New Mexico Federal Lands Council

Federal lawsuit targeting Forest Service alleges bias against Hispanic ranchers

2012-01-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

A group of ranchers and one county said Monday that they are suing the U.S. Forest Service over its decision to limit grazing on historic land grant areas in northern New Mexico.

The group of Hispanic ranchers and Rio Arriba County officials contend the agency is trying to push them from land that has been ranched by their families for centuries. They say at stake is a piece of Hispanic culture and the economic viability of several northern New Mexico communities that depend on access to surrounding lands for everything from grazing to fire wood.

"Without the ability to access and utilize natural resources, our communities are drying up. We're not economically sustainable. We're losing our customs and our culture," said David Sanchez of the Northern New Mexico Stockman's Association.

The lawsuit centers on a 2010 decision by El Rito District Ranger Diana Trujillo to cut grazing by nearly one-fifth on the Jarita Mesa and Alamosa grazing allotments, which are part of an area recognized by the federal government for special treatment aimed at benefiting land grant heirs.

Forest Service spokesman Mark Chavez said the agency had not seen the lawsuit and that he would not be able to comment on the pending litigation.

The feud over the federal government's management of land grants established at the end of the Mexican-American War through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo has been decades in the making.

The ranchers' lawsuit chronicles a history in which they say the property rights of Hispanics have been ignored and an institutional bias has been allowed to continue despite the Forest Service's obligation to accommodate the heirs' dependency on the land.

They point to a 1972 Forest Service policy that emerged following the raid of the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse in 1967 over unresolved land grant issues. The policy noted the relationship Hispanic residents of northern New Mexico had with the land and declared their culture a resource that must be recognized when setting agency objectives and policies.

After two years of study, the Forest Service released an environmental assessment of grazing alternatives on the Jarita Mesa and Alamosa allotments. One would have let ranchers maintain their existing herds.

Instead, Trujillo ordered that grazing be reduced by 18 percent. She argued that current grazing levels were unsustainable.

The Forest Service explained in a March 2011 letter to U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., that management practices by the ranchers had contributed to overuse of meadows in the two allotments and that fences were either poorly maintained or in disrepair.

"Without the ability to access and utilize natural resources, our communities are drying up. We're not economically sustainable. We're losing our customs and our culture," said David Sanchez of the Northern New Mexico Stockman's Association.

The agency also said the allotments had been operating below their permitted numbers of livestock for over a decade. Even with fewer cattle, the agency argued the allotments wouldn't be able to recover.

The ranchers maintain Trujillo's decision was retribution for them speaking out against the Forest Service's management practices and for requesting that she be transferred.

They have repeatedly voiced their concerns at public meetings and have written letters to New Mexico's congressional delegation about declining grazing opportunities and access to historic land grant areas.

The lawsuit accuses Trujillo of "engaging in a continuing and ongoing campaign of retaliation, misusing her position to harass and punish plaintiffs for their constitutionally protected conduct."

In addition to violating their First Amendment rights, the Forest Service has violated its own policies and federal environmental laws, the ranchers contended.

County officials said they are concerned about the loss of grazing fees, half of which are returned by the federal government to help fund local school districts and other public works.

County Commissioner Felipe Martinez also said ranchers help sustain the local economy by purchasing fuel, groceries and other equipment for their cattle operations.

"It all trickles down," he said. "For us, it's also about preserving the custom and culture, the language, the religion, everything that helps to identify us as who we are."

Attorney Ted Trujillo, who is representing the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit is the culmination of a long history of management disputes surrounding northern New Mexico's land grants.

"I think it's going to take a lot of education all the way around," he said, "but hopefully we can engage in some public policy discussions that would make a difference for the people of New Mexico."

National Park Service has new land-grabbing tool

2012-01-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

By: Ron Arnold

Big Green has an unlikely new sales pitch to convince Congress to fund ever-expanding land grabs by the National Park Service -- save wildlife migration. A map overlay showing all the U.S. wildlife migration paths would blot out nearly half the nation -- a very clever diagram for empire-building bureaucrats.

The obscure but well-heeled Wildlife Conservation Society (2010 assets $764 million) unveiled the idea last week in "Spectacular Migrations in the Western U.S.," a 45-page report on the purportedly urgent need for a widespread network of wildlife migration corridors to avert countless extinctions.

The WCS is a consortium of zoos ("urban wildlife parks") and global conservation programs that uses science, according to its mission statement, to "change attitudes towards nature." Its Spectacular Migrations report looks suspiciously like the expansion agenda of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the NPS's boss.

There's a good reason: WCS staff recently conducted a migration workshop for the NPS, which produced a new framework for conserving migrations in or near national parks.

The Hewlett Foundation has already funded demonstration corridors using the NPS framework in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico.

National parks can legally swallow up federal lands as well as private property. You can find national parks that contain wilderness, recreation areas, historic sites, scenic highways and many more, all within one big boundary.

"Connectivity corridors" such as migration paths are the perfect instrument for drawing lines between a number of protected areas, then drawing a single boundary line around the whole group -- Big Park.

Property owners and avid hunters are already taking to the email grapevine with alarms over the WCS report. The NPS management culture is notoriously hostile to both groups, which are ready to gird for battle.

The New York Times reported on Spectacular Migrations in lockstep with its debut, rhapsodizing over the dazzling beauty of a hummingbird "which weighs about as much as a penny, braves high winds and bad weather" to migrate from Canada to Mexico and back each year.

One of the report's authors, Keith Aune, a Montana-based WCS scientist, evoked the bison to make the point, "Long-distance migrations as a whole are rapidly disappearing," But there is no mention that his employer promotes programs that could cost property owners their land and hunters their access.

Aune said of spreading the migration gospel, "We have to have something the public can grasp. Spectacular migrations have great storytelling power." The story of dispossession and exclusion would be just as easy to grasp, but not as dreamy as a tiny bird that migrates 4,000 miles each year. His whole focus for the Times readership was how to frame the debate to be a more compelling sales pitch.

Although Spectacular Migrations covers only the West, the idea would be perfectly at home on the eastern seaboard. Its related concept -- land bundling -- is already at work in West Virginia.

A local green group is campaigning to create a High Allegheny National Park by bundling pieces of a national forest, two wilderness areas, several civil war sites, portions of a national scenic byway and a substantial amount of private property - Big Park. Migration corridors would easily fit in.

The High Allegheny idea gained traction when Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WVa, asked the NPS to perform a reconnaissance survey and report back to him on its feasibility.

Instantly, the West Virginia Outdoors News took him to task for spearheading "a potential threat to thousands of acres of hunting land and hundreds of miles of fishing streams."

Manchin responded last week that as an avid hunter himself he would never support anything that might impair the hunting and fishing tradition in West Virginia.

Emphasizing the economic benefits of national park tourism, he promised he would block any High Allegheny park bill without "ironclad protections" for hunting and fishing.

Outdoorsmen were not impressed. They've seen too many places put off limits. And it's still possible that wildlife migration corridors will creep into the High Allegheny proposal.

The migrations report is here.

The hearty ingredients of Canis soup

2011-12-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

The wolf is iconic and charismatic. We see him on t-shirts, on posters, and in fantasy novels. Conservationists do battle with ranchers to preserve populations of wolves. The coyote, on the other hand, is neither iconic nor loved. A newcomer to suburbia, he is feared as a suspected predator of cats, small dogs, and even small children. He is rarely seen on t-shirts; his name is not used to designate a rank of Boy Scout.
But now that we have the genetic tools to look at these animals’ genomes, it turns out that many of the populations of coyotes in North America are actually coyote-wolf hybrids, as are many of the populations of wolves. Unable to draw clear lines between these species, biologists have dubbed the populations of hybrids “Canis soup.”
What’s a Canis?
The term “canid soup” has also been used for this mess of wolf, coyote, and even dog genes that we find in some populations of canids. So what does Canis mean, and what is a canid?
These are terms related to the scientific classification of the species in question. Going through the hierarchy, we have Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Class Mammalia, Order Carnivora, Family Canidae (canids), and Genus Canis. Wolves, dogs, jackals, and foxes belong to the family Canidae, but only wolves, dogs, and jackals (not foxes) belong to the genus Canis. We call the wolf-like canids “canines” and the fox-like canids “vulpines.”
As foxes do not interbreed with wolves, dogs, or jackals, what we’re talking about here is correctly Canis soup, or perhaps canine soup, but not canid soup.
Is it Canis or is it soup?
The more you dig into wild canines in North America, the more unclear it is where any species lines should be drawn. So who makes up our cast of characters?
The first ingredient in Canis soup is the charismatic North American gray wolf or timber wolf, Canis lupus, sometimes known as Canis lupus lupus to differentiate it from the dog and the dingo, who belong to subspecies. The gray wolf is the largest wild canine, at a 79 pound (36 kg) average weight. (Domestic dogs of some breeds, of course, weigh more than that.) Its coat coloring can vary from white through blond, brown, grey, and black. It is found in the western parts of North America.
Next is the Western coyote, Canis latrans. This animal is also known as the American jackal or prairie wolf, suggesting that there has been some confusion about how to distinguish canine species for some time. The Western coyote is a significantly smaller animal than the gray wolf, weighing in closer to 20 pounds (7-14 kg). Its coat color is less varied than the gray wolf’s, almost always a grey-brown as you see in the image here.
The range of the Eastern wolf or Algonquin wolf, Canis lycaon, is Ontario, Canada. This wolf is smaller than the gray wolf, and has a distinctive grey-red coat with black hairs along its back. We believe that this wolf was the original North American canine, and that Canis lupus and Canis latrans immigrated over the land bridge from Europe. There’s a lot of debate about the species status of C. lycaon, as many Eastern wolves appear to have significant C. latrans heritage. Some people suggest that the Eastern wolf is in fact a C. lupus/C. latrans hybrid, or, alternately, a subspecies of the gray wolf, C. lupus lycaon.
The Eastern coyote, spreading along the east coast of the United States, is significantly larger than his Western counterpart. It turns out to be a coyote/wolf hybrid, and it has been argued that it should more accurately be called a coywolf. His wolf ancestors seem to be Canis lycaon — but then again, there is debate about whether C. lycaon is really different from C. lupus at all.
The red wolf or Southeastern wolf is subject to truly intense debate about species status. Is it his own species, Canis rufus? A subset of the gray wolf, Canis lupus rufus? Or a population of Eastern wolf, Canis lycaon? It has a beautiful red coat, and is smaller in size than the gray wolf. Its range was historically the southeastern U.S., but it went extinct in the wild by 1980. A founder population of 19 animals survived in captivity, and a reintroduction project in North Carolina was begun in 1987. Here the red wolf is today enthusiastically interbreeding with coyotes, leaving conservationists to wonder what they are conserving.
The three species of wild canines in North America today, then, are Canis lupus, Canis latrans, and Canis lycaon. But we really have just two soup ingredients, wolf and coyote. There are pure wolves (Canis lupus) and there are pure coyotes (Canis latrans), and there are populations that are mixtures of more or less wolf and more or less coyote (Eastern wolves, Eastern coyotes, and red wolves). There appears to be some dog mixed in there, too. You can think of gray wolf and Western coyote as ingredients, and everything else as soup.
Coyote flavor versus wolf flavor
The 2011 paper “A genome-wide perspective on the evolutionary history of enigmatic wolf-like canids” analyzed the various soup flavors out there and presented their findings in some easy-to-understand charts (below). Here, the different colors represent different amounts of each ingredient. The first chart describes the Eastern wolf, here referred to as the Algonquin wolf, which is mostly gray wolf (green) and joint wolf/coyote (yellow), but also has significant coyote (red). The second chart describes the red wolf; at a glance, it is obvious that the red wolf has a much larger percentage of coyote genes (again, red in this chart). These charts both use τ to denote the number of generations since the most recent admixture with another species.

The two coyote recipes pictured below describe two subpopulations of what I have described as the Eastern coyote; this particular paper considers them split into Northeastern and Southeastern coyotes. At a glance, these populations are mainly pure coyote (red), with big dashes of mixed coyote/wolf (yellow), and small but notable amounts of our friend the dog (dark blue, light blue, and pink).

Wild canine populations challenge us to let go of our obsessive need to categorize. Instead of slotting a canine population into a single species category, we might instead think of it as existing on a spectrum from “wolf-like” to “coyote-like.” A strongly wolf-like canid would be larger, sixty to ninety pounds. It would require a larger range, and would be a deerivore, subsisting off of larger game. It is likely to be a shyer animal, found only in more rural or wild areas. Conversely, a strongly coyote-like canid would be much smaller, fifteen to thirty pounds, with a smaller range. It might eat deer as well as rabbits and et cetera (probably a lot of et cetera, as coyotes are more willing to scrounge than wolves are). It would be more likely to be found in suburban areas, with a greater tolerance for human proximity. A given population of canines might fall anywhere on the spectrum between the two. The fact that a spectrum actually exists is beautifully demonstrated by the Eastern coyote, who has mixed coyote/wolf ancestry, is mid-sized between coyote and wolf, and has a mid-sized range.
What’s your preferred flavor?
Does the intermixture of various ingredients in the formation of soupy populations matter as more than a gee-whiz story? To some people, the answer is very much yes. The conservationists who are committing significant resources to the preservation of the red wolf don’t want to see the wolves that they reintroduce interbreed with coyotes. If the reintroduced wolf population blends into a coyote population, then are these resources actually being spent just to support a bunch of coyotes (who have been doing fine on their own)? At the same time, evidence shows that the founder population of 19 red wolves was already significantly coyotified, and we’re not sure how long it’s been since there have been any pure Canis rufus specimens in North America.
It is, of course, possible to think about the problem without asking for genetics to provide the complete answer for us. The red wolf is a red wolf, a beautiful, iconic animal that has lived in the southeastern United States throughout living memory. We know what the red wolf looks like (and that hasn’t been changing much, no matter what is happening to his genes). We also know that it is important in a particular environmental niche, and that hasn’t been changing much either.
Practically, the mixture of coyote genes into fragile wolf populations may be a good thing. Because coyotes are better at living on smaller ranges and in closer proximity to humans than wolves are, they are better adapted to the realities of North America today. As their genes mix into wolf populations, these populations become demonstrably more robust, more able to tolerate human presence, and able to survive on smaller ranges. It is possible, in fact, that coyote genes are exactly what are eventually going to allow a red wolf population to flourish without human assistance.
Conclusions, if we can make any
Does it matter that some of what we think of as wolves have coyote genes? I think the answer comes down to a cultural perception of the wolf as a romantic and charismatic creature, and of the coyote as a pest. Perhaps any mixture of the two is perceived as diminishing the wolf. A friend of mine once made this analogy: if you have an entire bottle of fine wine, and you pour just a teaspoon of sewage into it, now you have a bottle of sewage. Does any amount of coyote, no matter how miniscule, make the wolf impure, and less worth conserving than it was?
As a culture, I hope we can come to appreciate the strengths that the coyote brings to Canis soup, in its ability to coexist with humans in the modern world. It may be what saves populations of charismatic wolves from permanent loss. As we look at populations of canines in North America, we should learn to say that one is more coyote-like and another more wolf-like, on a spectrum from one flavor of soup to another, and appreciate the benefits of both.
Canis soup has been used before as an example of the blurriness of some species lines and the inadequacy of many existing definitions of a species, but it also provides some interesting insights into the fluidity of canid morphology and behavioral characteristics. How did something as large and wild as a wolf become something as variably-sized and tame as a dog? Moreover, how did this change happen (presumably) without a carefully planned breeding program? Why is it so easy to breed types of dogs with such different behavioral and physical characteristics, especially compared to the much more limited variety of breeds of cat, horse, or cow? The canine genome clearly has the capacity for expression across a startlingly wide array of phenotypes. The evidence of this variety has always been right before our eyes, but we are just beginning to understand its implications.
References:
· Adams J. R., Leonard J. A., Waits L. P. Widespread occurrence of a domestic dog mitochondrial DNA haplotype in southeastern US coyotes. Molecular Ecology. 2003;12:541-546.
· Adams J. R., Kelly B. T., Waits L. P. Using faecal DNA sampling and GIS to monitor hybridization between red wolves (Canis rufus) and coyotes (Canis latrans). Molecular Ecology. 2003;12:2175-2186.
· Hailer Frank, Leonard Jennifer A. Hybridization among three native North American Canis species in a region of natural sympatry. PLoS ONE. 2008;3:e3333+.
· vonHoldt Bridgett M., Pollinger John P., Earl Dent A., et al. A genome-wide perspective on the evolutionary history of enigmatic wolf-like canids. Genome research. 2011;21:1294-1305.
· Way Jonathan G., Rutledge Linda, Wheeldon Tyler, White Bradley N. Genetic Characterization of Eastern ”Coyotes” in Eastern Massachusetts. Northeastern Naturalist. 2010;17:189-204.
· Wilson Paul J., Grewal Sonya K., Mallory Frank F., White Bradley N. Genetic Characterization of Hybrid Wolves across Ontario. Journal of Heredity. 2009;100:S80-S89.
· Zimmer Carl. What Is a Species? Sci Am. 2008;298:72-79.
Images: Gray Wolf (Image courtesy of vargklo at Wikipedia and Flickr); Western Coyote (Image courtesy of Rebecca Richardson at Wikipedia and Flickr); Eastern wolf (Image courtesy Christian Jansky at Wikipedia); Eastern coyote/coywolf (Image from Eastern Coyote Research); Red wolf (image from True Wild Life); Two recipes for wolf flavored Canis soup (vonHoldt, 2011); Two recipes for coyote flavored Canis soup (vonHoldt, 2011)

New Parks For Northern NM & Southern Colo.?

2011-12-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

Interior: Region's Hispanic heritage worth honoring, preserving

By MATT HILDNER | matth@chieftain.com The Pueblo Chieftain

ALAMOSA — When Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar comes to Adams State College on Jan. 4, he'll come armed with a report he hopes can convince Congress and the National Park Service that Southern Colorado's Hispanic heritage is worthy of their attention.

The 56-page survey argues that the settlement of a 5,100 square-mile area, once part of the Mexican frontier, made up a significant chapter in American history that has left a legacy found today in the region's, language, art, religion and agriculture.

The area includes parts of Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla and Saguache counties, reaches across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to take in parts of Huerfano and Las Animas counties and extends south into two northern New Mexico counties.

It would be up to the Park Service, with direction from Congress, to determine whether it would be feasible or suitable to bring the area into the park system and whether it required direct management from the agency.

But the report looks at the history of the region, noting the impact of the five large land grants that were issued by the Mexican government to lure settlers to the area and fortify Mexico from Texan encroachment and threats from Native Americans.

While the Sangre de Cristo land grant remains very much in today's headlines as heirs continue the legal process to gain access to a portion of it east of San Luis, the report highlights the settlement patterns that sprung from all of them.

