Ranching families across this countryside are now facing an existential threat to a way of life<br />that has sustained them since homesteading days: years of cleanup and crippling losses after wind-driven wildfires across Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle killed seven people and devoured homes, miles of fences and as much as 80 percent of some families’ cattle herds.<br />“I think he’d be doing himself a favor to come out and visit us.”<br />Mr. Gardiner voted for Mr. Trump, and said he just wanted to hear a presidential mention of the fires amid Mr.<br />Trump’s tweets about the rapper Snoop Dogg, the East Coast blizzard and the rudeness of the press corps.<br />Ranchers said they felt overlooked amid the tumult in Washington,<br />and were underwhelmed by the response of a new president who had won their support in part by promising to champion America’s “forgotten men and women.”<br />“This is the country that elected Donald Trump,” said Garth Gardiner, driving a<br />pickup across the 48,000-acre Angus beef ranch he runs with his two brothers.<br />Emergency programs run by the federal Department of Agriculture — which is facing 21<br />percent cuts under Mr. Trump’s budget proposal — will help ranchers, up to a point.<br />Burying Their Cattle, Ranchers Call Wildfires ‘Our Hurricane Katrina’ -<br />By JACK HEALYMARCH 20, 2017<br />Ranchers in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas are trying to recover after wildfires ravaged their herds and their land.
