There has always been a debate amongst ranch land owners over the issue of cattle and grazing on land properties. One side of the fence claim that cattle ruin the land, while the other side claims that anti grazing environmentalists commit cultural genocide against ranchers and their ranch land.

In an attempt to solve the issue, many "on the fencers" attempted to find a third approach. They became progressive ranchers who experimented with different ways to ranch that are better for the ranch land. The theme was to keep good ranchers on the land.

It's a nice sentiment, but the fact is that ranching is dying in the West. While debating whether or not cattle could be grazed in an ecologically sound way, the Western ranch land was run over by a cement truck, and is quickly becoming residential properties and commercial land for sale.

The ranch land takeover is no doubt driven by the good old American marketplace. Foreign livestock producers and a monopolistic meatpacking industry have made it almost impossible for ranchers to make a living on their own ranch land. Then there is that alluring temptress we all face in America: the rising real estate market.

Though ranchers often have ties to the ranch land that go several generations deep, they find it as hard as the next person not to sell out, when they hold land worth millions and people with checkbooks come knocking on their doors. In the last 30 years, nearly a quarter of the West's private ranch land had been converted to other uses, according to many experts.

All of this spells huge trouble for the West, because these ranch land plots are some of the most beautiful and biologically rich that we have. If current population and land use trends hold, the Western landscape of the future will diminish to a patchwork of over-used, highly regulated public lands, surrounded by ever more sprawling suburbs. Recreational land will take over wildlife that traditionally came down from the mountains and plateaus to the well-watered rivers. They will be cut off and confused by the tangled maze of roads, fences, houses and strip malls.

Fortunately, plenty of people are resisting this vision. Over the past decade, progressive ranchers, conservationists and a host of local, state and federal entities have quietly built a movement that seeks to save some of this ranch land. Land trusts are sprouting up everywhere in the West, and they have protected more than 2.5 million acres through conservation easements and outright purchase of land.

The land trust movement is not a final solution for ranchers. Yes, conservation easements are allowing some ranchers to stay on the ranch land for at least another generation. Even with easements in place, however, raising livestock will continue to be a marginal economic activity for all but the most innovative, and the luckiest.

But it's a hopeful sign for the West's vanishing rural landscape. For the paramount question we must address today is not, "How do we save ranching?" but, "How do we save the ranch land?"