Often settled around a plaza, the communities included irrigation ditches, known as acequias, that watered long narrow lots.

San Luis, founded in 1851, would become the state's oldest town, while the People's Ditch that runs across the town's southern end to neighboring farms would mark the state's first water right.

The settlements also included common grazing areas and communal rights for settlers to gather firewood and take game.

And at the center of each plaza was often a church.

Salazar's study area includes the state's oldest parish — Our Lady of Guadalupe just north of Antonito and the oldest church in the San Acacio Mission just west of San Luis.

Moreover, the religious laymen's fraternities that sprung up across the region and were home to the Penitente Brotherhood, are still active in some places.

The report notes that if Congress were to authorize further study it could look to the management example found in the Blackstone River National Heritage Corridor, which honors the birth of the industrial revolution in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

It might also look simply at the creation of a commemorative center in the area that could host a museum, research center or cultural events.

But there are also other recommendations in the survey that don't involve the Park Service.

The report encourages the use of conservation easements in the region, particularly in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where three large ranches dominate the landscape.

The largely undeveloped terrain that make up the Trinchera and Cielo Vista ranches in Colorado and the Vermejo Park Ranch in New Mexico, could provide an important wildlife corridor, linking eastern prairies and the high mountain valleys.

Research May Revive Park Proposal
By Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board on Sun, Dec 25, 2011

A new National Park Service study may revive efforts, abandoned 30-odd years ago, to turn the Vermejo Park Ranch into a national park. In addition, the study could give new impetus to efforts to preserve historical Hispanic settlements and other sites in both northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, as well as link Vermejo Park and several other very large ranches north of there into a wildlife migration corridor.

In all this, it must certainly have helped that the current Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, is native to the area in question. But the fact that the big man — and the guy who initiated the study — is a homeboy doesn’t mean that parks and historical and habitat preservation across the San Luis Valley in Colorado and along the spine of the Sangre de Cristo range in northern New Mexico aren’t good ideas in their own right.

For northern New Mexicans, the study makes amusing reading. That’s mainly because Hispanic settlements on the Colorado side of the border, including the acequia systems, homesteads and historic churches that the study identifies as important evidence in the tale of what it calls “Latino settlement,” are so much younger than the same on this side the state line, farther south.

Colorado’s oldest church and its first recorded water right, plus its land-grant ranches — all hard by that border — date back only a couple of hundred years. Here, of course, when we talk about the first European settlements, we’re talking in terms of four centuries. But, as the study rightly notes, the whole area is culturally, geographically and demographically of a piece, representing “the northernmost expansion of the Spanish Colonial and Mexican frontier,” with a “distinctive and exceptional concentration of historic resources associated with Hispano settlement.”

A national historical park might be in order, the study notes. At the very least, the National Park Service could help the two states involved develop “heritage tour routes” that would include historical information and identify landmark sites.

Noting that conservation easements already exist on some of the big ranches that were once Mexican land grants in the area, the study recommends that these be expanded so that wildlife migration could be better protected. “There are few other places in the southwestern United States,” the study says, “where such an open and unchanged landscape exists.”

The study also recommends revisiting the previous Vermejo Park ranch study that was completed in 1979 and concluded that the ranch merited inclusion in the National Park System.

All of this will require more than just Salazar, however. Only Congress can authorize the more in-depth reviews needed to look at just what, and how much, might be required to designate sites as parks or landmarks.

Salazar will be back home in the San Luis Valley with two Colorado senators and the state’s governor to talk about it after the first of the year.

Maybe New Mexico’s congressional delegation can find a way to generate enthusiasm for these ideas on this side of the state line, too.

Not so home on the range

2011-12-19T16:34:00.000-07:00

The Old West tradition of using national forest lands for grazing isn't completely dead in the Roaring Fork Valley, but it could be on its last gasp.

For the first half of the 20th century, the Forest Service's primary duty in the Roaring Fork River basin was to manage the range for livestock grazing and, to a lesser extent, oversee timber sales.

Now, instead of supervising the grazing of large flocks of sheep on Independence Pass and huge herds of cattle in nearly all the lower-elevation drainages, the Forest Service is focused on protecting natural resources in the wake of an expanding number of recreationalists. (Oil and gas development has emerged in the past decade as a leading issue on the west side of the White River National Forest.)

The decline in the use of forest lands for grazing mirrors the slow decline in the overall health of ranching in the Roaring Fork Valley. As Aspen built its reputation as a world-class resort and land prices soared, many ranchers discovered they could get richer selling their land for real estate development than by spending years wrangling cattle.

Declining number of grazing permits
As a result, the demand for grazing allotments has plummeted in the Aspen and Sopris ranger districts, which combine to total about 720,000 acres.

“At the present time, there are approximately 202,000 acres of the Aspen and Sopris ranger districts open to domestic livestock grazing. In 1985, there were nearly 100,000 more acres open to grazing than there are now,” said Wayne Ives, the range technician on the two districts since the early 1980s.

“The number of permittees has definitely declined,” he added.

Sheep grazing used to be prevalent in the upper Roaring Fork Valley. Aspen native Stirling “Buzz” Cooper, 80, recalls Bleeker Street being used as a route to take sheep from west of town to the railroad depot, which was located near what is now Rio Grande Park.

Cooper also recalled cattle being grazed as far up as the Weller Cut on Independence Pass when he was a kid. His family lived in a cabin east of Aspen. His mother got upset when the cattle were driven down in the fall one year and trampled the family garden and yard.

Even into the mid-1980s, there were two herds of sheep grazing in the Aspen area, one in Grizzly Creek and another in East Snowmass Creek. There were four herds using the Marble area for summer pasture, Ives said.

The number of sheep grazing permits issued by the Forest Service for the Aspen and Sopris districts fell from five in 1987 to one in 2011. The last remaining herd grazes on public lands in the Marble area. A typical herd had about 1,000 head of sheep, Ives said.

The number of cattle grazing permits in the Aspen and Sopris districts fell from 28 in to 16 in 2011.

Conflicts contribute to decline
The grazing allotments range in size from 2,000 acres for 46 cow-calf units permitted to 32,000 acres with nearly 1,000 cows with calves. The fee, set by Congress, varies with beef prices. It cannot be lower than $1.35 per cow and calf per month.

Ives said grazing allotments have historically been held by the same families for generations or have carried over with different owners of a piece of property. When a ranch surrenders an allotment, it often expires these days because there are so few ranches remaining in the valley.

Ranchers face additional challenges. Some national environmental groups oppose grazing on federal lands because of the degradation to streambeds, water quality and natural pastures. Other groups complain that the fee that is charged is too low and amounts to a subsidy for ranchers. In the Roaring Fork Valley, there are conflicts between cows, climbers, cyclists and hikers.

Ives noted that cows and backpackers both are attracted to Capitol Lake, which is a popular base for climbers going up Capitol Peak, one of Colorado's mountains above 14,0000 feet. Camping spots are highly coveted around the breath-takingly beautiful lake.

“People don't expect to see cattle there,” Ives said.

Grazing patterns get messed up
Carbondale rancher Tom Turnbull has held grazing permit on federal lands for more than 50 years. Lands administered by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management aren't really the land of many users any longer, as once billed, he said. Mountain biking has become a dominate use outside of designated Wilderness, where motorized and mechanized uses are prohibited.

“Look at the impact that it's had in areas like the Crown,” Turnbull said, referring to BLM land between the Roaring Fork River and Mount Sopris in the midvalley. The Crown has become a hot spot for mountain biking in the last decade.

“All the good main cattle trails have turned into bike trails,” Turnbull said.

His beef with biking is the effect it has on grazing patterns. The key to effective grazing is to spread the herd over the entire allotment. When cyclists regularly ride through lands used by cattle, it tends to encourage the animals to congregate.

Rory Cerise has helped move his cattle up from his family's ranch in Emma to the Crown for more than four decades. His family has held a grazing right up there since 1944. He has witnessed the effects of the recreation boom on his family's operation. Hikers and bikers on the Crown often leave gates open, forcing Cerise to track straying cows. He's also witnessed equestrians chasing cattle, considering it harmless sport.

Conflicts became so bad on Basalt Mountain, another popular mountain biking site, that the permit holder asked the Forest Service to allow greater utilization of nearby lands in Cattle Creek. The allotment on Basalt Mountain hasn't been used for a few years.

“The permittee just didn't want to fight the battles anymore,” Ives said.

Grazing still big in Rifle, Meeker
White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said the forest used to be “one giant pasture.” While livestock grazing has declined in the Aspen, Vail and Summit county areas, it still thrives in the Rifle Ranger District and Meeker's Rio Blanco Ranger Districts.

In 2010, Fitzwilliams' office issued permits for 16,270 cattle and 43,290 sheep on 92 grazing allotments throughout the forest. The White River collected $103,917 for grazing permits.

Fitzwilliams said he believes it is important for the forest to continue to provide summer grazing lands to help keep the ranching industry economically viable. The private lands of the ranches provide the public benefits of open space, wildlife habitat and checks on urban sprawl.

“I see it well into the future. Public land grazing is going to be part of the West,” Fitzwilliams said.

How much it remains a part of the Aspen and Sopris districts after the current generation of ranchers retire remains to be seen.

scondon@aspentimes.com

Grazing strategy could be key to reducing wild land fires, researchers say

2011-11-29T04:07:00.000-07:00

New Mexico State University researchers and experts from other universities are looking into the possibility that a targeted grazing strategy for range cattle could significantly reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. "Behavior of wildfires is affected by the abundance of what we call 'fine fuels,'" said NMSU rangeland expert Derek Bailey. "Our assumption is that moderate levels of grazing can be used to strategically reduce the levels of fine fuels and correspondingly limit impacts and economic losses of wildfire."

Bailey teaches in the Department of Animal and Range Sciences and is the director of NMSU's Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center north of Las Cruces. He and other investigators are halfway through a three-year study on targeted grazing.

In some areas, the grasses that fueled normal and periodic low-intensity surface fires in the past have been replaced by densely packed trees and brush that fuel the raging prairie and forest fires seen in recent years, including record-setting 2011 fires in the Southwest.

The Albuquerque Journal (http://bit.ly/uHEbPY ) reports the study is based on the premise that cattle tend to graze unevenly. Their natural tendency is to stay close to water sources, which can lead to deterioration of riparian plant life while leaving an abundance of forage material in more rugged areas or areas away from water. In some cases, the neglected forage exacerbates fire danger.

Targeted grazing at four locations in New Mexico and Arizona involves manually herding cattle into more rugged and remote areas of fuel buildup and determining if the availability of forage, along with the strategic positioning of protein supplement blocks, encourages the animals to spend a higher percentage of their time away from the overgrazed areas around their water source.

To track cattle, Global Positioning System collars are being used to monitor where the cattle in both the control group and the experimental group spend their time.

The project has been implemented at NMSU's Corona Range and Livestock Research Center in central New Mexico and on a U.S. Forest Service grazing allotment in the Santa Rita Mountains of Arizona.

Preliminary results suggest that the combination of herding and strategic supplement placement can effectively reduce biomass of fine fuels, Bailey said.

Aging Sagebrush Rebel Keeps up Fight Against Feds

2011-11-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

A 75-year-old lawyer who fought private property rights battles alongside Idaho U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth and her Nevada rancher husband Wayne Hage in the 1990s is still cultivating the Sagebrush Rebellion's roots.

Fred Kelly Grant has been slowed by age and heart surgery, but he's in demand from counties — and tea partyers who attend his $150-per-person seminars — as conservative elements in the West's continue to clash with the federal government.

California's Siskiyou County is paying Grant $10,000 to help block removal of four Klamath River dams. Montana and Idaho counties have enlisted him to trim hated wolf populations and thwart U.S. Forest Service road closures.

What Grant preaches is "coordination," the theory that federal agencies by law must deal with local governments when revising their public land travel plans or protecting endangered species. Grant insists he's not reviving the discredited "county supremacy" movement, in which a Nevada county once threatened federal employees with prosecution.

"This is not nullification," simply ignoring federal mandates, he told The Associated Press. "Coordination is working within the system to try and make the system work."

Hage, who died in 2006, epitomized the Sagebrush Rebellion by battling the federal government over water rights. Chenoweth, killed the same year in a car crash, worried that federal agents would arrive aboard black helicopters to enforce the Endangered Species Act.

Grant is promoting a strategy for counties that he says will help them take on the federal government, on hot-button issues including wolves, U.S. Forest Service road closures and the removal of dams on the Klamath River in California. (AP Photo/John Miller) Close

Grant, a former federal prosecutor in Maryland who once helped guide Stewards of the Range, the Hage family's property-rights nonprofit, started his own foundation last year. He, a son and daughter-in-law now give seminars, often to tea party groups, on how locals can demand coordination when Washington, D.C. isn't listening.

Grant insists he's no radical, but he's not above fanning the flames. In 2009, he told a crowd angry about road closures in California's Shasta-Trinity National Forest that he once dismissed those who claimed the United Nations and U.S. government sought to eliminate people from public land as crackpots who saw "a communist behind every sagebrush."

"I thought it was a conspiratorial theory," Grant said, in video footage. "It's not."

Some environmentalists are dubious of Grant's "coordination," saying it's so much fodder on the conservative rubber-chicken circuit for a restive Western audience long unhappy with federal management of vast tracts of public land.

"He's saying a county should adopt its own plan, and the federal government is obliged to make sure its plan is consistent with the local plan," said Jon Marvel, Western Watersheds Project director in Hailey, Idaho. "It's nullification by another name."

Grant insists federal courts side with him.

In 2001, a U.S. District Court judge in Utah ordered the Bureau of Land Management to remove wild horses resettled in Uintah County, in part because the agency didn't coordinate with local officials.

"Coordination does not mean the county gets its way," Grant said. "What it means is, the federal government should be discussing policy with the county, and considering alternatives."

He cites Idaho's Owyhee County, where he says coordination between locals and the BLM beginning in 1990 resolved grazing disputes — and led to ranchers' support for 500,000 acres of federally protected wilderness created here in 2009.

Cattle group counters Interior grazing claims

2011-11-17T04:16:00.000-07:00

The Public Lands Council is commissioning a study to determine the true economic value of public lands grazing.

The study seeks to scrutinize a Department of Interior report that claims grazing is only responsible for a miniscule amount of the jobs and economic impact created by the agency's programs.

According to the "Department of Interior's Economic Contributions" report, which was released in June, the agency's programs were responsible for 2 million jobs and $363 billion in economic activity during fiscal year 2010.

The report makes much ado about the estimated 388,000 jobs and $44 billion in economic activity generated by recreation and tourism on DOI-managed lands and the 1.3 million jobs and $246 billion in economic activity created by energy development and mining.

But it barely mentions the impact of public lands grazing, estimating it is responsible for 2,500 direct jobs and less than 5,000 indirect jobs and has an economic impact of $640 million.

The PLC, which consists of state and national cattle, sheep and grasslands associations, believes those numbers are way off and has hired an outside company to do an independent analysis of the report.

"This report talks about recreation from beginning to end," PLC Executive Director Dustin Van Liew told Idaho Cattle Association members Dec. 15 during their annual meeting in Sun Valley. "Grazing was basically an afterthought in this report."

He pointed out the BLM administers 18,000 federal grazing permits. The fact that the report credits grazing for only 2,500 direct jobs shows that ranchers themselves weren't counted as direct jobs, he said, despite the fact that most "of those jobs don't exist without access to federal forage."

He also noted that the report's 5,000 jobs total for gazing works out to less than a third of a job per permit.

"We all know common sense wise that doesn't pass the smell test," Van Liew said. "Those are grossly under-reported figures in this study."

He said the PLC will use county and state tax data and case studies "to show exactly how much economic activity is created by grazing."

ICA Executive Director Wyatt Prescott said the industry welcomes PLC's independent analysis and agrees with its criticism of the DOI report.

"As an industry, we know the economic difference we make in communities by being on rangeland," he said. "The biased nature of this report was appalling to our industry. We were extremely disappointed to see that because it was so misrepresentative of our industry."

BLM officials could not be reached for comment Nov. 15. But the report's executive summary admitted that some DOI services can't be fully counted in terms of output or jobs.

REVA (H.R. 3432) Would Provide Cash Option for Grazing Permittees

2011-11-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

Conservationists hailed the introduction of the Rural Economic Vitalization Act (H.R. 3432) in Congress, a bill that would allow federal grazing permittees to voluntarily relinquish their grazing permits back to the managing federal agency in exchange for compensation paid by a third party. The bill was introduced by Representative Adam Smith (D-WA-9th) and six original cosponsors.

“When enacted, this legislation will help resolve endless conflict on public lands, while providing ranchers with opportunities to restructure their operations, start new businesses, or retire with security,” said Mike Hudak, author of Western Turf Wars: The Politics of Public Lands Ranching and leader of the Sierra Club Grazing Team.

Domestic livestock grazing is the most pervasive and damaging use of federal public lands. On public land across the West, millions of non-native livestock remove and trample vegetation, damage soil, spread invasive weeds, despoil water, deprive native wildlife of forage and shelter, accelerate desertification and even contribute to global warming.

Unfortunately, antiquated federal law generally prohibits closing grazing allotments to benefit fish, wildlife and watersheds. The Rural Economic Vitalization Act would authorize federal agencies to permanently retire grazing permits if requested by ranchers.

“Grazing permit retirement has been implemented in a few places around the West with marked success, but there is much greater need—and demand from ranchers—to retire grazing permits,” said Mark Salvo of WildEarth Guardians.

One landscape that has benefited from grazing permit retirement is the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem where grazing allotments have been closed to reduce conflicts with wolves, grizzly bears and bighorn sheep, and to expand winter range for bison outside Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone bison, the last remaining genetically pure wild herd in the U.S., are subject to intensive management and control based on the irrational fear that they will transmit disease to domestic livestock.

“Bison are hazed, captured, shot and slaughtered to protect grazing interests on public land in Yellowstone country,” said Josh Osher of the Buffalo Field Campaign. “REVA is the tool we need to finally, permanently address these conflicts.”

Whether it be bison, sage-grouse, big game, wolves, fish, wild horses, clean water, or any number of additional environmental values which prompt conflict in the west, REVA opens up a new opportunity for stakeholders to come together and utilize an innovative, free-market tool to resolve natural resource conflicts.

In addition to being the source of immeasurable environmental harm, the federal grazing program is a fiscal boondoggle for federal taxpayers. The Government Accountability Office reported that the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service annually spend $132.5 million on grazing management, but collect only $17.5 million in grazing fees for a net loss to taxpayers of $115 million.

“The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest service run an annual deficit administering grazing permits and managing private cattle grazing operations. My bill eliminates wasteful spending, gives ranchers the choice to retire permits, allows public lands to recover natural habitats and fosters the return of native plants and wildlife,” said U.S. Representative Adam Smith (WA-09).

