim Anderson, to be his friend, and it 
is my honor to tell you a little bit about Jim Anderson today. Jim 
Anderson was a rancher. It wasn't only what he did as a rancher, but it 
was who he was.
  He was killed in a tragic accident on his ranch on the border of 
Malheur County in Oregon and Owyhee County in Idaho, in the 
southwestern edge of my congressional district in Idaho. Jim's grazing 
allotment was far, far out in the Owyhee Desert, in a wide-open, 
sweeping land of grasses, of sagebrush, a few hardy juniper trees, a 
whole lot of rattlesnakes, but a land that cut deeply into the Owyhee 
River Canyon. It is a rugged, beautiful, brutal country far, far from 
the nearest cities.
  The grassland, the hills, valleys, creeks, are heartbreakingly 
beautiful. The Owyhee River Canyon is one of the most magnificent 
wonders of my district and of this Nation. It carves through this 
beautiful high desert for hundreds of miles, cutting a deep, straight-
walled gorge into the desert. The Owyhee can appear benign to the 
casual observer, but it can suddenly change from a meandering stream to 
a raging torrent, and from a foot deep to a bottomless pit.

                              {time}  1415

  Jim loved this country with his whole heart. It was in his blood. It 
was where he was born and raised, and where he had lived his entire 
life. It was where he wanted to raise his two sons, Patrick and Jeff.
  Jim was riding the Owyhee River alone 3 weeks ago, gathering his 
cattle and pushing them onto spring range when the accident occurred. 
While crossing the river and pushing a small group of cattle ahead of 
him, Jim's horse stumbled and fell, crushing him underneath it, under 
the water. The horse struggled back to its feet, waded to a nearby 
island, and turned back to wait for his master. The cows wandered on. 
Jim's dog waited near the horse, but their master did not emerge from 
the river.
  The horse and the dog were still waiting there on the island a day 
later when family and friends came in search of the missing man. When 
they saw the dog and the horse, they knew what happened to Jim. They 
knew from that rugged country and the ways of that rugged country that 
you always believe the animals. Five days later, divers found Jim 
Anderson's body miles downstream in the river, drowned. Even though Jim 
was raised there beside the river and was a heck of a horseman, he 
never learned how to swim. I just pray that he did not die in pain. But 
he did die alone, far, far from the family he loved, from his friends 
and from any help. I pray that he died without knowing what happened.
  Jim's death was very tragic and incomparably lonely and saddening to 
his family and friends and every one of us who knew him. Yet every one 
of the people who knew Jim had a tremendous respect for the man that he 
was, the life that he led and the way he died.
  You see, Jim died doing what he loved. He loved his family but he 
also loved his work, and he loved the land that he worked. He always 
knew that if we are good to the land, the land will be good back to us. 
Many people do not understand this today, when we do not live on the 
land and when we try to live our lives as comfortably as possible and 
eliminate every danger, inconvenience and hardship; but inconvenience 
and hardship and danger was Jim's way of life.
  That morning, like every morning, Jim had gotten up before the sun 
and he went outside into the cold morning and saddled up his horse, 
called his dog and loaded his animals into the truck for a long, bumpy 
rough drive out into his grazing allotment. Jim unloaded his horse at 
dawn and began a wide sweep of his range alone, through some of the 
most beautiful, most brutal and unforgiving country on God's earth. 
Physically the work is very hard, demanding, tiring and rough, but that 
was the life that Jim Anderson wanted and he accepted this hard work 
with it and did not complain. He was college educated and had a high 
intelligence.
  Jim could have been anything he wanted to be, a teacher, a physician, 
a stockbroker, a lawyer. He certainly could have been a Congressman. 
But he chose the way of life of a rancher.
  Jim never stopped learning nor did he stop teaching others around 
him. He read the Wall Street Journal every single day, and other 
magazines such as National Review and Forbes magazine

