Truck and Barter

I read this article with great pleasure. One should not be mistaken into believing that environmental groups simply want better stewardship of the land. They want to drive people off of it. The funny thing is that cattle grazing actually benefits the environment as it's needed to replace the gone wild animals which used to feed on the same land. A snapshot:

Jim Chilton doesn't just admire cowboy values. He believes in them. And, like any true believer, he's eager to share the gospel in well-rehearsed sound bites, whenever the situation allows.

Ask him, for example, why he decided to sue one of the West's most prominent environmental groups. "I laid in bed at night, wondering if I was a cowboy or a wimp," he'll reply. "If you're a cowboy, you stand up and fight for truth, justice, integrity and honor. If you're a wimp, you lay there and go to sleep."

Or, ask about nature. "For a cowboy," he'll tell you, "every day is Earth Day."

That's why Chilton got so mad at the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center tried to make him the bad guy when he, the cowboy, was supposed to be the hero. And that was an attack no cowboy could forgive. (Forgiveness, after all, is for wimps.)

And so he sued -- a switch, given that the Center is normally the one filing the lawsuits. Chilton took the case to trial, and won one of the biggest punitive damage awards Arizona is likely to see this year.