“We want to save public lands and do our part to solve the deficit,” said Brian Ertz of Western Watersheds Project. “We just need Congressional approval to buy out willing ranchers and retire their grazing permits.”

Grazing permit retirement is a voluntary, non-regulatory, market-based solution to public lands grazing conflicts. Permittees determine if and when they want to retire their grazing permits. Permittees and third parties separately agree how much a permittee will be paid for relinquishing their permit. And federal agencies facilitate the transaction by immediately retiring grazing permits received from a permittee. The Rural Economic Vitalization Act caps the total number of grazing permits that may be retired each year at 100.

“This is a win-win-win for ranchers, the environment, and taxpayers,” said Rose Chilcoat of Great Old Broads for Wilderness. “Let’s pass this bill so that we can finally take some common sense steps to ensure healthy public lands.”

Rural Economic Vitalization Act (H.R. 3432)

Protecting the Path of the Pronghorn

2011-11-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Conservation groups defend ancient critical migratory corridor

Western Watersheds Project, represented by Western Environmental Law Center, has taken legal action to protect a 6,000-year-old, critical migratory corridor necessary for the survival of North America’s fastest land animal, the pronghorn. The groups allege that the Forest Service unlawfully authorized the building of structures for private livestock on the public lands, which have the potential to impede pronghorn migration and block the movement of other large mammals.

The structures -a permanent corral, holding pasture, and additional fencing – are to be located at the confluence of Slate Creek and the Gros Ventre River in Wyoming. This area is a critical link in the “Path of the Pronghorn,” an annual migration corridor for the species between the Upper Green River Valley (near Pinedale) and Grand Teton National Park. The Path of the Pronghorn is the longest remaining migration of any land mammal in the lower 48 states.

Numbering only a few hundred, this dwindling herd relies on the ancient Upper Green River Valley migration corridor for its very survival. In 2008, in recognition of the importance of this corridor to the pronghorn, the Forest Service designated this area as the nation’s first wildlife migration corridor. At the time, former Forest Supervisor Kniffy Hamilton proclaimed, "This migration is an important part of Wyoming's history and we want to do all we can to maintain it."

But while Ms. Hamilton was announcing with much fanfare a plan to protect the “path of the pronghorn”, the agency was simultaneously authorizing the building of livestock facilities in the migration corridor behind closed doors, facilities it readily admits “have the potential to impede pronghorn movements through the corridor.”

The Forest Service authorized the facilities pursuant to two internal “categorical exclusion” decisions and deferred action on additional fencing in order to avoid input and the need to conduct an alternatives and environmental analysis. “This isn’t allowed” said Matthew Bishop, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center who is representing Western Watersheds Project. “The Forest Service can’t break its plans up into small, component parts in order to circumvent the law and avoid a meaningful environmental analysis. If it wants to authorize new facilities and other projects in the Path of the Pronghorn it must first take a hard look at the overall, cumulative impacts to the migration corridor.”

“We tried to get the agency to preserve unbroken landscapes to protect the ‘Path of the Pronghorn,’” said Jon Marvel, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project. “Unfortunately, the Forest Service didn’t want to listen to the public, to other wildlife managers, or to science. Instead, they made an end-run around important environmental laws. We intend to hold them accountable.”

The “Path of the Pronghorn” is one of the longest large mammal migration corridors in North America, and spans over 100 miles. Numerous land management agencies, including the Forest Service, have signed a, “Pledge of Support for the Conservation and Protection of the Path of the Pronghorn.”

###

Lizard loses a vote

2011-11-09T02:16:00.000-07:00

SANTA FE — The region's most controversial reptile lost a vote Monday at Capitol, but the decision by New Mexico legislators may not carry any weight.

Ten members of the natural resources committee voted to publicly oppose listing the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species. They will send a letter expressing their sentiment to Daniel Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Four Democrats on the committee dissented. They included two from southern New Mexico, Rep. Joseph Cervantes of Las Cruces and Sen. Mary Jane Garcia of Dona Ana. Their objection will be added to the end of the letter.

Ashe is to decide by Dec. 14 whether the dunes sagebrush lizard should be designated as an endangered species.

State Rep. Paul Bandy, R-Aztec, led the opposition to federal protection for the reptile.

He said such a move could hurt businesses, especially ranchers and oil and gas producers.

The dunes sagebrush lizard is found in a total of eight counties in the oil-producing Permian Basin. Four are in southeastern New Mexico and the others are in West Texas.

Bandy's letter, endorsed by a mix of Republicans, Democrats and an independent, asks that the decision on the lizard be delayed for a year.

Citing no sources or scientific data, Bandy wrote that listing the lizard as endangered would "delay or even curtail livestock grazing and oil and gas development in southeastern New Mexico..."

State Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, left the meeting before the vote, but he criticized Bandy's letter on his way out the door.

"Typical sky is falling, scared of science, nonsensical position," Egolf said.

Conservationists say that the dunes sagebrush lizard occupies about 1 percent of the Permian Basin, and listing it would have minimal or no effect on the economy. But the oil and gas industry has closed ranks and is unanimous in opposing federal protection for the reptile.

Rep. Andy Nunez, an independent from Hatch, voted against protection for the lizard. One reason was his distrust for a particular conservation group, the Center for Biological Diversity.

"Whatever they say, I don't believe," Nunez said.

Two Democrats, Sen. George Munoz of Gallup and Rep. Thomas Garcia of Ocate, stood with Republicans and Nunez in opposing the reptile.

The dunes sagebrush lizard is about the size of a human hand. It can live only in dunes with the shrub shinnery oak.

Bandy in a September special session sponsored a memorial calling for a delay in listing the lizard. Democrats killed that proposal in another committee, but he rebounded for a smaller win Monday.

How much weight Bandy's letter will carry is anybody's guess.

The federal government's deadline for public comments on the lizard expired in May.

As for a delay in the listing, Tom Buckley of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque, said that would be unlikely.

A decision on whether to list the lizard as endangered would be postponed only if experts were stalemated on scientific data, Buckley said.

The dunes sagebrush lizard exists in the New Mexico counties of Chaves, Eddy, Lea and Roosevelt. It also is found in Andrews, Gaines, Ward and Winkler counties in Texas.

Santa Fe Bureau Chief Milan Simonich can be reached at msimonich@tnmnp.com or 505-820-6898. His blog is at nmcapitolreport.com.

A Far Reaching Court Victory for Western Watersheds Project

2011-09-29T00:46:00.000-06:00

Friends,

Western Watersheds Project (WWP) has won a great court victory !!!

Judge B. Lynn Winmill’s Order of today (9/28) rules in favor of Western Watersheds Project's challenge to 16 Bureau of Land Management Resource Management Plans (RMPs) in 6 western states covering over 30,000,000 acres of public land.

This Order addresses the WWP challenge to two of the RMPs that are serving as test cases for all 16 Resource Management Plans being challenged. These two test cases are for the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve RMP in Idaho and the Pinedale RMP in western Wyoming.

The federal court has granted summary judgment to WWP on both FLPMA and NEPA claims and denied all summary judgment claims by the BLM and intervenors.

This case will resonate in many ways including, in particular, the failure of the BLM to consider overall cumulative effects of all permitted activities and all impacts on Greater Sage Grouse. The Order also strongly addresses failure of the BLM to comply with its own sensitive species policy and its national sage grouse conservation policy.

WWP’s excellent legal representation in this case is by Laird Lucas of Advocates for the West in Boise.

All-in-all this is a very important win for western public lands management and all native sage-steppe wildlife including greater sage grouse.

Read the Order

‘Driest Year Ever’ Continues In N.M.

2011-09-26T04:01:00.000-06:00

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Weather forecasters and water managers had little good news to share Thursday about the prospects of Mother Nature helping New Mexico overcome a year of drought.

Members of New Mexico's Drought Monitoring Workgroup met in Albuquerque to talk about the lack of moisture over the past eight months and projections for fall and early winter.

"We're well on track for this being the driest year ever in New Mexico," Ed Polasko, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, told the group.

Polasko's grim statement followed his listing of dozens of communities around New Mexico that have fallen inches behind in their precipitation.

Some of the biggest precipitation deficits are along the Middle and Lower Rio Grande, but he also pointed to Carlsbad and Tatum in southeastern New Mexico, which have missed out on anywhere from six to 10 inches of their normal annual precipitation. Alcalde, Cloudcroft, Glenwood, Las Cruces and Deming are also behind.

Nearly every corner of New Mexico has been affected by drought this year, and the conditions are so bad that about two-thirds of the state have been classified as extreme and exceptional — the two worst levels of drought.

This summer was one of the driest on record and that helped compound a problem that has been brewing since last fall and winter, when storms brought little more than freezing temperatures to New Mexico.

The La Nina weather pattern that repelled moisture from much of the state was to blame. The bad news is that La Nina seems to be rearing its head once more, Polasko said.

New Mexico has also just wrapped up one of its hottest summers ever. This summer ranks just slightly behind the summer of 1980, which was filled with numerous triple-digit days.

"Here we are 30 years later and we're having one of the hottest summers ever and one of the driest," Polasko said. "Things go in cycles and it just happens to be our turn in the dry and very warm cycle."

From farmers along the Pecos River to ranchers in central New Mexico, months without any measureable rain have been difficult to bear. Farmers have been forced to pump groundwater to supplement this year's minuscule irrigation allotments, while ranchers have been trying to decide between selling off their herds or paying higher prices for feed.

In Albuquerque, residents rejoiced this summer when afternoon clouds would yield even a few raindrops.

With the combination of relentless heat and drought, members of the work group said this summer felt as if it would never end.

Thursday was the last day of the season, but the experts said New Mexico can expect more hot and dry weather.

Polasko described the outlook for rain and snow from October to December as "particularly distressing," as models predict storms tracking way to the west and north of New Mexico.

Forecasts show a 40 percent probability of below-normal precipitation for parts of the state, which is consistent with the return of the La Nina weather pattern.

As for temperatures, there's as much as a 50 percent probability that New Mexico will see above-normal temperatures through at least the end of the year.

"Nobody is really putting much stock in the fact that El Nino will return. That's been pretty much washed off the charts," Polasko said.

Raymond Abeyta, a hydrology technician with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in New Mexico, reviewed with the group water storage levels in reservoirs around the state.

While the Rio Grande is far below normal, he said things are worse along the Pecos River.

"If those models prove true, we're going to be in a heap of trouble next year," he said.

September has seen some scattered rainfall around New Mexico, but New Mexico Department of Agriculture range resources specialist Les Owen said it's too little too late for production of any grass on New Mexico's rangelands.

He said ranchers are paying $100 more per ton this year for feed and placement of cattle in feedlots in the Panhandle and Midwest this summer have been the highest on record because of the dry conditions plaguing New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.

"The impacts on the ranching community are continuing to mount," Owen said, adding that rural counties that depend on taxes derived from ranching operations will also soon feel the hit.

Forest Service Probes Road Grading in Catron County

2011-09-19T18:41:00.000-06:00

By Rene Romo / Journal South Reporter on Sat, Sep 17, 2011

LAS CRUCES - Federal officials are butting heads with Catron County over the county's unauthorized grading of parts of a 13-mile stretch of road that runs alongside, and sometimes across, the San Francisco River south of Reserve in the Gila National Forest.

The grading project, carried out by a bulldozer, appears to have crossed the river more than two dozen times within an area designated critical habitat for the loach minnow, which has been designated a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"It's a terrible place for a road," said Cyndi Tuell, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, who called the early August grading project the county's attempt to "thumb their noses at the federal government."

Catron County Commission Chairman Hugh McKeen could not be reached for comment. But in an Aug. 17 letter informing the Gila National Forest supervisor that the grading had occurred, McKeen and two other commissioners described the project as an effort to improve public access and the road's quality. County commissioners said three landowners asked for the road to be graded.

Catron County also asserted its jurisdiction over the road, which the county calls Historic Highway 12, through a grandfathered easement under

federal Revised Statute (RS) 2477, an 1866 public lands law aimed at encouraging Western development by granting rights of way over public land.

Some Western communities that have bristled at federal management of public lands have cited RS 2477 in claiming rights of way through national forests or wilderness.

"Maintenance of the original road has removed the in-stream travel of vehicles; they are limited to river crossings only," the County Commission's letter states. "Being aware of the ecology of the area, all material was pushed away from the live streambed. We have made every effort to retain the overall beauty of the road with its many trees and overhead shaded areas."

In a written response to Catron County's letter, Gila Forest Supervisor Kelly Russell disputed the county's claim of jurisdiction over the old road, which the county has not established in state District Court.

Private property owners have blocked the road at its northern and southern ends with locked gates, but grant Forest Service personnel access, Russell said.

Even if the road had been conveyed to Catron County, Russell said, the county failed to comply with federal laws and regulations under the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

A Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman said Friday that agency law enforcement officers are cooperating with the Forest Service to investigate the incident. The U.S. Attorney's Office has not yet become involved in the matter, a spokeswoman said.

Lawmakers go west for hearing on public lands

2011-09-17T16:53:00.000-06:00

The perennial conflict over public lands will surge again Monday in Sacramento, Calif., as congressional Republicans showcase their unhappiness over environmental restrictions they consider excessive.

Carpenters will complain about logging restrictions, motorcycle riders will plead for more off-road access and conservative lawmakers will hope to build momentum for bills whose long-term prospects remain uncertain.

"All of the West is under attack from radical environmentalists, so we'll have to move legislation," Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said in an interview. "Jobs are being destroyed."

The Sacramento field hearing, and others like it, provides a stage for competing political narratives. Republicans can emphasize jobs; one of their witnesses Monday is from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. Democrats can stress the vulnerable environment; one of their witnesses is from Trout Unlimited.

"There's been a full assault on any effort to stop rampant resource development," Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., said of congressional Republicans.

However it's characterized, there's certainly been no shortage of legislative proposals concerning public land use.

Prompted by President Bill Clinton's designation of the 328,000-acre Giant Sequoia National Monument in 2000, Nunes authored a bill to slow the creation of additional national monuments. His is one of a number of GOP bills likely to win favor in the House subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands, which organized the Sacramento field hearing.

Some pending bills would specify that presidents cannot establish new national monuments in Montana, Utah or Idaho without congressional approval. Others would give state legislatures a veto over national monuments in their state or, like the Nunes bill, let the monument designations lapse without subsequent congressional approval.

Several different federal agencies currently administer some 100 national monuments nationwide, including the California Coastal, Carrizo Plain and Muir Woods monuments in California.

Republican presidents designated five of California's 10 national monuments, including one that commemorates the Tule Lake camp that incarcerated Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Beyond national monument controversies, the House subcommittee led by tea party favorite Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, is considering several broader public lands bills, including one by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

The legislation by McCarthy, the House majority whip, would lift current interim protections from 6.6 million acres of Bureau of Land Management property.

Still other bills are designed to open up Forest Service land for multiple uses including grazing and mining.

Republicans run the House panel on public lands with a 13-10 margin, giving them the power to set agendas, dominate witness lists and move bills through the House over the objection of Democrats.

The Democratic-controlled Senate, though, poses a potentially serious impediment to the House's public lands efforts, and Garamendi predicted the House's most aggressive proposals won't go far. The Obama administration, too, has already stressed its opposition to a number of the House bills, including the national monument bill written by Nunes and the Bureau of Land Management bill written by McCarthy.

"Through our wilderness decisions, we demonstrate a sense of stewardship and conservation that is uniquely American," Bureau of Land Management Director Robert Abbey told the House subcommittee earlier this year.

Elko County wants end to 15-year-old trout case

2011-08-31T04:56:00.000-06:00

RENO, Nev. — Never one to back down from a fight with the U.S. government, northern Nevada's rural Elko County has been feuding with federal land managers for decades over environmental protections they say go too far.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to lawyers for the government and the environmental groups they've been battling for 15 years that the county's district attorney thinks it's time to end a legal skirmish over protecting a threatened fish and controlling a national forest road.

"There is nothing left to fight about," Deputy District Attorney Kristin McQueary said about the dispute that pitted a citizen work crew called the Shovel Brigade against the Endangered Species Act.

Mother Nature started the whole thing in 1995 when the Jarbidge River flooded its banks and washed out the final 1.5-mile stretch of the remote road that winds up a steep narrow canyon. The road dead-ends at a wilderness area where motorized vehicles are prohibited in the rugged mountains near the Nevada-Idaho line, about 70 miles west of Utah.

The Forest Service initially made plans to repair most of the road, but backed off when Trout Unlimited objected based on concerns about the impact erosion from the road work would have on bull trout.

The agency abandoned the idea altogether when then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt declared the fish threatened in 1998 in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Nevada. That's when the Elko County commissioners decided to take matters into their own hands and make their own repairs to the road they claimed belonged to the county in the first place, not the feds.

The Justice Department filed suit against the county and Shovel Brigade leaders in 1999, winning an injunction forbidding any unapproved repair work, and the battle for the South Canyon Road was on in what was proudly proclaimed the republic of Elko.

"It never should have been closed in the first place," Grant Gerber, an Elko lawyer and founding member of the Shovel Brigade, said in an interview last week. "That's why the citizens went up there and opened it up."

At its height, the controversy that is as much about principal as a gravel road became a symbol of conflict between private property rights and wildlife protections in the Endangered Species Act and other federal laws under assault in Congress at the time by a number of Western Republicans.

State Assemblyman John Carpenter, another Shovel Brigade leader, likened the uprising to the Boston Tea Party. Supporters shipped 10,000 shovels to the town in a symbolic gesture and a giant shovel was erected in front of the courthouse for the county bigger than the state of Maryland.

A parade down main street took aim at Forest supervisor Gloria Flora, who later resigned citing an "anti-federal fervor" in the state where she said "fed-bashing" had become a sport.

But things have changed in the ensuing decade, according to McQueary, who has filed a formal motion arguing the lingering case in U.S. District Court in Reno should be dismissed because it is moot. She said the relationship between the county and the Forest Service has been downright "cordial" since the agency agreed to reopen all but the last half mile of the road into the Jarbidge Wilderness.

"It is 16 years after the flood that caused the (road's) damage, almost 13 years after the Shovel Brigade made repairs, almost 12 years after this lawsuit was filed, 10 years after the parties settled, more than six years after the road was fixed," McQueary wrote in court papers.

"There is no dispute between the Forest Service and Elko County," she said. "There is no longer a cause of controversy."

Not so fast, says The Wilderness Society and the Utah-based Great Old Broads for Wilderness. They argue the settlement agreement that reopened most of the road is illegal and have won a pair of favorable rulings from the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that have kept it from being formally implemented.

Michael Freeman, a Denver-based lawyer for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund who has represented the two conservation groups from the beginning, said the federal appellate court in San Francisco has made it clear - most recently in 2006 - the Forest Service had no authority to cut the side deal without regard to the impact on the fish.

Keeping the last half mile closed is a "definite improvement," he said. "But the rest of the road is still open. We think it should be closed."

