Bryan Bias of Kingman, Ariz., drives cattle Tuesday toward an opening in the upper corral on the Jean Lake allotment. "I guarantee you it beats the (expletive) out of a 9-to-5 job," he said. Cal Baird opens a tailgate on a trailer so cattle can enter a corral Tuesday during the last roundup on the Jean Lake allotment. Rancher Cal Baird moves "corriente" cattle into a corral Tuesday. Baird is moving his operation to a ranch north of Wikieup, Ariz. Photos by Clint Karlsen. Click image for enlargement.

Cal Baird snapped a buggy whip on the dirt inside a wooden corral, scaring a few of his Spanish-breed range cattle into a pen behind the weathered boards.

"The trick is not to make eye contact with them," the 63-year-old rancher said as he glanced over his shoulder, his eyes peering out from beneath the brim of a dusty, black hat.

"We ride through them a lot and that keeps them gentle. You stay away from them and they get wild as deer."

It was a mild winter day Tuesday for the last roundup on one of the last year-round grazing allotments in Clark County.

Some of Baird's "wilder" cows wouldn't budge, resisting his effort to move them into the holding pen. So, he waited for a couple cowboys on horseback to help him clear the corral to capture the rest of the herd.

"Hey! Hey!" he shouted above the "moos" as the stragglers headed for the chute.

His cows had been roaming the 111,000-acre Jean Lake allotment, 40 miles south of Las Vegas, since he moved the herd there in 1998 from Mount Stirling to satisfy U.S. Forest Service concerns for grazing on environmentally sensitive lands in the Spring Mountains.

Once corralled, the cows were destined for their new home at the Windmill Ranch north of Wikieup, Ariz., an operation on "checkerboard" state and private lands.

"This is the end of it," Baird said. "This is the last roundup. It's a sign of changing times.

"It's happening all over the West," he said.

Removing Baird's 250 head of rodeo-stock "corriente" cattle -- a special breed from those brought to Mexico by 16th-century Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez -- in essence marks the end of an era that dates back to the mid-1880s. That's when settlers brought cows to the Las Vegas area, according to Duane Wilson, range specialist for the Bureau of Land Management's state office.

He said Baird has paid the BLM about $1.75 per cow per month to use the Jean Lake grazing area.

While there are some 550 grazing permittees in Nevada for cattle and sheep, only five are left in the BLM's Las Vegas Field Office area. Given that, Wilson said, "I'd say the era is already over. ... I don't think any of those (allotments) are used to any great extent."

The demise of public lands grazing in Southern Nevada parallels the effort to protect habitat for the endangered desert tortoise.

Before the tortoise was listed in 1989 as a federally protected species there were about 50 grazing permittees in the BLM's Las Vegas district. The number held for the most part into the mid-1990s until ranchers who became "willing sellers" offered their permits to conservation groups and other "buyers" to retire them for preserving habitat for the tortoise and other protected species.

On Dec. 29, Baird, a "willing seller," relinquished to Clark County his grazing permit that was tied to water rights for seven springs and five wells. The deal for the water rights was appraised and closed at $250,000 and Baird was given a couple of months to remove his cattle, said Lewis Wallenmeyer, assistant director of Clark County's Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management.

"We will not be grazing cattle on that but will retire the allotment for habitat conservation," Wallenmeyer said Thursday.

The springs, he said, will be co-managed by the county, the BLM and the Nevada Department of Wildlife "to benefit wildlife."

Cows and wildlife have coexisted in Southern Nevada for more than a century. Long before Baird's bow-and-arrow brand marked the cows on the open range, the area between Jean and Searchlight was dominated by the historic, Walking Box ranch owned by cowboy Rex Bell Sr. and actress Clara Bow.

Bob Stager, a 30-year veteran BLM range ecologist who surveyed many of the allotments in Southern Nevada, said his research shows there were "thousands of head of livestock out there" in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The number of cattle had "a significant impact" on the environment, he said.

But Baird, he said, has been a protectorate of the land, providing water for wildlife as well as cows and being persistent in rotating his herd among several pastures to avoid overgrazing.

"He's the cowboy's cowboy," Stager said. "He is one of the best, if not the best rancher I know. He's the kind of a fellow if you shake his hand and he said he'd do it, he would do it."

Public lands management took hold when Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934. The Department of Interior's Grazing Service, predecessor of the BLM, managed the lands until the BLM was created in 1946, about the time Baird came to Las Vegas as a youngster. When he turned 14, he began helping out on ranches and has worked as a cattleman on many of them across Southern Nevada.

Stager, who currently works for the BLM in southern Utah, said Baird's last roundup is a sign that the Old West in Southern Nevada is losing ground to urban expansion, which in turn is tied to Clark County's plan to preserve wildlife habitat outside the Las Vegas Valley to allow development within it.

"I think it's sad," Stager said. "Las Vegas is going to lose some of its mystique."