[[Page H3020]]

every day. They shared their places with other magazines like Range, 
even like TV Guide.
  At Jim's funeral, one of Jim's college roommates mentioned total 
surprise the day that he went out to Jim's cow camp and found a one day 
old copy of the Wall Street Journal on the cow camp table, many, many, 
many miles from town.
  Jim was always ready to launch into a debate on any number of issues, 
armed with facts and figures; whether it was corn futures, public land 
policy, politics, you name it, he was well read on it. Jim embraced his 
life as a rancher. He accepted the risk, too. He knew anything could 
happen when riding alone so far from people and so far from help. But 
it was part of his job; it was part of his way of life.
  Jim embraced that risk, that work and that way of life totally. It 
was what made him who he was and made him a part of our very proud 
western heritage. The family, the friends, the acquaintances, neighbors 
and strangers who turned out to aid in the search and to comfort the 
family after the body was found and to support and help the family 
through their tough times without Jim's presence are another part of 
our proud western heritage.
  I mentioned the efforts of a search party, as well I should. Five 
days the community searched for Jim. They knew what happened to him 
because, like I said, the animals never lie. The animals would not 
leave the river where they lost their master. But hour after hour, day 
after day, volunteer searchers traveled on foot, on horse, by four-
wheel drive, by ATV, by airplane, by helicopter and back and forth over 
the Owyhee River canyons, literally searching every crack, every 
crevice, every ravine, behind every bush, rock, and stump looking for 
Jim. It was a monumental job but they were tireless.
  No government agency or professional search and rescue team could 
have done the job those friends and neighbors did, searching for Jim. 
No one else knows the land like they do, and no one else cares like 
they do. When they found him, though, no one went home. They gathered 
Jim's cattle. They moved them to where they needed to go. They cared 
for the family and the area cattlemen made plans to help Jim's family 
get through the rest of the year. With Jim gone, the community picked 
up his work and is going to take care of his family, not through 
charity but through respect for the man he was and because it is the 
right thing to do. It is the way things are done out there. It really 
is the American way. It is what makes a community. It is what makes our 
country great, people like Jim Anderson and the people in the Jordan 
Valley community that drew together to help this family through their 
very hard time.
  Jim Anderson was a fiercely independent man. His widow and his 
children will tell you that, and those of us who were his friends will 
tell you that. Yet, they will also tell you that Jim was a man who 
worked with his neighbors and helped them out in times of need, too. I 
first met Jim Anderson in a circumstance when he and his friends and 
neighbors had pulled together to work on something that they believed 
in. I owned a natural resource consulting business in Boise, Idaho when 
Jim Anderson and the Owyhee cattlemen came to me for help in working 
out a better relationship with the Bureau of Land Management. That was 
way back in 1979.
  We are still working to accomplish that same thing today, a better 
relationship with the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM manages 74 
percent of Owyhee County and 73 percent of Malheur County and has 
tremendous influence over the lives and the livelihoods of the ranchers 
in that area. For years the relationship has been declining with the 
BLM, and Jim Anderson and others were looking for a better way. For the 
last 25 years I have been working with Jim and the cattlemen in my 
district to try to help them find a better way. Today, as a Member of 
Congress, we are still working on finding a better way. I will not stop 
now.
  But always, through all these years, in the battles and the 
discussions, I have seen the same thing that I saw with the events 
around Jim's death. I saw people of integrity and people who care 
really draw together to help each other through a rough time. They care 