Freeman said the latest move is the county's attempt to declare victory, continue its defiance of federal jurisdiction and run roughshod over U.S. environmental protections.

"The broader question here is whether the Forest Service is going to manage public lands that belong to the entire American people for the public, or be allowed to give away that authority away to a small group of people who have flouted the federal government and defied its authority," he said.

Justice Department lawyers acknowledge that the Forest Service and the county "have developed improved relations, in part through cooperation on a number of watershed improvement projects."

"In short, the county is correct that there is no longer a dispute between the county and the United States. However, that does not mean the case is moot," according to court papers by David Gehlert, a lawyer in the Environmental & Natural Resources Division. He said that's because the status of the proposed settlement "remains unresolved."

McQueary said the only reason the agreement is unresolved is because the two environmental groups "don't like it."

"The interveners got what they wanted, but it wasn't enough," she said.

"No matter the semantics, the federal government and Elko County have agreed to not waste any more time fighting about the road, opting instead to expand taxpayers' resources on more productive projects."

Surviving leaders of the famed Shovel Brigade are among those backing the motion to dismiss.

"The Forest Service and county shook hands and agreed the road would stay open," Gerber said.

The county's claim to the road is based in part on a Civil War-era law, R.S. 2477, that allows for use of historic highways across federal lands in the West if the lands are not in federal use.

Under the settlement agreement, the Forest Service declined to formally recognize the South Canyon Road as an RS-2477 road, but agreed not to challenge the county's claim that it is.

Twice over the past eight years, federal judges in Reno have given their stamp of approval to the deal only to be told each time by the U.S. appellate court in San Francisco that the deal didn't pass legal muster.

While the government formally opposes the motion, Forest Service spokeswoman Christie Kalkowski said the agency remains "fully committed to our relationship with Elko County."

"While differing opinions will occur during our ongoing conversations about resource management, we remain engaged and ready to work towards sustainable solutions," she said.

The Justice Department recently entered three dozen new documents into the record, including rules governing forest reserves dating to 1897, mining claims in the Jarbidge area in 1912 and Humboldt National Forest sheep and cattle boundaries in 1917.

Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert McQuaid granted a request to extend deadlines for the latest round of response briefs into November before he decides whether to hold another evidentiary hearing.

Carpenter, another of the original Shovel Brigade leaders, never dreamed the legal battle would continue this long.

"Them enviros, they can't stand to lose," said the 80-year-old rancher and realtor who retired from the legislature this year. "The people have won, that's the main thing."

"The road is open and it is going to stay open. They're not going to get it closed no matter what because we'll just keep opening it."

The monumental fight over Otero Mesa

2011-08-18T04:33:00.001-06:00

The decade-long tussle over energy development in New Mexico's Otero Mesa has been reinvigorated recently, as hardrock mining claims now threaten the region for the first time.

The area, sometimes referred to as the "Southwest's Serengeti," is a 1.2 million-acre stretch of undisturbed Chihuahuan Desert grassland. The sprawling but sensitive expanses of black grama are home to over 1,000 species of native wildlife including a genetically-pure herd of pronghorn antelope, the endangered northern aplomado falcon, mountain lions, mule deer, bald and golden eagles and hundreds of species of plants, insects and migratory birds.

Otero Mesa is administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) which is mandated to facilitate exploration, development and production of energy on appropriate public lands. During the second Bush's administration there was a push to advance oil and gas extraction on the Otero Mesa.

But whether or not the area's fragile ecology can withstand such activity became central to the ongoing row. Drilling opponents—which then included the State of New Mexico—fought industry all the way to the U.S. 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals which, in 2009, found that the BLM's Resource Management Plan Amendment fell short in assessing the potential impacts of oil and gas development, including possible habitat fragmentation and contamination of the Salt Basin Aquifer which underlies the mesa.

The BLM is now working on a new management plan, which is expected to be released early next year.
New to the debate is the discovery that Otero Mesa may harbor a cache of valuable minerals. A 2010 U.S. Geological Survey study revealed that the Cornudas Range, including 7,280-foot Wind Mountain, may hold 200 tons of minerals, including highly sought-after rare earth metals. Seeing dollar signs, Colorado-based Geovic Mining Corp. staked 161 mineral claims (five square miles worth) this spring, nearby some of the most visited parts of Otero.

The General Mining Act of 1872 allows companies to develop staked claims but the BLM is required to do environmental reviews of all proposed actions. Conservationists say exploration and mining of the area could lead to destruction on the scale of the mountaintop removal seen in Appalachia. The company says digging for rare earths would mean only minor disturbances.

Regardless, the claims have led to a renewed push to declare Otero Mesa a national monument. While President Obama has yet to invoke his authority to establish monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a BLM memo leaked last year put Otero on a hot list of locations that qualify for nomination.

Although Obama has said that only places with local support for a monument in their backyard will make the cut, the designation is at the president's discretion; it requires no Congressional consideration or approval. Fifteen out of the past eighteen presidents have designated national monuments, some amid a firestorm of criticism.

An elevation to national monument would permanently protect the Otero Mesa from new mining and drilling claims. Existing claims, including Geovic Mining Corp.'s, would remain valid but would be scrutinized for their economic fruitfulness.

Adding their voices to those of environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts in the drive for monument status are members of the Mescalero Apache, a tribe that took refuge in the mountains of southern New Mexico in the 18^th century and still assert ancestral ties to the mesa. In a letter to their tribal president, the group Mescalero Apache Advocates expressed their spiritual connection to Wind Mountain and to the archaeological artifacts that are among the area's attractions. "And on those massive stones that fell from the mountain top, our people expressed through rock paintings their challenges, their visions, and their stories, like their ancient ancestors who dwelled there before them," they said.

Last month, the Mescaleros met with Department of the Interior and New Mexican officials, expressing concern for the natural resources which they believe drilling and mining endanger, including the huge untapped aquifer underlying Otero, which may be the largest remaining in the state. They worry that the fractured geology that characterizes the area makes that reserve vulnerable to contamination.

Despite the desire of many local and national groups to award the mesa a higher level of protection, a monument designation will not come easily. Western lawmakers are particularly touchy about the subject, arguing that states and Congress should have more say in what happens to public land. This type of dissention goes as far back as western members of Congress opposing Theodore Roosevelt's establishment of large new reserves on federal lands.

Last May, the Otero County Commission passed an ordinance opposing national monument protection for Otero Mesa, likely at the behest of local ranchers who fear the status change will threaten their cheap grazing on public lands. While Susana Martinez, the state's new governor, hasn't voiced her stance, her coziness with oil and gas industries makes her an unlikely ally for conservation.

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) has been an outspoken critic, and has actively campaigned not only to prevent protection of Otero Mesa but to change the way national monuments are designated nationwide. He is a co-sponsor of H.R. 302, legislation that would require the president—in direct opposition to the Antiquities Act—to secure state consent before declaring a national monument. "When conserving our natural resources, it is important to have a balanced approach that includes local priorities, such as jobs, the economy, private property and support," a Pearce spokesman told the Environment & Energy Daily.

The tired argument that conservation will mean economic paralysis wherever the magic wand of protection lands is a disingenuous one in the case of Otero Mesa. If elected officials in New Mexico are truly interested in acting in the best interests, now and in the future, of their constituents, they need to run the numbers.

An analysis of the potential impacts, on the southern New Mexican economy, of naming Otero Mesa National Monument was done recently by Headwaters Economics, an independent, non-profit research group.

"The short answer is that repeated academic studies have shown that investments in public lands conservation and restoration provide an immediate return through new employment and revenue," says author Ben Alexander. The study cites the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which recently found that "recreation and tourism development contributes to rural well-being, increasing local employment, wage levels, and income, reducing poverty, and improving education and health.”

Unlike the small-scale, short-term benefits of resource extraction that would be expected for Otero Mesa residents, protected public lands also help to promote long-term economic growth, says the Headwaters study, "because of their ability to attract and retain people, entrepreneurs, and the growing number of retirees who locate for quality of life reasons." Published research also shows that natural amenities help sustain property values and attract new investment.

While a national monument designation "would not harm agricultural uses or military employment" in the area, says the study, passing up an opportunity to diversify the economy of southern New Mexico and to boost its long-term resiliency by protecting its unique desert grasslands could be a bad move. "Looking at mineral wealth, the [BLM's] analysis showed little reason to believe that the local economy would benefit from projected fossil fuel extraction on Otero Mesa--and that the limited revenue from mineral extraction might not even cover the share of infrastructure and service costs," says Alexander.

It's difficult to hear amid the anti-environmental mewling that's overtaken Congress nowadays, but here it is loud and clear: conservation pays. If they are honestly focused on "local priorities, such as jobs, the economy, private property and support," as Rep. Pearce's camp purports to be, they would have to support national monument status for Otero Mesa. Anything less is playing politics with our public lands.

Essays in the Range blog are not written by High Country News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

Heather Hansen is an environmental journalist working with the Red Lodge Clearinghouse /Natural Resources Law Center at CU Boulder, to help raise awareness of natural resource issues.

National forests: Recreational payoff and grazing benefits

2011-08-11T05:23:00.000-06:00

by John Maday

Recreation and tourism bring dollars to communities near national forests, but ranching and public-lands grazing play a key role too.

A new report from the USDA’s National Forest Service shows that recreational activities on national forests and grasslands make large economic impacts on America's rural communities, contributing $14.5 billion annually to the U.S. economy. This week’s “National Visitor Use Monitoring report” indicates national forests attracted 170.8 million recreational visitors and sustained approximately 223,000 jobs in rural communities this past year.

"This data shows once again just what a boon our forests are to local economies," says Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. "Because of forest activities, thousands of jobs are supported in hundreds of rural communities. We are proud of helping to put a paycheck into the pockets of so many hardworking Americans."

The report focuses on recreational use of these public lands, noting a high visitor-satisfaction rate and the money recreational visitors spend in communities near national forests and grasslands. These impacts surely are important, with tourism and recreation representing significant contributions to local economies, particularly in Western states featuring expansive public lands. This report, however, does not document the economic, environmental and social contributions of public-lands grazing.

Many ranchers in Western states rely on grazing allotments on Forest Service lands and other public lands for summer range. These arrangements allow them to maintain much larger herds than they could on deeded land alone. These ranches employ workers, pay taxes and spend considerable funds locally on equipment, supplies and services.

Another set of benefits often overlooked by the general public is that these ranches provide critical “buffers” around forest and grassland areas. Ranches adjacent to public lands protect the scenic, open vistas treasured by recreational visitors. They also provide critical wildlife habitat. Many of the ranches that graze cattle on public lands are located in the lower valleys surrounding the more mountainous national forests. While the ranchers winter their cows on their private land, deer, elk and other wildlife migrate to the same areas, benefitting from improved water sources and forage supplies.

Access to seasonal grazing on public lands helps keep these ranches viable, as without it, many could not maintain enough animals year-around to sustain the ranch. When ranches are not economically sustainable, we’ve seen what happens – ranchers sell and developers move in. A ranch becomes a collection of 20-acre “ranchettes,” complete with buildings, fences, pavement and a few horses or cows continuously grazing each property down to the bare dirt. Wildlife habitat and migration corridors are gone, along with much of the scenery tourists and recreationists pay for.

Over time, loss of grazing rights on public lands could lead to national forests becoming islands surrounded by development, and that visitor satisfaction rate, which USDA lists as 94 percent satisfied, would decline.

So, next time you hear someone complain about public-lands grazing, explain to them that ranchers are some of the best friends our national forests and grasslands have.

Pressure resumes for trapping ban in wolf area

2011-08-01T01:38:00.000-06:00

Now that state game officials have cleared the way for trapping to resume in southwestern New Mexico, environmentalists are renewing their calling for the federal government to do more to protect the Mexican gray wolf in the Southwest.

The U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service received letters this week from the group WildEarth Guardians and its supporters. They asked that officials reconsider a 2010 petition seeking to end trapping throughout the wolf's range in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona.

Supporters contend trapping presents a threat to wolf recovery and that the agencies have a legal obligation under the Endangered Species Act to maintain fit wolves that can hunt for native prey.

"As a direct result of trapping activities in the recovery area, two wolves have had entire limbs amputated. Some wolves lost digits and others sustained different injuries," the group said in its letters.

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, another pro-wolf group, said any additional injuries or deaths are "of grave concern just given the numbers and the genetic plight of the Mexican wolf."

The federal government has been trying to reintroduce wolves to the region since 1998. Biologists had hoped to have more than 100 wolves in the wild within a decade, but that number is closer to 50.

Regulated furbearer trapping on the Gila and Apache national forests was banned last summer by former Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, a supporter of the wolf reintroduction effort.

The state Game Commission extended the ban last fall, giving researchers more time to study the risks of trapping and snaring to wolves. While the results of the study have yet to be made public, the commission voted last week to lift the ban.

Environmentalists want the Fish and Wildlife Service to amend the wolf reintroduction rule to ban the use of all traps and snares in the wolf's range. They want the Forest Service to impose emergency trapping closures on the Gila and Apache forests and amend any planning documents to ban trapping in the future.

Regional Fish and Wildlife spokesman Tom Buckley said Friday the agency isn't going to be doing anything differently in the area now that New Mexico has lifted its trapping ban.

"There's always a concern when there are additional threats in an area and this of course will entail an additional threat to the wolves, but they've had that before," Buckley said, noting that the ban had been in place for only a year.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, there have been 14 incidents involving wolves caught in traps since 2002. In six cases, the animals were injured.

"It's something we'll keep an eye on," Buckley said. "We would encourage anybody who does any trapping out there to check their traps regularly so that any wildlife, including wolves, if they get caught they don't have to sit in the trap and suffer."

The Mexican gray wolf was added to the federal endangered species list in 1976 after it was all but wiped out due to hunting and government-sponsored extermination campaigns.

The reintroduction effort along the New Mexico-Arizona border has been hampered by illegal shootings, court battles, concerns from environmentalists and complaints from ranchers. Another blow came last month when the New Mexico Game and Fish Department voted to pull out of the project.

Buckley said the Fish and Wildlife Service is still trying to make progress on revamping the wolf's recovery plan and the agency is getting its new interdiction program up and running so ranchers who lose livestock to the wolves have another place to seek financial help.

In fact, the interdiction program had its first claim from a New Mexico rancher in June. The claim, which is being processed, sought $1,500 for a pair of calves that were confirmed to have been killed by wolves.

Buckley said wildlife managers are also hopeful after seeing pups with some of the packs during surveys in the wake of the Wallow fire, which burned hundreds of thousands of acres in Arizona and New Mexico.

"If they survive until the end of the year, they will be part of our count," he said. "But between now and then, we're just keeping our fingers crossed."

Obama administration debating care of U.S. national forests

2011-07-26T10:00:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is crafting a new plan to manage the nation's 155 national forests, including six in Arizona, for the next 15 to 20 years.

At stake is the future of 193 million acres of forests and grasslands that are the nation's single largest source of drinking water and home to more than 15,000 species of plants and wildlife.

The U.S. Forest Service says the new plan, due by year's end, is urgently needed to replace the so-called forest-planning rule written in 1982 during the Reagan administration. That rule, which emphasized using the forests for logging, does not reflect the latest science on climate change and how best to protect wildlife and water, the Forest Service says.

The rule was never intended to last nearly three decades - about twice as long as expected. President Bill Clinton attempted to replace it in 2000, but his proposal was scrapped when President George W. Bush took office in 2001. Efforts by the Bush administration to draw up its own plan were derailed when the proposals were challenged by environmentalists and thrown out by federal courts.

As President Barack Obama's administration takes up the crucial but contentious issue, it is under intense scrutiny from competing interest groups that hope to shape the plan to their liking. Neither environmentalists nor business interests are happy with the first draft of the new forest rule. Conservation groups say it lacks adequate protection for wildlife and water and gives individual forest managers too much discretion in how to carry out the plan. Business groups say some of its provisions to protect species could end up kicking ranchers, timber companies and others off the land.

Industry groups also point to this year's devastating wildfires in Arizona as evidence that more logging and grazing are needed to prevent forests from becoming overgrown and fueling fires. Environmentalists say the fires underscore the need to make the forests more resilient to climate change, which increases temperatures and decreases streamflows.

A planning rule is required by the National Forest Management Act of 1976. It is intended to provide an overarching framework for the managers of individual forests and grasslands in the National Forest System to use in revising their own land-management plans, which they are supposed to do every 15 years. The rule is intended to provide guidance to forest managers on how best to protect forest health, water and wildlife while providing opportunities for recreation and economic ventures.

The first draft of the Forest Service plan focuses for the first time on how to strengthen the health of forests in the face of climate change and includes enhanced protections for water resources and watersheds, updated provisions for sustainable recreation, and a requirement that the land be managed for such multiple uses as mining, logging, energy production, outdoor recreation and wilderness protection.

The final plan, which does not require congressional approval, is expected to be published in November.

"We believe this is one of the most important conservation policies the Obama administration will undertake," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during the Clinton administration and executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife. "This is land that belongs to all of us as Americans.

'Forests' appeal

The country's national forests attract more than 170 million people a year who hike, camp, hunt, fish, go boating or whitewater rafting, ride horses, ski, and drive snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles. Visitors spend an estimated $13 billion a year in communities surrounding the national forests, supporting more than 224,000 jobs.

In Arizona, visitors are drawn to the lakes in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests (two forests managed as one), the Red Rocks of Sedona in the Coconino National Forest, the diverse "sky island" mountains in the Coronado National Forest, the bison herd in Kaibab National Forest, the Verde River headwaters in Prescott National Forest, and the saguaro-studded desert of the Tonto National Forest.

Nearly 3 million Americans have forest-related jobs in such fields as forest management, outdoor recreation and the forest products industry, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Protection urged

Environmentalists say the current rule has not proved to be strong enough to protect the watershed that carries drinking water to 124 million Americans.

Clark said about three-quarters of the forest watersheds are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be "impaired," meaning that federal water-quality standards are not being met. According to the Forest Service, the biggest causes of water-quality impairment include excessive sediment loads, habitat destruction near waterways and contamination from mercury and other metals.

The Forest Service unveiled the proposed rule in February, opening it up for a public comment period that lasted through mid-May. During that time, more than 300,000 individuals, groups, tribes and state and local governments weighed in on the plan, reflecting a strong interest in the issue, the Forest Service said.

Forest Service officials will consider those comments as they draw up a final rule and environmental-impact statement.

Environmentalists applaud the increased protections for water resources and watersheds, stronger requirements to provide habitat for diverse animal and plant species, and a plan to address the impact of climate change for the first time. But they say the plan undermines those goals by giving too much power to individual forest managers to decide how - or even if - to protect wildlife and water.

In Arizona, that means managers could choose whether to maintain healthy populations of bighorn sheep, turkey and elk, designated by the Arizona Game and Fish Department as priority species of concern.

Matt Skroch, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, said he would like to see the new forest rule do more to preserve watersheds by preventing development in roadless areas and making it easier to designate new wilderness areas, where logging, mining and other resource extractions are banned. A wilderness area has not been created in Arizona since 1984.

"If you go back 110 years or so, Arizona's national forests were largely created out of an interest in protecting our watershed and our water supply," Skroch said.

View from business

At the same time, the timber, cattle and sheep industries complain that the proposed forest rule's protections for wildlife are too broad and unclear because they require the Forest Service to "maintain viable populations of species of conservation concern," which could lead to restrictions on grazing and logging. In 2010, about 2 billion board feet of timber was harvested from national forests, down from about 12 billion in 1980. The proposed new rule does not specify how much logging would be allowed.

"There is no scientific consensus on what level of any given species is 'viable' or how it is to be 'maintained,' " said Dustin Van Liew, executive director of the Public Lands Council, which represents ranchers, and director of federal lands for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. "The viability standard will be impossible for the agency to meet. There will be a litigation feeding frenzy by the radical environmental groups bent on ending grazing and other multiple uses on federal lands."

Environmental litigation and complicated bureaucratic rules already have significantly reduced the number of cattle that Arizona ranchers are grazing on national-forest land, said Bas Aja, director of government relations for the Arizona Cattlemen's Association.

There are about 100,000 head of cattle grazing in Arizona's six national forests today, Aja said, about 55,000 fewer than in 1993. That represents an estimated annual loss of $126 million to ranchers and to the larger Arizona economy, he said.

Ranchers typically acquire a 10-year lease to graze on public land, but that lease must be reviewed by the Forest Service each year, Aja said.

"You may be in the middle of your 10-year lease, but the Forest Service can tell you that they've identified a new species of concern and you can't graze your cattle anymore for who knows how long while they conduct studies and environmental reviews," Aja said.

The debate between environmentalists and ranchers mirrors a split in Congress, where lawmakers have sent dueling letters to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, calling for him to heed their calls for changes in the final forest rule.

A letter organized by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and signed by 59 House members asks Vilsack to start over. "Please do not lose this opportunity to produce a planning rule that is truly simple, understandable, flexible and (defensible) in court," the letter says.

A letter drafted by Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and signed by 66 members of Congress, urges Vilsack to go further in protecting water and wildlife. "The course set by these sweeping new rules will determine the future of our national forests for generations to come," it says. "It is essential that we get this right."

Mexican gray wolves face new challenges in struggle for survival

2011-07-05T04:58:00.003-06:00

Life isn't getting any easier for Mexican gray wolves struggling against extinction.

Both politics and nature have produced new hurdles for an animal reintroduced in 1998 to vast native ranges in Arizona and New Mexico. Currently, about 50 wolves live in the wild.

The Wallow Fire, which scorched more than a half-million acres, mostly in Arizona, blazed through prime wolf habitat. A June 21 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service update said there was no evidence wolves had been killed in the fire. Adult wolves wearing radio collars were located near three dens in the burn area, but wildlife officials were still trying to determine whether pups survived. The report gives a status report on 10 packs, all of which were "exhibiting denning behavior."

It appears the wolves will survive the devastating wildfire. The politics, however, are influenced by a variety of competing ideologies ranging from ranching economics to ecosystem health that have given the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program a herky-jerky gait.

New Mexico's new governor, Susana Martinez, provided the most recent turn. Martinez replaced four members of the New Mexico State Game Commission, which on June 9 voted to end the state's participation in the recovery program. State wildlife personnel officially ceased their activities on Friday.

"The governor's concerns remain the same about the real and various risks of the program - everything from the cost of livestock that is lost to basic safety concerns of parents and families," said Martinez spokesman Scott Darnell in an email. "She believes we must find an equitable and fair solution to this problem, one that, in particular, provides for compensation to our hard-working ranch families for the loss of their livelihood."
Before the commission voted, Michael Robinson, with the Center for Biodiversity, sent a letter to Martinez endorsed by 12 other national and local conservation groups.

"There is strong and growing support nationally, throughout New Mexico and in the Gila National Forest region for this beautiful, intelligent, social animal that is uniquely adapted to the arid Southwest but is beleaguered and at great risk of extinction," Robinson wrote. He exhorted Martinez and her game commission appointees to "take a stance consistent with dependable science and the broad public interest."

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson - a Democrat who preceded Republican Martinez - had directed state wildlife officials to stop trapping and killing wolves that were preying on cattle. Wolf advocates hailed that decision and supported state efforts to protect cattle, which included fencing livestock out of wolf denning areas, hazing wolves that venture into potential conflict areas and wolf feeding programs.

That approach, Robinson said, kept packs intact and caused the number of cattle killed by wolves to drop from 36 in 2007 to nine in 2010.

Nonetheless, officials in New Mexico's Catron County - which has large areas of public land designated for wolf recovery - are committed to ending the recovery program. With dwindling water supplies and other hardships, the last thing the livestock industry needs is another predator, said Catron County Commission chairman Hugh B. McKeen. County officials had asked Martinez to end the state's participation.

"Catron County engineered the ouster of New Mexico Game and Fish from the program," Robinson said in a telephone interview. "If there is depredation, I can see them (Catron County ranchers) immediately start clamoring for wolf removal."

McKeen has a different explanation for the drop in wolf attacks. He said wildlife officials under Richardson were feeding the wolves in an effort to ensure those numbers went down. Yet he also says that fewer area ranchers are reporting livestock depredations.

"So many ranchers are fed up with losing cattle," McKeen said. "And we don't want these federal people on our land."

Tod Stevenson, director of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, does not believe the changes will significantly impact the program.

"We will not have a direct hand in dealing with those on-the-ground, day-to-day issues," Stevenson said. "But this is a federal program and it always has been a federal program. We expect the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) will staff up to continue providing those services."

Fish and Wildlife Service officials did not respond Friday to numerous phone messages requesting an interview.

New Mexico wildlife officials still will conduct biennial status reviews of state endangered species, Stevenson said. And they will continue to conduct law enforcement activities related to taking, possessing, selling or transporting any species on the state's endangered list.

"We will continue to fully investigate and prosecute violators to the best of our ability," Stevenson said.

Since the recovery program began 13 years ago, New Mexico has invested about $507,644. Federal funds obtained by the state over that time amounted to more than $1.4 million bringing the total investment to slightly more than $1.9 million. Two full-time staff members were involved, both of whom will be given the opportunity to find other positions within the department, Stevenson said.

State wildlife officials trapped and transplanted wolves; collared and tracked them; conducted feeding programs, provided range riders, fence modifications and other livestock management tools; made recommendations about wolf removals; and provided wolf location information to landowners and livestock producers, Stevenson said.

Still unknown is whether a $60,000 federal grant that requires a dollar-for-dollar state match will be maintained, Stevenson said. The money was used to reimburse ranchers whose livestock are killed by wolves and to pay for projects that minimize wolf impacts on livestock. Stevenson said his department is negotiating with the FIsh and Wildlife Service to keep that money in the program.

"We haven't got that completely resolved as to what mechanism we use," Stevenson said. "I'm pretty confident, one way or another, that we will get that done."

McKeen said he hopes they get the money "with no strings attached." He would like to see less bureaucracy involved in getting reimbursed for wolf kills and he said prevention techniques do not work.

Wolves are "not going to stay there in the Gila Wilderness," McKeen said. "They came out and started killing cattle again."

The wolf program is just the most recent example of forest mismanagement, McKeen said. A series of bad decisions - Forest Service actions that cut back on grazing and logging - are killing the livestock industry in Catron County, said McKeen, whose grandfather arrived there in 1886.

Logging would have reduced the severity of the Wallow Fire by removing deadwood that has been building up for decades, he said. Periodic wildfires in uninhabited areas also should be left to burn, he said. Without such thinning, trees suck groundwater and dry up wells, he said. Ranchers already deal with numerous other predators, including mountain lions and black bears.

McKeen has heard reports from Yellowstone National Park, where biologists say wolves are benefitting the ecosystem. Elk and deer herds are culled, making them healthier. Wolves also push the herds out of stream beds, allowing them to recover and support a wide variety of plants and animals.

"It's just a lot of hype," Mc-Keen said. "The wolves are here to further put us out of business."

In the meantime, the Mexican gray wolf hangs on.

Robinson said a successful program, which would result in a self-sustaining population, depends on more frequent releases, particularly in New Mexico.

In a May report, an interagency reintroduction team ranked 32 potential wolf release sites based on a formula that considered the results of past releases; appropriate distances from residences, towns, livestock, the recovery area boundary and other territorial wolves; and proximity to deer and elk, Robinson said. "The three top-ranked sites were all in the Gila Wilderness" part of which is in Catron County, he said.

In his letter, Robinson told Martinez that the Fish and Wildlife Service appears to be holding back on releases "in deference to perceived lack of support by your administration."

Chris Roberts writes for the El Paso Times, a member of the Texas-New Mexico Newspapers Partnership, and may be reached at chrisr@elpasotimes.com; (915) 546-6136.

Appeals court quashes rancher's claim on grazing land

2011-07-05T03:30:00.000-06:00

The state Court of Appeals has thrown out a bid by a Southern Arizona ranching company to get title to land where its predecessors had grazed cattle for more than a century.

Without dissent, the three-judge panel rejected arguments by attorneys for Robinson Cattle that it was entitled to possession of thousands of acres that was deeded over to the state by the federal government in 1991. The court specifically rejected the company’s claim of vested property rights.

At the heart of the battle is land that became federal government property in 1853 when it got the parcel along with other lands pursuant to the Gadsden Treaty with Mexico. Judge William Brammer Jr., writing for the appellate court, said no competing claims had been asserted under Mexican law.

The federal government took the land out of public domain in 1902 to become the Santa Rita Forest Preserve.

Before that happened, though, Robinson’s predecessors had entered the parcel and later began grazing it. One predecessor even obtained title to a 160-acre homestead within the parcel.

Robinson eventually got the homestead and possessory rights to the parcel. And the company has continued to graze cattle on the parcel in a series of cooperative agreements with the University of Arizona, which manages what is known as the Santa Rita Experiment Range for research purposes.

When the last agreement was not renewed, UA sent Robinson a letter terminating its right to occupy the land.

The state then filed an action seeking clear title. Robinson filed a counterclaim, also seeking title.

When a trial judge dismissed Robinson’s claim without trial, he appealed.

Robinson says it is entitled to ownership of the parcel. That is based on an argument that, under local law and customs, and “pursuant to laws of Congress,’’ its predecessors obtained title to the property — and that its rights vested before the parcel was reserved by the federal government.

Brammer said that argument is flawed.

“Only Congress can authorize rights in public lands,’’ he said.

“Although the United States has allowed persons, sometimes called settlers, to graze livestock on public domain, such permission only gave rise to an implied license,’’ the judge continued. And Brammer said the federal government could revoke that right at any time, with no vested right to those who had been grazing cattle there.

What that means, Brammer said, is any “local laws and customs’’ that Robinson claims entitle the company to the property exist only if Congress authorized those rights explicitly. And the judges said an 1866 law that Robinson cited only acknowledges water and ditch right-of-way rights created under state law.

The judge also pointed out that when the federal government gave the land to Arizona, there were no reservations about any rights belonging to Robinson or any predecessor. More to the point, Brammer said, if the federal government considered Robinson the owner of the parcel, it never would have granted title to the state.

The court sidestepped the question of whether Robinson can access any water rights or improvement on the parcel without the state’s permission. The judges said he may have such rights but that needs to be decided through an administrative appeal to the proper state agency.

Ranchers eye Utah grazing program's success

2011-07-01T05:06:00.000-06:00

Idaho ranchers and county commissioners are eyeing a unique grazing program in Utah that has resulted in millions of dollars of improvements in range conditions and water quality in that state.

Created by the Utah Legislature in 2006, the Utah Grazing Improvement Program has enabled that state to team with the private sector and federal agencies to make about $25 million in rangeland improvements.

It has also assisted ranchers sued by environmental groups, a facet of the program that is of particular interest to Idaho cattle producers.

Troy Forrest, a grazing rangeland coordinator with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, explained the program to Idaho cattle producers recently during the Idaho Cattle Association's mid-year conference.

Though the legislature initially funded the program to the tune of $2 million annually, that amount has dropped to $1.4 million because of the economic recession, Forrest said. Still, he added, the program has been able to leverage the $10 million it has received from the state to generate another $15 million from private and federal sources.

The money has been used to make an extensive array of rangeland improvements, including installing fencing, seeding, managing brush, fighting invasive plant species and improving water quality and availability.

Forrest said about 50 percent of the program's funds are used on water improvement projects, including developing springs and wells and laying miles of pipeline to better distribute livestock, benefit wildlife and lessen impacts to riparian areas.

Program funds have been used to purchase equipment such as drills that are available for lease at a minimal price for range improvement projects.

Utah had its worst ever fire season in 2007 and program funds were used to reseed badly damaged areas.

The program partners with other land management agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service and "we've been able to affect public policy in that way," Forrest said.

Forrest said the program spends a lot of money on monitoring so when BLM allotments come up for renewal, "we have hard data that can be used in federal court to defend (the agency's) decisions."

The program has filed as intervenors on behalf of ranchers in some anti-grazing lawsuits and has also brought in experts to testify and submitted court briefs.

"We have good science to back up what we're doing," Forrest said.

He said federal grazing improvement programs are poorly funded and Utah lawmakers "saw a gaping hole where we could step in and help make improvements to public and private lands."

The presentation got the attention of Idaho Rep. Jim Guthrie, a Southeast Idaho rancher. He said such a program could benefit Idaho ranchers, though he added it's too early to speculate on whether the Idaho Legislature would create and fund such a program.

"Avoiding lawsuits may be the wrong reason for doing it, but taking care of the land is the right thing to do regardless of what motivates you to do it," he said. "I think any time the cattle industry can collectively work to improve range conditions, it's a good idea.

Bishop Meets With DOI Officials to Confirm that the Wild Lands Proposal is Gone for Good

2011-06-22T17:00:00.000-06:00

Washington, Jun 22 - House Natural Resources National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) today met with Department of Interior (DOI) Deputy Secretary David Hayes and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Bob Abbey to discuss DOI Secretary Ken Salazar’s recent memo halting administrative efforts to unilaterally designate new Wild Lands areas. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) also attended the meeting.

On April 14, 2011 the House of Representatives passed the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, the budget to fund the remainder of FY2011. This legislation included a provision cutting off all funding through September 2011 for the controversial Secretarial Order #3310, which outlined plans for the creation of new de-facto wilderness areas or “Wild Lands.” Subsequently, on June 1, 2011 DOI Secretary Ken Salazar issued a memo to BLM Director Bob Abbey stating that “pursuant to the 2011 CR, the BLM will not designate any lands as ‘Wild Lands’.”

“Deputy Secretary Hayes and Director Abbey reiterated that Secretarial Order #3310 is dead. They both assured me that no administrative action will be taken to designate Wild Lands now or any time after FY2011,” said Congressman Bishop. “The only way to move forward on public land issues is to avoid unpredictable, unilateral actions without congressional input. Both Director Abbey and Deputy Secretary Hayes stated their intention to reduce the uncertainty that has plagued the debate in recent years and pledged to seek more consensus on these issues by improving coordination and dialogue with Congress and stakeholders.”

In the memo, Secretary Salazar also stated that Deputy Secretary David Hayes will work to develop recommendations regarding the management of lands with wilderness characteristics. Congressman Bishop expressed a concern over the creation of new management plans and indicated that he was interested in learning more about what Deputy Secretary Hayes would be looking to implement. During today’s meeting, Deputy Secretary Hayes also indicated that his recommendations were not imminent and that the Administration would work closely with Congress once those recommendations were completed.

“After today I am confident that the Administration recognizes the primary role that Congress must play in land management decisions going forward, Bishop added. “I appreciated both Director Abbey and Deputy Secretary Hayes for taking time to sit down with me and Chairman Hastings and it is my hope that they will uphold the assurances made to us during today’s meetings that Secretarial Order #3310 is no longer. While it was good to hear their assurances, I remain cautiously optimistic and will work with my colleagues on the committee to continue careful oversight of the Administration.”

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Introduces a Framework and Map to Improve the Health of America's Watersheds

2011-06-03T20:12:00.001-06:00

Watersheds on national forests and grasslands are the source of 20 percent of the nation's drinking water supply

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2011-- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the release of a new map that characterizes the health and condition of National Forest System lands in more than 15,000 watersheds across the country. The U.S. Forest Service's Watershed Condition Classification Map is the first step in the agency's Watershed Condition Framework, and is the agency's first national assessment across all 193 million acres of National Forest lands. Vilsack made the announcement at a USDA event in Washington highlighting the United Nation's International Year of Forests.

"Clean, healthy forests are vital to our efforts to protect America's fresh water supply," said Vilsack. "Our nation's economic health, and the health of our citizens, depends on abundant, clean and reliable sources of freshwater. The Watershed Condition Framework and map will help provide economic and environmental benefits to residents of rural communities."

The map establishes a baseline that will be used to establish priorities for watershed restoration and maintenance. The national Watershed Condition Framework establishes a consistent, comparable, and credible process for characterizing, prioritizing, improving, and tracking the health of watersheds on national forests and grasslands. The Framework also builds added accountability and transparency into the Integrated Resource Restoration program which is included in President Obama's budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

The Framework uses three watershed condition classifications:

* Class 1 watersheds are considered healthy.
* Class 2 watersheds are relatively healthy, but may require restoration work.
* Class 3 watersheds are those that are impaired, degraded or damaged.

Additional benefits to the Framework are the opportunities it provides to current and future partners in watershed restoration and maintenance. It also increases the public's awareness of their local watershed conditions and the role they can play in improving them. The Forest Service expects that as the map gains more widespread use, it will promote the department's "all-lands" approach to managing the nation's forest and landscapes.

"Watershed restoration is not new to the Forest Service, but we now have new capabilities to assess and prioritize where resources are most needed," said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. "For the first time, we are laying out a process to allow data from local assessments to be collected, analyzed and evaluated to better understand existing conditions and the specific needs for restoration and maintenance at the national level."

The Forest Service, as custodian of national forests and grasslands—which contain nearly 400,000 miles of streams, 3 million acres of lakes, and many aquifer systems—provides drinking water for more U.S. residents than any other entity. The Forest Service manages habitat for more than 550 rare, threatened, and endangered aquatic species and provides water-related recreation to more than 130 million visitors each year. U.S. lakes and streams provide drinking water for one in five Americans.

The Framework integrates well with both the proposed Land Management Planning Rule and the agency's Climate Change Scorecard. All three efforts require working with the public and partners to assess, monitor, maintain and restore the health of forests and watersheds. The Framework assists by providing key data that will help to prioritize resources.