about their families, their neighbors, and they love the land on which 
they make a living. They have rough, tough jobs, dangerous jobs, but 
these jobs are not just a way of making a living for them. They are a 
chosen way of life. In past years their livelihood and their way of 
life has been threatened. With Jim Anderson and the ranchers in my 
district, we have fought to protect this unique western heritage and 
the communities that have developed in the West. These communities 
still exist and remain strong through the kind of personal integrity, 
dependability, honor and respect for themselves and their neighbors 
that we see continue to work for those of us who live in the West.
  I said Jim Anderson grew up on a ranch. Indeed he was a fourth-
generation rancher. Many of the families who have lived down there have 
carved their ranches out of the wilderness when Owyhee County was first 
settled. They brought in long horned cattle from Texas to start their 
herds and began a long process of improving their range and building 
homes in some of the most rugged, hostile yet beautiful, country in the 
world.
  You might have heard of the grazing rights these cattlemen have 
developed. Yes, over time they filed claims on water and they 
homesteaded lands under various homestead acts, and they proved up on 
the homesteads and they settled down to raise their families.
  I am sure my colleagues have heard of the range wars of the late 
1800s and the early 1900s. These range wars raged in my district, and 
people like Jim Anderson could tell you stories about the challenges 
their ancestors faced during these times from increasing settlement 
but, even more, from transient stockmen. The range was open in those 
days, unfenced and unrestricted. Homestead laws were designed for the 
East where 160 acres would support a family.
  In the arid West, the rugged West, these small parcels were totally 
inadequate. By looking at a property map, it is readily apparent that 
the ranchers filed on the best and most valuable lands, those that 
there were out there in these arid lands, the land with water. Private 
land winds up and down the creeks and is located on springs or water 
holes across the landscapes. By homesteading on the creek bottoms where 
ranchers raised hay for the winter and by owning the water, ranchers 
were able to graze the open range in their vicinity.
  Their goal was to consolidate the range into a workable ranch with 
the private land and the open grazing land inextricably interlinking 
elements of the ranch. But other transient cattlemen and transient 
sheepmen routinely trailed herds back and forth across the land, 
overgrazing and then moving on, devastating the land. They owned no 
private land, had no stake in the health of the land, but they simply 
ravaged the land and then they moved on. The Andersons and many of the 
old families I mentioned attempted to protect the range they had 
settled and to keep it in good condition for continued use. They wanted 
to pass it on to their children in better condition than they got it.
  They fought to protect and guard the range and the integrity of the 
ranch under the provisions of prior beneficial use. But they had no 
legal basis to exclude others from overgrazing. Well, what resulted was 
a period of terrible destruction to the land. Transient stockmen ruined 
the range and prior settled stockmen had no ability to protect their 
range and no incentive to improve the range or ability to exclude over 
grazers.
  As Members may know, it was cattlemen like Jim Anderson's family who 
fought for an end to this destructive, degenerating system. It was 
cattlemen who lobbied for and passed the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.
  The Taylor Grazing Act did four very, very important things. Number 
one, it eliminated the transient stockmen. Number two, it created 
grazing allotments out of undesignated lands. Number three, it tied 
that grazing allotment to a rancher's nearby private property. And, 
number four, it recognized and guaranteed ranchers prior existing use 
right to this land in perpetuity. The grazing allotment became 
appurtenant to the rancher's private land. The grazing allotment was 
recognized by courts and by banks, by local taxing districts and, yes, 
by the Internal Revenue Service. Indeed today the