The Forest Service expects to have national and regional Watershed Condition Classification maps posted electronically on an agency Web site early next week, with an interactive mapping tool available by the end of the month, according to agency officials.

The mission of the U.S. Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to state and private landowners, and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world.

Grazing Improvement Act introduced

2011-05-30T04:47:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON –Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has joined Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) in introducing legislation that will bring greater certainly to ranchers and farmers in rural Utah and other states who graze livestock in the face of constant legal challenges from environmental extremists.

The Grazing Improvement Act of 2011 (S. 1129) helps ranching communities by preserving the use of livestock grazing permits. It provides more flexibility to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service, allowing them to continue issuing grazing permits while required environmental analyses are pending.

“Cattle and sheep production in rural Utah brings in nearly $300 million per year in direct cash receipts and is an important driver in the state’s agricultural economy of nearly $3.5 billion. This is a critical component of the economic health and welfare of rural Utah,” Hatch said. “Our ranchers are responsible land stewards who should not be held hostage by a rigid permitting process or by lawsuits from environmental elitists who want to keep all livestock off of our public lands. This legislation will help provide our livestock producers with the certainty they need to make a living and to continue to contribute in a significant way to our economy.”

Under current law, livestock grazing permits expire after 10 years, and a new environmental analysis is mandatory before a new one can be issued. Unfortunately, federal agencies have been hamstrung in renewing permits because of the backlog of environmentalist lawsuits aimed at delaying the process.

For more than a decade, grazing permit holders and public land agencies have relied on Congress to temporarily grant continued use of grazing permits every year. The Grazing Improvement Act changes this by allowing the BLM and Forest Service to continue issuing grazing permits while an environmental analysis is being completed. It also provides more flexibility with categorical exclusions and other needed reforms to grazing permits.

In addition to Hatch, the Grazing Improvement Act is co-sponsored by Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), James Risch (R-Idaho) and John Thune (R-S.D.).

MEMORANDUM

KAREN BUDD FALEN
BUDD-FALEN LAW OFFICES, LLC

MAY 23, 2011

RE: LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD: SUPPORT FOR THE GRAZING IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2011

If jobs and the economy are the #1 concern for America, why are rural communities and ranchers under attack by radical environmental groups and overzealous federal regulators? America depends upon the hundreds of products that livestock provide, yet radical groups and oppressive regulations make it almost impossible for ranchers to stay in business. Opposition to these jobs comes in the form of litigation by radical environmental groups to eliminate grazing on public lands,
radical environmental group pressure to force "voluntary" grazing permit buy-outs from "willing sellers," and holding permittees hostage to the court deference given to regulatory "experts." The playing field is not level and the rancher is on the losing side. The Grazing Improvement Act of 2011 will level the playing field. I urge your support.

The Grazing Improvement Act of 2011 does the following:

1. Term of Grazing Leases and Permits. Both BLM and Forest Service term grazing permits are for a 10 year term. This bill extends that term to 20 years. This extension does not affect either the BLM's or Forest Service's ability to make interim management decisions based upon resource or other needs, nor does it impact the preference right of renewal for term grazing permits or leases.

2. Renewal, Transfer and Reissuance of Grazing Leases and Permits. This section codifies the various "appropriation riders" for the BLM and Forest Service requiring that permits being reissued, renewed or transferred continue to follow the existing terms and conditions until the paperwork is complete. Thus, the rancher is not held hostage to the ability of the agency to get its job done-a job that is admittedly harder because of radical environmental appeals, litigation and FOIA requests.

This bill also codifies the ability of the BLM and Forest Service to "categorically exclude" grazing permit renewal, reissuance or transfer from the paperwork requirements under National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA") if the permit or lease continues current grazing management on the allotment. Minor modifications to
permit or lease can also be categorically excluded from NEPA if monitoring indicates that the current grazing management has met or is moving toward rangeland and riparian objectives and there are no "extraordinary circumstances." Finally, this section allows the BLM and Forest Service to continue to set their priority and timing for permit renewal or reissuance.

3. Applicability of Administrative Procedure Act. This provision is really what levels the playing field for the rancher, against the environmental "willing buyer" and the arbitrary decisions of the governmental regulator. First, this provision applies a real decision making process, with an independent hearing officer or judge, to Forest Service administrative appeals. Currently, legal challenges to Forest Service decisions are heard by the "next higher Forest Service line officer." There have long been allegations that this system is significantly skewed so that the Forest Service decision maker is "almost always right." For example, out of the 28 decisions that were administratively appealed in Forest Service Region 2 (Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota) from 2009 to the present, only 2 were rejected as being legally or factually wrong. In that same time period, in California, out of 78 appeals, only 13 decisions were either rejected or withdrawn. In Arizona and New Mexico, the Forest Service "independent review by the next higher line officer" only found 15 out of 83 decisions were deficient. In other words, just considering these three Forest Service regions, the agency found itself right 85% of the time. In a fair and equal system, no one is right that many times!

This provision would change that pattern so that Forest Service grazing permittees would appeal the decisions they believed were legally, factually or scientifically wrong to an independent law judge and the Forest Service would have to show why its decision is right, rather than the permittee having to show why the decision is wrong. The permittee would also be able to cross-examine Forest Service "experts" on the reasons for the decision and the agency would have to supply some justification for its decision. It is critical that Forest Service permittees have the ability to protect themselves from arbitrary decisions; an ability they do not have now.

Second, this Act would level the playing field for BLM permittees. Like the Forest Service provisions discussed above, this bill "changes" the current appeals system by requiring the BLM to prove its decision is legally and scientifically correct; rather than forcing the permittee to prove why the decision is legally and scientifically wrong. Additionally, the OHA has determined that when the BLM issues a decision adversely affecting a permittee's grazing privileges, the BLM decision can still be upheld, even if the BLM did not comply with all of the grazing regulations. In short, under the current appeals system, the permittee's experts have to show why the BLM experts are wrong (a burden that is very hard to carry) and the BLM decision can still be held to be correct, even if the BLM only substantially complied with its regulations. This is not a level playing field and a problem that absolutely needs corrected.

Finally, this section also returns to the law the "automatic stay" provisions eliminated by the Bruce Babbitt "Range Reform '94" regulations, except for decisions of a temporary nature and except in emergency situations.

In truth, this bill is more than mere technical changes to erroneous agency regulations, it gives some very real protection to the permittees. For example, the Ruby Pipeline "donation" to Western Watersheds Project to purchase grazing preferences on a "willing seller" basis only works if the permittee is honestly "willing to sell." However, if the permittee is always behind the curve in protecting his grazing permit and the only way he can "win" is by "voluntarily selling" his permit for pennies on the dollar, the word "willing" is truly compulsion. And, in the case of the Forest Service, the current administrative appeals process is like asking your father to change the decision of your mother, when your mother and father agreed on the decision before it was dictated to you.

Finally, this bill reverses the U.S. Justice Department capitulations to environmental groups during the course of recent litigation. These "settlements" have significantly restricted the BLM's and Forest Service's ability to legitimately use categorical exclusions to renew grazing permits. Neither the Justice Department nor the federal bureaucrats should be allowed to make Congressional policy without the Congressional branch of government. Make no mistake-this is not just a public lands ranchers' bill; this bill will help preserve family ranches, rural communities and the American beef supply. This is an American jobs bill! I urge your support and ask that you request your Congressional representatives support this bill.

-END-

Pearce pushes wilderness rollback

2011-04-24T03:07:00.000-06:00

By Diana M. Alba DALBA@LCSUN-NEWS.COM

LAS CRUCES -- A proposal backed by Congressman Steve Pearce, R-N.M., would roll back wilderness-like protections from three Do a Ana County mountain ranges, as well as other land throughout the West.

The bill was applauded by local off-road vehicle enthusiasts and ranchers, who've complained the designations keep them off public lands, but condemned by wilderness proponents, who said it is the latest in a series of attacks by Pearce on the environment.

In Do a Ana County, the bill, H.R. 1581, would get rid of about 32,700 acres of wilderness study area, a temporary status treated like wilderness, which is the highest level of protection for federal lands.

A look back

Congress directed agencies to catalogue public lands in the 1970s and evaluate them for wilderness potential. In 1993, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management made its recommendations about potential wilderness in New Mexico.

In Dona Ana County, some 181,100 acres -- including in the Organ Mountains and West Potrillo Mountains -- were declared suitable for wilderness, while about 32,700 acres weren't, according to the report.

Despite the recommendations, Congress never took action, and the inventoried lands in Do a Ana County have been in a limbo state since.

Full-fledged, permanent wilderness status prohibits the use of mechanized vehicles -- at the heart of most contention surrounding the designation. Indeed, that was the focus a five-year debate about creating wilderness in Dona Ana County that cooled last December with the expiration of a bill by U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

Off-roading debate

No land in the in the Robledo or Sierra de Las Uvas mountains, in the west and northwest Do a Ana County, was recommended suitable for wilderness in 1993. They're among the temporary wilderness designations that would go by the wayside, if Pearce's bill were passed. About 8,600 acres in the West Potrillos, located in the southwestern part of the county, also would be removed.

Both are areas popular among off-road vehicle enthusiasts. But environmentalists contend they're scenically and ecologically valuable areas that merit wilderness protection.

Told about Pearce's proposal, ATV and off-road enthusiast Bob Duffey of Las Cruces said he favors removing some wilderness study area designations. The off-roading community, for the most part, uses public lands responsibly, he contended.

"There's enough land for everybody," said Duffey, a world champion motorcyclist. "We're not the big enemies they think we are."

Duffey pointed out that other states, including Utah, have benefited economically from promoting ATV recreation.

A notice sent by Pearce and two other sponsors soliciting support from other congressmen noted a number of off-roading, four-wheeling and logging groups that back the bill.

But Las Cruces City Councilor Sharon Thomas, a wilderness proponent, said the bill is a step backward. Getting rid of the designations would open up "very fragile lands" to more off-roading and development, she said.

"They're already being grazed upon, and that's probably enough," she said. "That's some risk; I don't think we should add anymore risks."

Forests, too

In addition to scrapping certain wilderness-study-area acreage, the bill would get rid of roadless areas within national forests that also haven't been recommended to become wilderness.

If passed, said Pearce spokesman Eric Layer, the lands would be managed as multiple-use, "which would allow for more recreational access and responsible resource development."

"Congressman Pearce is co-sponsoring this bill because it is a common-sense approach that simply codifies the recommendations of two federal agencies," he said in an email. "This is about seeking a common-sense solution to a land management issue in the West."

Should a wilderness study area designation be removed, the BLM would fall back to its long-term management plan, said Tom Phillips, with the agency's Las Cruces office. That offers protections for certain areas, including for environmental resources. For instance, if the Organ Mountain study area were lifted for some reason -- though that's not an actual proposal in the recent bill -- there would still be an administrative protection in place, he noted.

The legislation is likely to wind up a political statement only, given it's not backed by Bingaman, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the panel that reviews wilderness bills. And the Senate and presidency are controlled by Democrats.

Bingaman, in an emailed statement, said H.R. 1581 would "take away existing protections from millions of acres of roadless areas managed by the Forest Service and BLM without properly considering the merits of each specific area."

"It could negatively impact the clean water we rely on that comes from these watersheds, and it could harm the fish and wildlife on our public lands that hunters and anglers use," he said. "For those reasons, I would oppose this legislation if it came to the Senate."

Pearce in 2008 introduced legislation to counter a wilderness proposal circulating in Do a Ana County. It would have eliminated wilderness study areas, while creating two new designations that would have restricted certain development while encouraging ranching. It never passed.

Changes?

Now, the BLM manages temporary wilderness conservatively.

Phillips described that as a "non-impairment standard," meaning the agency is attempting to preserve the lands, in case Congress ever decides to declare them permanent wilderness.

Some roads through temporary wilderness have been closed off, Phillips said. Still, there are some allowed routes, called "ways," Phillips said. Drivers, including ranchers and hunters, can use those roads, though they're not maintained routinely.

Also ranchers -- because wilderness allows ranching activity to continue -- can enter the areas with equipment to maintain water tanks periodically.

The BLM doesn't permit new roads in wilderness study areas, Phillips said, though he acknowledged the public does cut new, unauthorized dirt tracks.

If temporary wilderness was removed, Phillips said the agency could consider OK'ing new roads, as long as the area didn't have another type of protection under the agency's long-term plan. Projects would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, he said.

"That's what we do now on land that's not WSA," he said.

Frank DuBois, a former New Mexico agriculture secretary and outspoken critic of the former Dona Ana County wilderness proposal, said he's aware of utility corridor projects that have "been delayed or re-routed at great expense" because of temporary wilderness. And one Dona Ana County rancher recently experienced a five-month wait while trying to get an OK to revamp a dirt tank, he said.

The proposed legislation isn't unreasonable, considering the BLM didn't recommend the areas be granted permanent status, DuBois said.

"I think the legislation is the ultimate in common sense," he said.

However, just because the BLM didn't recommend that these areas become wilderness does not preclude residents from seeking the designation independently, said Las Crucen Jeff Steinborn, a New Mexico Wilderness Alliance director who helped spearhead the legislation to create new wilderness. The bill, if passed, would hurt quality of life, hunting and recreation locally, Steinborn contended.

"To unilaterally roll back the protections makes no sense," he said. "It's not the type of vision most of us espouse in this county."

Diana M. Alba can be reached at (575) 541-5443.

Complaint Lodged With Agency Over Cow's Death

2011-04-15T02:43:00.000-06:00

        The Catron County Commission has lodged a complaint alleging that state Game and Fish Department biologists tried to alter the finding of a federal investigation into a cow's cause of death.
        At stake in the verdict by Wildlife Services, a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency, is whether the cow's owner can receive compensation for the loss.
        If Wildlife Services confirms that a cow was killed by a Mexican gray wolf, an endangered species, a rancher can be reimbursed $747. But if the finding is not definite, if a wolf kill is only considered "probable," the rancher is not eligible for compensation.
        According to Catron County officials, two Wildlife Services employees, as well as the county's own "wolf incident investigator," concurred that a cow discovered Jan. 18 near the Arizona border had been killed by a wolf. Catron County officials allege Game and Fish biologists sought to change that conclusion to a "probable" wolf kill.
        According to Catron County's own news release issued this week, Game and Fish Director Tod Stevenson denied that his staff tried to modify the Wildlife Services finding from "confirmed" to "probable" wolf kill, but simply suggested federal personnel take into account the presence of feral dogs in the area of the cow carcass.
        The Game and Fish Department is looking into the matter, but administrators won't discuss the case at this time, said spokesman Lance Cherry.
        In response to emailed questions, Alan May, Wildlife Service's New Mexico director, said the exchange between his staff and Game and Fish employees in the case "was appropriate."
        During their meeting April 6, Catron County commissioners complained about the matter to Stevenson and two Game Commission members. The Catron commission in late February also filed a complaint with Gov. Susana Martinez asking for a review of the Game and Fish biologists' actions.
        "We have taken a no-wolf stand," Catron County Commission Chairman Hugh McKeen said in a written statement directed at the governor. "I'm requesting that you take a no-wolf stance, too."
        Martinez spokesman Scott Darnell said members of the governor's staff discussed Catron County's concerns with Game and Fish staff, adding: "We have instructed the Department of Game and Fish that this is a federal issue and DGF should not be playing such a role in the federal (wolf) repopulation efforts."
        May said that in trying to determine the cause of a domesticated animal's death, Wildlife Services personnel "routinely solicit input from others," including Game and Fish employees, "in order to ensure that the most informed decision is made."
        A private conservation group, Defenders of Wildlife, stopped paying ranchers compensation for wolf depredations last year; the group paid $19,203 to eight individuals in 2009 for wolf depredation claims.

NM ranchers: Venture threatens to leave area dry

2011-04-11T03:38:00.000-06:00

Ray Pittman pulled his 1994 F-150 pickup to the top of a thinly wooded hill, a short walk from the water tank he built back in 1999 on his 1,300-acre ranch.

A mile down the hill, Pittman's 540-foot-deep well pumps groundwater, pushing it up to the tank to provide for cattle on this remote patch of central New Mexico landscape.

To the west, on the vast plain that makes up the Augustin Plains Ranch, a commercial venture has proposed sinking 37 wells to pump groundwater and pipe it to the Rio Grande Valley to supplement dwindling water supplies of central New Mexico's farms and cities.

The Augustin Plains Ranch proposal would move 54,000 acre-feet per year of water to the Rio Grande Basin 50 miles away — enough water to meet the needs of a city the size of Albuquerque.

In their application to the state, project backers were not specific about how the water would be used. The group declined repeated requests to provide further information.

But it appears to be aimed at making up for a water shortfall in the rapidly growing Rio Grande Valley, either through direct use or replacing water removed from the Rio Grande by municipal or industrial users upstream.

Those in the central New Mexico ranch country where the water would start its journey fear the project would leave them high and dry.

Pittman and his wife, Carol, use a second well to provide water to two ranch houses, three horses, two donkeys, "six or seven cats," one dog and nine goldfish that call one of the stock tanks home.

"People are afraid that this will deplete the aquifer," said Carol Pittman. "We all have wells."

The proposal would "essentially dry up the whole damn basin," said Albuquerque hydrologist Frank Titus. Water would disappear from wells, said Titus, who investigated the issue on behalf of the Pittmans and other residents of the ranching community. He said he has received no financial compensation for his work.

The Augustin Plains Ranch proposal and a similar project in eastern New Mexico, which would send water from the Fort Sumner area to Santa Fe, reflect entrepreneurial attempts to deal with a glaring New Mexico water problem.

The most detailed analysis, done for the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission in 2004, found residents of New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande Valley are using water at an unsustainable rate, consuming water faster than nature replenishes it.

Albuquerque and Santa Fe have in the past few years started using water imported from the Colorado River Basin via the San Juan-Chama Project, reducing their dependence on unsustainable groundwater pumping.

Cities also have been pushed to make up some of the shortfall by buying up agricultural water rights in the Rio Grande Valley and taking the land out of production to reduce irrigation use.

To meet all municipal water needs would require taking nearly all the valley's agricultural land out of farming and shifting the water to city use, according to an analysis by the state Interstate Stream Commission.

The search for alternatives has led to the proposals to pump water from rural New Mexico into the Rio Grande Valley.

"There's no question in my mind that at some point there may be a need to augment the Middle Rio Grande by bringing in some bulk water from somewhere," State Engineer John D'Antonio said.

The proposals raise the specter of the Owens Valley, the California area dried up early in the 20th century to bring water to Los Angeles. Taking that water devastated the Owens Valley, D'Antonio said.

For now, D'Antonio, whose office administers New Mexico water rights, has said no. In a ruling earlier this year, D'Antonio turned down the Fort Sumner proposal. The group proposing the pipeline has appealed.

Attorneys involved in the case say the law cited in D'Antonio's decision is likely to apply to the Augustin Plains Ranch proposal. But the legal argument behind the decision is narrow, leaving open the possibility the proposal could return.

There are significant differences between the proposals.

The Fort Sumner proposal at 6,425 acre-feet of water per year involves about one-eighth the amount proposed to be pumped from the basin adjacent to the Pittmans' ranch.

The Fort Sumner proposal also involves existing groundwater pumping rights being used to irrigate farm land, said Ron Green, the Roswell rancher behind the project. The Augustin Plains Ranch wants to create new water rights with its 37 wells.

But the chief complaint against both projects is similar — that pumping water from rural areas to meet demand in New Mexico's cities will reduce the water available to communities left behind.

Green says the Fort Sumner project was designed to protect the water rights and economy of the Pecos River Valley, where the water will originate. The project has been structured to take only groundwater from farms in a way that won't affect the rights of other water users, Green said.

Steve Hernandez, the attorney who represents Pecos Valley irrigators who oppose the project, says the project poses the risk of upsetting the delicate water rights balance in the valley.

The project has a fatal flaw, according to D'Antonio's decision: Green has not identified who, specifically, will be using the water.

State water law requires an identified "beneficial use" on the receiving end, D'Antonio ruled. Without knowing who will use the water, where and how, the state cannot approve the application, D'Antonio ruled.

The argument used in the Fort Sumner ruling appears to apply to the Augustin Plains Ranch proposal, said Bruce Frederick of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, who represents the Pittmans and other opponents.

The Augustin Plains Ranch proposal submitted in 2008 simply says the water can be used for any purpose anywhere in the portions of Catron, Sierra, Socorro, Valencia, Bernalillo, Sandoval and Santa Fe counties that lie in the Rio Grande Basin.

That falls short of the requirement to specify a "beneficial use," said Frederick.

The proposal amounts to an "attempt to monopolize a water supply for purposes of speculation and possible future water sales," Frederick wrote in a brief filed in the case.

There has been no decision in the case. But observers note both projects could overcome the current legal hurdle by signing up and identifying users, starting the legal discussions anew.

To Graze or Not To Graze?

2011-04-08T04:53:00.000-06:00

Drought, Forest Service threaten to delay grazing season

The Rio Arriba County Commission voted to declare a state of emergency on behalf of local ranchers after the federal Forest Service threatened to delay the start of cattle grazing season on public lands.

Several stockmen spoke to the Commission at a meeting March 31 and said due to persistent, drought-like conditions in the region, district rangers in the Santa Fe and Carson National Forests were going to push back the date ranchers are permitted to release their cattle onto public grazing lands.

Dennis Gallegos, whose cattle graze on the Polvadera allotment in the Santa Fe National Forest, stood before the Commission the day before his permitted release date and said he was willing to force a confrontation with the Service, though he had been told not to release his cows yet. Then he called upon the commissioners to support him.

“I’m willing to turn the cattle out tomorrow if the County’s willing to challenge (the Service’s) authority,” Gallegos said. “I’m willing to start the brawl.“

Carlos Salazar, president of the Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association, also spoke at the meeting and said he hoped the Commission and the sheriff would support Gallegos if he defied the Service.

Commission Chairman Felipe Martinez said as a public official the Commission could not encourage civil unrest. Then he added, “If I was in your position, maybe I’d do it too.”

Commissioner Alfredo Montoya agreed with Martinez that the Commission could not encourage defiance of the Service but to appease the ranchers he proposed passing the resolution declaring a state of emergency.

The resolution was drafted on the spot by Salazar, County attorney Ted Trujillo and County Emergency Manager Mateo DeVargas, then passed by the Commission. It declares “a state of emergency for the grazing community“ and calls upon available local resources and emergency measures, though it does not call for any explicit action or set aside any money.

Montoya said the declaration will call attention to the matter and could qualify the County for state resources.

Gallegos, who has one of the earliest permitted entry dates in the Santa Fe National Forest, said he received a verbal warning from Forest Service Range Conservationist Donald Serrano informing him that due to a lack of rainfall, his entry to the Polvadera allotment would be delayed indefinitely.

On April 1, the day Gallegos was supposed to turn his cattle out to graze, he instead met with Española District Ranger Sandy Hurlocker, Serrano and three members of the Range Improvement Task Force from New Mexico State University for a joint evaluation of the grazing land.

Sam Smallidge, of the task force, agreed with Serrano’s assessment that conditions on the range were dry, but said there was enough residual forage from last year to sustain Gallegos’ 30 cattle for at least a month until the date of release for other ranchers’ cattle on the allotment, whereupon a reassessment of the conditions should be conducted.

Smallidge also said a wet summer can be expected following a dry La Niña winter.

But Serrano said if conditions remain dry the entire allotment may have to be abandoned for the season and he was concerned that it would be more difficult to persuade Gallegos to remove his cattle than prevent him from allowing them onto the lands in the first place. Serrano said if the pastures received enough rainfall in the coming weeks to spur the growth of forage grasses for the cows, everything could proceed as normal.

“Why would I leave my cattle in a place with no food and water?” Gallegos said. “I’d rather sell them for $600 each than clip tags off their ears and let them die.”

Serrano fretted that if water remained scarce the ranchers would herd the cows into a higher-altitude pasture, potentially affecting an area the Service is rehabilitating from a forest fire last year and damaging a trout stream.

“We’re under a lot of pressure to take care of the burn area,” Serrano said.

After the joint assessment, Hurlocker, who as district ranger has the final say on the grazing decision, said he would allow Gallegos to turn out his cattle Monday, if he agreed to undertake certain measures, such as hauling water by truck for his cows or removing his cattle, should the dry weather persist

Hurlocker said he would incorporate the added measures into Gallegos’ annual operating instructions — a set of regulations given to each rancher at the start of each season. Hurlocker said situations like this are difficult because he is charged with managing the land for many uses not just cattle.

Gallegos’ reprieve may be temporary. Serrano said ranchers should be prepared with emergency drought plans and may have to sell their cows, send them to slaughter or support them on hay on their own property through all or part of the summer.

Ranchers on the Jarita Mesa and Alamosa allotments in the Carson National Forest — who are already bracing for a season marked by a 20 percent reduction in their permitted cattle — were also given warning in January that if the dry weather continued they would be subject to later entry dates, said Jarita Mesa Rancher Sebedeo Chacon. As of March 31, with many of the ranchers’ entry dates a month or two away, he said the Forest Service had not given him a written notice of any postponement, something he said it is required to do.

The emergency declaration cites delayed entry of livestock in several allotments in the Jemez, San Juan and Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Don't let Big Green use government to mug taxpayers

2011-04-04T05:05:00.000-06:00

So you are walking along one bright, sunny day minding your own business and loving life when suddenly two strangers jump in front of you, one a bearded dude in a worn L.L. Bean canvas shirt, khaki cargo shorts and sandals, the other in a dark pin-striped suit waving a file labeled "Equal Access to Justice Act."

When they demand that you "hand it over," your first instinct is probably to grip your wallet while assuming a defensive stance. You are indeed about to be mugged, but don't bother fighting these characters. Resistance is useless because such muggers have the law on their side. EAJA payouts for lawyer fees and other settlement costs in environmental suits against the government are going to leave you much poorer.

But the day could be coming when you won't be entirely without recourse, thanks to Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. They have introduced the Domestic Jobs, Domestic Energy, and Deficit Reduction Act of 2011 (3-D). The sponsors claim their bill "would create more than 2 million jobs, $10 trillion in economic activity, and $2 trillion in federal tax receipts (conservative 30-year estimates)." Among 3-D's major features are provisions to prod the federal bureaucracy to speed up Outer Continental Shelf lease sales for oil and natural gas exploration and development off the U.S. coasts, as well as federal permitting for energy purposes on public lands. The measure also would fix time limits on environmental and judicial reviews of leases and permits.

So what has all that to do with the two menacing figures blocking your way? The 3-D proposal would cap EAJA payouts in environmental lawsuits against the government. Under EAJA, Big Green environmental groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and Center for Biodiversity file hundreds of suits against the government every year, knowing the odds are great the litigation will be settled out of court. Win or lose, the Big Green groups receive millions of dollars in settlements, including lawyers fees and other cost reimbursements. The settlements are paid by the Treasury Department's Judgment Fund. Vitter and Bishop estimate that at least $4.7 billion has been paid out since 2003, with much of it going to Big Green groups.

But here's the catch: According to the Treasury Department, "the Judgment Fund has no fiscal year limitations, and there is no need for Congress to appropriate funds to it annually or otherwise. Moreover, disbursements from it are not attributed to or accounted for by the agencies whose activities give rise to awards paid. Absent a specific statutory requirement, the agency responsible is not required to reimburse the Judgment Fund." In other words, EAJA invites Big Green attorneys to file suits regardless of merit, knowing their hefty fees will be covered in the settlement paid from the Judgment Fund.

Worst of all, taxpayers have virtually no way of knowing how much such suits cost because courts often seal the settlements. Plus, according to Vitter and Bishop, "since 1998 there has been no uniform method of reviewing EAJA and there is no public accountability or transparency in the program." Tomorrow's Examiner editorial will look at the victims of this legalized theft and the lengthy list of Big Green perpetrators assaulting them.

Secrecy hides taxpayer dollars used in Big Green lawsuits

2011-04-04T04:57:00.001-06:00

For thousands of farming and ranching families with leases and grazing rights on public lands in the West, having a good lawyer on call is more than a routine cost of doing business. It's an absolute necessity to protect a way of life that has often been handed down for generations. But that's far from the worst of it because not only do these hard-working, taxpaying men and women have to pay their own attorneys, they also frequently end up having to help pay the attorneys' fees and other legal costs for Big Green environmental groups that file lawsuits seeking to force the federal government to do their bidding. Usually, the individual ranchers and farmers aren't even defendants, they're just innocent bystanders who need attorneys to protect their interests because their livelihoods depend on the outcome of such litigation.

This unjust situation is a result of the Big Green environmental movement's discovery several decades ago that there was indeed "gold in them thar hills," thanks to an obscure federal law known as the Equal Access to Justice Act. Sunday's Examiner editorial detailed how a law intended to help small businesses get their day in court has been perverted into an unaccountable, tax-paid, cash cow worth hundreds of millions of dollars to groups like the Sierra Club, Center for Biodiversity, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council.

Payments under EAJA are made by the U.S. Treasury to its Judgment Fund, which is funded by a permanent congressional appropriation. The fund is not audited, agencies aren't required to account in their budgets for payments mandated by court decisions in their areas of jurisdiction, and courts often seal settlements to prevent public examination. It's an open invitation for Big Green groups to file suits, knowing that win or lose, most if not all of their legal expenses will be paid by the government. Best of all for them, it's all but impossible to track who gets how much from the taxpayers from these suits.

But there is enough evidence available to remove any doubt that Big Green litigators have hit the jackpot. Wyoming attorney Karen Fallen has spent many hours poring over court records to compile what she concedes is an incomplete list that includes 647 cases, including 299 in which nearly $18 million was paid under the EAJA to lawyers for 10 Big Green groups. If that amount seems insignificant, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, estimate that at least $4.7 billion has been paid out of the Judgment Fund under the EAJA since 2003, with much of it going to Big Green groups. Vitter and Bishop have introduced legislation to cap such payments and to mandate proper accounting of them. Such actions would be good first steps toward restoring balance to federal litigation costs and ensuring justice for Western farmers and ranchers.

Gas pipeline company blasted for its role in purchasing Idaho grazing leases

2011-03-24T04:46:00.000-06:00

To say that El Paso Western Pipeline Group President Jim Cleary was met with an unfriendly welcome at the Idaho Capitol Wednesday might be an understatement.

Cleary, whose entity is building the Ruby gas pipeline that will run underground from southwestern Wyoming to northwestern Nevada, stood before lawmakers Wednesday to discuss his company’s agreement with the Western Watersheds Project (WWP), an environmental group characterized as “domestic terrorists” by Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale.

The agreement – a settlement of a lawsuit WWP filed over the construction project – forces El Paso to pay $15 million through a 10-year time span to the Sagebrush Habitat Conservation Fund. The fund is intended to be used solely conservation efforts, but several lawmakers on the House and Senate resource committees inferred that the money and the partnership are being used to force ranchers out of business by buying up federal grazing permits.

The intriguing thing is that the project doesn’t even touch Idaho soil; it runs through northern Utah. The settlement allows for the fund to conduct conservation activities in the five southern Idaho counties because they are adjacent to counties where pipeline construction is taking place.

It is also interesting that – as noted by Rep. JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, – El Paso is already required to restore the disturbed lands once construction is completed. Wood questioned the need for the conservation fund if mitigation is already taking place in affected areas. Cleary said that WWP was concerned with animals and plants that inhabit the area might be adversely affected by construction and that the fund will help soften the blow to native species.

The fund is prohibited from using litigation – or threats of it – to engage in conservation efforts, but lawmakers are skeptical there isn’t some tag-teaming going on between WWP and the fund over grazing permits.

On its website, WWP boasts that it holds 4,000 acres of Idaho land previously used for cattle grazing and that it is now using the property for conservation efforts. The group also brags about its past litigation in order to move toward improved ecological stewardship over public lands.

Ranchers holding federal and state grazing permits must renew them every 10 years and can be bid against by willing buyers at that time. The fund itself is not allowed to bid on leases, but WWP can – and does – bid for the leases in order to retire them permanently. The group feels it is in the best interest of the environment to end unsuitable land practices.

Ranchers can also sell leases at any time during the 10-year period if another party is interested in the land.

The fund can only buy permits from ranchers who want to sell, but Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Twin Falls, contends that WWP is attempting to intimidate ranchers to force the sale of leases to the fund. “This is just another tack they are taking,” said Brackett, adding that he has a letter from an Arizona rancher who has dealt with WWP and has been threatened with litigation over his grazing permit. “That’s how you get a willing seller,” he explained. “This is not much different than that.”

During the hearing, Brackett fired away at Cleary, saying that allowing the fund to buy up grazing leases is devastating to local economies. “It destroys the tax base,” he said.

Cleary, on the defense all afternoon, said that’s not the purpose of the deal. “It is certainly not the intent to impair communities or their tax bases,” Cleary explained. He noted that only willing buyers sell grazing leases and that the fund itself has no way of putting pressure ranchers to give up their grazing rights.

Rep. Scott Bedke, R-Oakely, was one of the most outspoken critics of Leary, El Paso, and the $15 million fund. Bedke said that the by working out a deal with WWP, El Paso sacrificed the interests of Idaho. “You got yours and we didn’t get ours here,” said Bedke. “You had the ability to cut your deal and the rest of us were left to twist here.”

Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, echoed Bedke’s sentiments. “That land is completely out of production now,” said Siddoway.

Rep. Lenore Hardy Barrett, R-Challis, didn’t mince words when it came her turn to speak. “You dodged a bullet, but you funded the firing squad that’s coming for the rest of us,” said Barrett, saying that El Paso got everything it wanted from the deal.

But Cleary stayed firm, contending that no one has forced ranchers to sell leases. “There are people who have their own reasons for doing transactions,” he explained, adding that ranchers often sell leases in order to fund retirements or to generate funds to re-tool other ranching operations.

Salazar renews debate over wild lands

2011-03-22T01:39:00.000-06:00

When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered the Bureau of Land Management to begin looking for wild lands in the West, he set up a new chapter in an old confrontation.

Conservation and environmental organizations in Colorado saw an opportunity to take a step toward long-sought goals of having land across the state — most of them in northwest Colorado — and in neighboring Utah set aside for preservation of wilderness characteristics.

Others, however, saw the inventory of wild lands as a threat to the energy and other industries.

The order by Salazar, a former Colorado senator and onetime head of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, was innocuous, said Kurt Kunkle, wilderness coordinator for the Colorado Environmental Coalition.

Salazar’s Secretarial Order 3310 was merely aimed at complying with federal law, the Federal Lands Policy Management Act, which calls for a inventory of such lands.

“It’s not a land grab,” Kunkle said. “I’m kind of surprised by all the hubbub around wild-lands policy.”

Salazar’s order reinstated long-standing BLM authority that was reversed during the George W. Bush administration, Kunkle said.

That’s not to say, however, that Kunkle’s organization and others want the land only to be inventoried.

“We still would like to look at a map and see wilderness one day,” Kunkle said.

Talk about doing that, however, already is having the unwelcome effect of further depressing an already stressed economy in the northwest part of the state, U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., said.

The starting point for the wild-lands discussion in western Colorado are proposals set out in 2006 by the Southern Rockies Conservation Alliance, which outlines 60 proposed wilderness areas, and a majority of them, 37, are in northwest Colorado. The areas were offered as wilderness proposals by residents.

Tipton’s district affected

Conservation and environmental organizations see Salazar’s order as a return to the original idea of land management in the West.

Tipton says the Interior Department “overreached its authority, moving into the powers granted to Congress.”

“We need input first, rather than after the fact,” Tipton said.

Tipton’s 3rd Congressional District, which he wrested from Salazar’s brother John in November, includes most of the Western Slope. It is potentially the most heavily affected in Colorado by the wild-lands proposal.

Many of the proposed northwest Colorado areas are where the oil and gas industry is active or holds leases, including the Roan Plateau in Garfield County and Vermillion Basin in Moffat County.

Salazar’s order calls on the BLM to protect lands with wilderness characteristics by avoiding “impairment” of those lands “unless the BLM determines that impairment of wilderness characteristics is appropriate and consistent” with existing law and other considerations.

The order requires that wild lands be recognized as a part of the development of resource-management plans, which guide the management of bureau districts for 20 years.

It’s in the drafting of those plans that the public will have the opportunity to be deeply involved in the wild-lands discussion, Interior Department officials say.

Uintah County, Utah, Commissioner Mike McKee said he fears that Interior Department officials in Washington, D.C., would be able to supersede local and state bureau officials and play too great a role in determining whether lands have wilderness characteristics that need to be protected from development.

The secretarial order wipes out work already done in many parts of the West and lets environmental organizations take another shot at establishing wild lands after decisions have been reached, McKee said.

“So, it’s a continual moving ball,” he said.

Drilling, employment

The wild-lands proposal also stands to hinder efforts to develop domestic energy resources, Tipton said.

“The West is mineral rich, and there are those of us who believe there can be a win-win” with energy and environmental concerns, Tipton said.

Industry already has a big lead in that department, environmental organizations said, pointing to statistics showing that one acre of BLM land is set aside as wilderness for every 42 acres leased by oil and gas corporations. More than 64 percent of lease acres remain to be drilled, according to checksandbalancesproject.org, which criticizes leasing as “simply a land grab on the part of fossil fuels corporations.”

Restrictions on drilling and rising unemployment in the West are likely connected, Tipton said.

“I don’t think you can dismiss it as a potential cause of unemployment,” Tipton said, noting the 11 percent unemployment rate in Mesa County, which three years ago was a booming energy area.