[[Page H3021]]

value of the grazing allotment is commonly a majority of the value of 
the ranch.

                              {time}  1430

  Grazing allotments are taxed and used as collateral for bank loans. 
But besides tying private property and the grazing allotment together 
in one inextricable ecological and economic unit, the Taylor Grazing 
Act also gave ranchers the ability and the incentive to improve the 
range.
  And ranchers responded with their hearts and their souls and their 
hard work. The results were absolutely astounding. With the legal 
ability to exclude the transient stockman and the right to use the land 
and improve the land, the entire dynamics of the Western livestock 
industry's grazing changed.
  Today, Mr. Speaker, today I can say that we have one of the Nation's 
finest California big horn wild sheep populations in that very area, 
well taken care of by not only our Idaho Fish and Game, but also by our 
ranchers. That population has grown and proliferated so much that we 
are now able to take some of those wild sheep out and plant them in 
other States. It is because of the ranchers and the cooperation that we 
are seeing results such as that.
  Ranchers began fencing to hold their cows in different pastures and 
to divide their range to facilitate proper grazing allotments and 
rotation. They began developing springs and water holes away from the 
creeks, to draw the cattle off the riparian areas and spread them 
across the range to protect those riparian areas and to spread the 
grazing more evenly. They began improving roads and building ponds, 
clearing brush, eradicating weeds and improving the land. Very, very 
hard work.
  Jim Anderson, his family and the families that I have mentioned began 
working to improve their land and perfect their grazing operations. 
They have been working on it literally for generations, and the results 
have been incredible.
  Think about it. The cumulative knowledge of generations was contained 
in Jim Anderson's mind. The knowledge of animals, the knowledge of 
weather, the knowledge of plants, the knowledge of wildlife and of 
proper stewardship of that land. All this knowledge was resident in Jim 
Anderson's mind and in his every action. It was this knowledge that he 
was passing on to his children as it had been passed on to him.
  But what kind of life has Jim Anderson passed on to his two young 
sons? We fought shoulder to shoulder for 25 years to make it a better 
life and to guarantee them the best opportunities possible. But what 
have these fine two boys actually inherited?
  A legacy of burgeoning bureaucracy, of strife and conflict in 
management of public lands, of science with a political agenda, and a 
legacy of continued restrictions and limitations on the way of life 
that their family has cherished for generations, a way of life that is 
pictured in movies, in songs, in dress, in poetry, in novels. But it is 
being regulated out of our existence in America.
  I feel for those boys. Their father and their ancestors left them a 
proud and wonderful legacy, a rich and strong heritage. Our government, 
on the other hand, has left them a bitter draught, a sad and 
heartbreaking regulatory stew, and a lifetime of struggle and strife to 
just continue the family tradition and maintain their way of life.
  Unlike the thousands of youngsters before them, I hope that they are 
not driven from this land in desperation, hoping to be able to pursue a 
reasonable living somewhere else without continual government 
intrusion.
  The day Jim was out before dawn to gather his cattle along the Owyhee 
River, the BLM land managers who manage this area were still in bed. 
Federal land managers are not members of Jim's community, although they 
would be welcome and, from time to time, some of them do make 
themselves part of the community and, indeed, they are personally 
welcomed.
  Most of the managers, though, who manage and make the decisions that 
affect them live in Washington, D.C. They do not live out there on the 
ranch and they rarely work out there. Long, regular spells of pushing 
paper in the office are only occasionally punctuated with short and 
infrequent visits to the actual land that they manage.
  Like in old Ireland, ranchers very rarely see their Federal 
landlords, except carrying bad news or bringing new regulations or 
restrictions. It is very little wonder that Jim Anderson and the 
community of Owyhee ranchers feel a great deal of frustration and are 
calling for better, more responsive land management. They are also 
calling for more range monitoring, yes, more scientific range 
monitoring.
  Some allotments in Owyhee County are 8 hours of steady driving from 
the nearest BLM office. Some are 4 hours driving. But no allotment in 
Owyhee County is nearer than 1 hour of steady driving, about 50 highway 
miles from the nearest BLM office.
  Today, we rarely see the BLM land managers out there on the ground 
with the cattlemen, yet Jim Anderson knew and I knew that critical, 
important decisions that affect our ranchers' livelihoods and their 
children's futures are being made every day by these government land 
managers. These decisions are often based on faulty information, poor 
science or science with a political agenda, and are heavily influenced 
by the litigation and pressure of urban environmental groups who have 
limited, if any, knowledge or understanding of the dynamics of the 
Western range.
  Our ranchers today are struggling for a small say in the management 
of the land they have lived on, the land they have loved for 
generations. And what they are calling for is better land management 
through science and on-the-ground range monitoring. They are asking for 
decisions made on the basis of what the range will actually support, 
and the cattle stocking levels based on clear scientific standards. But 
that is not what they are getting, and they and the land deserve far 
better.
  Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to know that even here in 
Washington, D.C., I always carry with me the memories of people like 
Jim Anderson. I am sure my colleagues know what I am talking about. 
Their faces and their histories and their families and their struggles 
are always on my mind. I know the names of their children, they have 
told me their dreams, and they have shared their frustrations with me.
  Today I wanted to share it with my colleagues. I wanted my colleagues 
to know about a person in my district, a man with hopes and dreams, a 
man we could have helped to have a better life and to give his children 
a better future, a person who we have needed to consider in our debates 
and in our discussions for America's future.
  But Jim Anderson is now gone and I ask that my colleagues remember, 
like I do, who he was and what were his hopes and his dreams; remember 
his children, that we might treat them with greater respect and more 
thoughtfully in the future.
  Today, all I can say is, goodbye, my friend. We will keep working.

                          ____________________