Recognition of wild lands could be beneficial to the recreation industry, which includes hunting, angling and wildlife viewing, said Suzanne O’Neill, executive director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation.

Salazar’s order put back in place a criterion for the multiple-use evaluation of BLM holdings that had been removed in 2003, O’Neill said.

“We are comfortable with it being a criterion” in deciding how to manage those lands, especially considering that wild lands could be an important part of a robust outdoor-recreation segment of the regional economy, O’Neill said. “We can have extraction, and we can have areas that are really for wildlife recreation.”

Ninth Circuit’s "federal defendant" intervention rule in NEPA cases finally meets its end: Wilderness Society v. United States Forest Service

2011-03-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

* Latham & Watkins LLP
* Janice M. Schneider , James L. Arnone and Drew C. Ensign
* February 22 2011

Introduction

In a significant decision issued in mid-January 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (en banc) abandoned its categorical rule that a party may not intervene of right in the merits of a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) case. In doing so, the court overturned its decades-old rule that had severely limited and often prevented holders and beneficiaries of federally issued permits and approvals from participating as a party in the merits of lawsuits challenging the government’s compliance with NEPA. This limitation was inconsistent with the plain language of the federal intervention rules, ignored the significant investments and interests private parties have in seeking and obtaining federal authorizations for a vast array of projects, and conflicted with the Ninth Circuit’s test in favor of liberal intervention in all other cases. Most importantly, the limitation ignored the very real practical impairment that project proponents would suffer if the agency approval(s) were set aside. Project proponents now have the opportunity to demonstrate that they have the requisite interests to participate in the merits of NEPA lawsuits brought against the government, and a greater ability to assist the government in defending project approvals while protecting their own interests. All we can say is, its about time.

Intervention of Right Standard

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a) provides:

Intervention as of Right. Upon timely application anyone shall be permitted to intervene in an action: (1) when a statute of the United States confers an unconditional right to intervene; or (2) when the applicant claims an interest relating to the subject of the action and the applicant is so situated that the disposition of the action may as a practical matter impair or impede the applicant’s ability to protect that interest, unless the applicant’s interest is adequately represented by the existing parties.

From Rule 24(a), the Ninth Circuit distilled a four-part test for intervention of right:

(1) the motion must be timely; (2) the applicant must claim a "significantly protectable" interest relating to the property or transaction which is the subject of the action; (3) the applicant must be so situated that the disposition of the action may as a practical matter impair or impede its ability to protect that interest; and (4) the applicant’s interest must be inadequately represented by the parties to the action.

Sierra Club v. EPA, 995 F.2d 1478, 1481 (9th Cir. 1993) (quotations marks and citation omitted). A interest is "protectable" if is "protected by some law." Id. (emphasis added). The Ninth Circuit further provides that "[t]he rule is construed broadly, in favor of the applicants for intervention." Id. (quotation marks omitted).1

Prior Ninth Circuit NEPA Rule

Despite taking a generally liberal view towards intervention, the Ninth Circuit adopted a unique rule for NEPA cases. In Portland Audubon Society v. Hodel, 866 F.2d 302, 309 (9th Cir. 1989), the Ninth Circuit held that "purely economic interests" were not protectable interests that could support intervention of right in NEPA actions. The Ninth Circuit later broadened those restrictions such that "no one but the federal government can be a defendant" in NEPA actions. Sierra Club, 995 F.2d at 1485; see also Churchill County v. Babbitt, 150 F.3d 1072, 1082, as amended by 158 F.3d 491 (9th Cir. 1998).

The Ninth Circuit drew these restrictions from the Seventh Circuit’s generally restrictive view towards intervention of right in all cases. The Ninth Circuit, however, did not apply this restrictive standard to any statute other than NEPA. Nor did the Ninth Circuit base this NEPA-specific approach on any statutory language in NEPA or the federal intervention rules.

The Ninth Circuit’s NEPA-specific standard conflicted with the standard of every other circuit that had reached the issue, including the Third, Fifth, Tenth and D.C. Circuits. See WildEarth Guardians v. U.S. Forest Serv., 573 F.3d 992 (10th Cir. 2009); Kleissler v. U.S. Forest Serv., 157 F.3d 964, 969-74 (3d Cir. 1998) (explaining that Ninth Circuit approach is a "wooden standard [that] minimizes the flexibility and spirit of Rule 24"); Sierra Club v. Espy, 18 F.3d 1202 (5th Cir. 1994); Wilderness Soc’y v. Morton, 463 F.2d 1261 (D.C. Cir. 1972).

This NEPA-specific rule produced anomalous results. For example, the holder of a federal permit was denied any ability to defend the issuance of that permit against challenge under NEPA. Recognizing this injustice, the Ninth Circuit pared back its NEPA-specific rule a bit, by permitting private parties to intervene of right in the remedies stage of NEPA litigation. See Forest Conservation Council v. U.S. Forest Serv., 66 F.3d 1496-97 (9th Cir. 1996). The limitations on intervention of right in the merits stage, however, was retained. Id.

Although the Ninth Circuit’s rule only applied to intervention of right,2 many district courts extended that categorical bar on intervention to permissive intervention under Rule 24(b) as well. See, e.g., Center for Food Safety v. Connor, No. 08-484, 2008 WL 3842889 (N.D.Cal. Aug 15, 2008); Center for Tribal Water Advocacy v. Gutierrez, 2007 WL 527932, *4 (D.Or. Feb. 12, 2007); Olympic Forest Coal. v. U.S. Forest Serv., No. 07-5344, 2007 WL 3374996, at *2-3 (W.D. Wash. Nov. 9, 2007).

Anarchy in the District Courts

Egged on by plaintiffs seeking to preclude participation by project proponents in other environmental litigation, many district courts in the Ninth Circuit began to extend the Ninth Circuit’s restrictions on intervention of right to other environmental statutes, over the objections of project proponents.3 Cases were broadly split, with other district courts refusing to extend the doctrine, but nonetheless driving up litigation issues and costs across a broad array of environmental statutes.4

Wilderness Society: Background

Wilderness Society began as a challenge under NEPA to a decision by the U.S. Forest Service. Specifically, two environmental groups filed suit against the adoption of a "travel plan" that allowed motorized vehicles to use some 1,196 miles of trails in Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest. The environmental groups argued that the Forest Service’s failure to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) violated NEPA.

Three recreational groups, Magic Valley Trail Machine Association, Idaho Recreation Council and Blue Ribbon Coalition, Inc., sought to intervene of right to defend the validity of the Forest Service’s approval of the travel plan. Applying the Ninth Circuit’s "federal defendant" rule, the district court denied intervention of right, and then also denied permissive intervention. When the recreational groups’ motion was denied, they appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

The Ninth Circuit panel sua sponte asked the parties on July 13, 2010 to file supplemental briefs addressing "[w]hether this case should be heard en banc to decide if this court should abandon the ‘federal defendant rule,’ which prohibits private parties from intervening of right as defendants under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(a) on the merits of claims arising under the National Environmental Policy Act." Following those briefs, the Ninth Circuit granted en banc review on September 30.

There was an outpouring of support for abandoning the Ninth Circuit’s restrictions on intervention of right in NEPA cases. As the Ninth Circuit noted, "no fewer than thirty-seven amici — including conservation, recreation and commercial groups, state and local governments, Indian tribes, regional water authorities, and the federal government, among others — argue that we should abandon our categorical prohibition …." Wilderness Society, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 734, at *10-11. Notably, even the plaintiffs did not formally oppose abandonment of the "federal defendant rule," but instead merely argued that Wilderness Society presented a poor vehicle for considering the issue. (The government also argued the case did not present the issue properly.)

Wilderness Society: Holding

The Ninth Circuit squarely abandoned its restrictions on intervention of right in NEPA cases in a unanimous opinion written by Judge Silverman. Indeed, that court forthrightly admitted the many errors underlying its prior standard:

The "federal defendant" rule runs counter to all of the above standards. In applying a technical prohibition on intervention of right on the merits of all NEPA cases, it eschews practical and equitable considerations and ignores our traditionally liberal policy in favor of intervention. It also fails to recognize the very real possibility that private parties seeking to intervene in NEPA cases may, in certain circumstances, demonstrate an interest "protectable under some law," and a relationship between that interest and the claims at issue. Courts should be permitted to conduct this inquiry on a case-by-case basis, rather than automatically prohibiting intervention of right on the merits in all NEPA cases.

Wilderness Society, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 734, at *14. The court further acknowledge that the rule conflicted with virtually every other court of appeals that had addressed the issue. Id. at *16-18.

Abandoning its prior rule, the Ninth Circuit substituted a standard under which "the operative inquiry should be, as in all cases, whether ‘the interest is protectable under some law,’ and whether ‘there is a relationship between the legally protected interest and the claims at issue.’" Id. at *5. Importantly, the court held that "[a] putative intervenor will generally demonstrate a sufficient interest for intervention of right in a NEPA action, as in all cases, if "it will suffer a practical impairment of its interests as a result of the pending litigation." Id. at *19. The Ninth Circuit therefore vacated and remanded so that the district court could reevaluate the recreation groups’ motion under its new standard. Id. at *18-19.

Implications Going Forward

Most obviously, Wilderness Society will permit intervention of right far more broadly in NEPA actions by removing the prior categorical bar and substituting a liberal standard that favors intervention. In addition, Wilderness Society should stop and reverse the trend of district courts precluding intervention of right in suits involving other environmental statutes or denying permissive intervention categorically in NEPA suits.

Wilderness Society should therefore allow much broader participation by individuals and groups that are likely to be affected by litigation. This is critically important as in many instances this will allow parties and counsel with greater familiarity and involvement in specific projects during the regulatory compliance stage (such as development of a proposed project’s EIS) to contribute to resolving the litigation. And this in turn should lead to better judicial decision making, consistent with the purposes underlying Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24. See County of Fresno v. Andrus, 622 F.2d 436, 438 (9th Cir. 1980) (the interest test is primarily a practical guide to disposing of lawsuits by involving as many apparently concerned persons as is compatible with efficiency and due process).

In some instances, Wilderness Society will permit private parties to advance arguments that the government was not inclined to make. In recent litigation concerning genetically modified sugarbeets, for example, the government declined to raise a laches defense despite plaintiffs’ nearly three-year long delay in filing suit. See Center for Food Safety v. Vilsack, No. 08-484, 2009 WL 3047227, at *9 n.4 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 21, 2009). In that case, while the owner of the intellectual property and growers of the crop applied for intervention, the district court categorically denied both intervention of right and permissive intervention — allowing the permit holders to participate only as amici, who were not permitted to take discovery on or otherwise pursue the laches defense. In other instances, this may take the form of advancing different statutory or record-based arguments.

The Wilderness Society decision may also affect the tendency of district courts to bifurcate NEPA actions into merits and remedies phases. This approach paralleled the Ninth Circuit bifurcation previously recognized for intervention, which gave the intervenor a clear role in the remedy, if any, that should be applied if a NEPA violation was found. Instead, district courts may increasingly ask for briefing on both merits and potential remedies issues to be combined, although intervenors should be vigilant in pressing for a remedies phase if necessary given prevailing case law. See, e.g., Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 130 S. Ct. 2743, 2756 (2010) ("The traditional four-factor test applies when a plaintiff seeks a permanent injunction to remedy a NEPA violation"); Northern Cheyenne Tribe v. Hodel, 851 F.2d 1152, 1158 (9th Cir. 1988) (NEPA "does not show a congressional intent to foreclose equitable balancing by a court enforcing its requirements"); High Sierra Hikers Ass’n v. Blackwell, 381 F.3d 886, 898-99 (9th Cir. 2004) (affirming limited, "fair and balanced" NEPA injunction where district court expressly "balanced the environmental and economic concerns").5

Another major impact is that intervenors will now be able to appeal of the merits of NEPA decisions even when the government declines to file its own appeal. From a private project proponent’s perspective, this can be critically important because the result of a government decision to not appeal from an adverse decision may be years of additional NEPA review and associated significant costs. Indeed, reversing a litigation loss can mean the difference in a successful project versus an abandoned one.

This change may have other foreseeable consequences: (1) there may be a noticeable increase in the Ninth Circuit’s NEPA docket, and (2) the government’s ability to act strategically by restricting the NEPA cases it appeals to the Ninth Circuit will likely be diminished. As a result, more NEPA cases may reach the Supreme Court on the merits. Notably, two of the government’s recent victories in Supreme Court environmental cases were in cases where intervenors successfully sought Supreme Court review over the government’s opposition. See Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 130 S. Ct. 2943 (2010);6 Entergy Corp. v. Riverkeeper, Inc., 129 S. Ct. 1498 (2009).

Now that the Ninth Circuit has abandoned the "federal defendant" rule, project proponents can expect to more significantly and directly influence NEPA and other environmental litigation in order to protect their interests.

Future of Southwest’s Mexican Gray Wolf Uncertain

2011-03-02T06:42:00.000-07:00

A program to reestablish the Mexican gray wolf in New Mexico and Arizona narrowly dodged a defunding proposal recently. With only 50 of the wolves living in the wild, what kind of protection will they receive?

By Bobby Magill, 3-02-11

Like many outfitters and ranchers in Catron County, New Mexico — one of the counties of the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 70s and 80s — Tom Klumker wants Mexican gray wolves out of the Gila National Forest, where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been releasing the endangered wolves into the wild since 1998.
“They’ve been successful at wiping out a bunch of livestock and hurting a bunch of ranchers,” Klumker said. “As a result, they’ve made a big difference on the livestock industry in Catron County. I don’t think we need them. The early settlers worked very hard to get rid of both the wolf and the grizzly for a very good reason.”
Klumker, based in Glenwood, N.M., is a board member of the vehemently anti-wolf Americans for the Preservation of Western Environment, or APWE, and the Southwest Director of the New Mexico Council of Outfitters and Guides, a group now part of a new Fish and Wildlife Service Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Planning Team. The team will create a new recovery plan that may eventually lead the way to a healthy and sustainable population of Mexican wolves in New Mexico and Arizona.
Whether it’s in New Mexico or the Northern Rockies, efforts to restore native gray wolf populations must face ranchers and sportsmen worried and angry that wolves will prey on their cattle and run elk into places difficult to hunt. And, just as in Montana, whose Democratic senators have introduced a bill to remove federal Endangered Species Act protections from the gray wolf of the Northern Rockies and where Gov. Brian Schweitzer declared in February that the state will not prosecute ranchers who kill wolves that attack livestock, efforts to help the recovery of the gray wolf’s southern counterpart face numerous political challenges.
Smaller and lighter than its Northern Rockies cousin, the Mexican gray wolf is one of five subspecies of gray wolf native to North America. Today, Mexican wolves, which roam the Gila and Apache-Sitgreaves national forests in western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, are the controversial subjects of the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program, which began after the species was listed as endangered in 1976.
So far, about the Fish and Wildlife Service has released about 90 wolves since 1998, according to agency data. Today, about 50 Mexican wolves exist in the wild.
Originally, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s goal was to have 100 wolves in the wild by 2006, but because of conflicts with ranchers and the broiling politics surrounding the Mexican wolf’s reintroduction, that goal has yet to be met.
“The idea is to get enough wolves out there where we can step back, get them de-listed, and they can generate their own self-sustaining population, and the states will then have management of them,” said Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Tom Buckley.
The Mexican wolf recovery area straddles the eastern reach of the Mogollon Rim country, where the rim disappears into the remote Blue Range in Catron County, one of New Mexico’s biggest and least populated counties. The lobos’ new turf includes the rugged Gila and Aldo Leopold wilderness areas — together totaling more than 750,000 acres of wilderness broken only by a single unpaved road — and the Blue Range Wilderness and Primitive areas of New Mexico and Arizona.
The deep sense of wildness there is as legendary as the wilderness areas’ founder and namesake — Aldo Leopold, the “Sand County Almanac” author who in the 1920s demanded the U.S. Forest Service protect the Gila region as the nation’s first wilderness area 40 years before the passage of the Wilderness Act.
In those days, there were still wild Mexican wolves roaming the Gila. By the 1970s, they were nearly extinct.
The Mexican wolf was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1976 and efforts began to reintroduce the wolf into New Mexico and Arizona not to restore balance to the ecosystem, but to simply return an endangered species to the wild as the law demands, said ReWilding Institute carnivore biologist Dave Parsons, a former Fish and Wildlife Service Mexican wolf recovery coordinator.
But the absence of the wolf since the mid-20th Century took its toll on the balance of the ecosystem, he said.
In Yellowstone National Park, the return of the gray wolf has given elk a long-absent predator, providing for healthier aspen stands and riparian vegetation and an ecosystem that supports more bird species than before, he said.
“What we’re seeing in the Gila is very similar, and the riparian vegetation is pretty well gone in a lot of places,” Parsons said.
Researchers working in Yellowstone studied the Mexican wolf reintroduction area in the Southwest and discovered a “reverse trophic cascade where the ecosystem has simplified in the absence of the wolf,” Parsons said. Once some of the wolves were returned to the wild, the health of aspen groves began to improve.
But cattle growers aren’t impressed.
Caren Cowan, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, said the lagging Mexican wolf numbers show the program isn’t working, especially as ranchers continue to deal with wolves killing cattle.
Officially, there were 185 confirmed cattle depredations from wolves from 1998 through 2009 in New Mexico and Arizona, said Arizona Department of Game and Fish wolf biologist Jeff Dolphin.
But the real number of depredations, Cowan said, is difficult to nail down because many ranchers fear the level of proof needed to confirm that a wolf killed a cow is so high that they don’t bother to report a suspected killing.
With the Fish and Wildlife Service’s population goals unmet as it dealt with livestock industry concern about widespread cattle depredations, the future of the recovery program remains uncertain.
In February, the program survived an attempt by U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., to de-fund the program for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year after his amendment was dropped from the continuing resolution that will fund the government for the rest of the year.
In November, a group of 13 Democratic congressmen, including Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Rep. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to release 22 captive Mexican wolves into the wild immediately, create a new Mexican wolf recovery plan and complete a draft environmental impact statement allowing changes to the program’s rules that will ensure the Mexican wolf’s full recovery.
Their letter to Salazar claims the Fish and Wildlife Service has been ignoring scientists’ recommendations for the health of the wolves, jeopardizing their viability in the wild.
Cowan said Pearce, long an opponent of the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program, has championed the cattle growers’ cause and wants to see the program ended immediately.
Pearce’s press secretary, Eric Layer, said Pearce is concerned mainly with cutting federal spending and reducing the national debt, but he doesn’t know if Pearce will attempt to de-fund the program again as Congress takes up President Obama’s 2012 budget request.
Though the politics of the program may be daunting, some important biological questions vital to the Mexican wolf’s recovery still need to be answered, particularly: How many wolves does it take for the species to fully recover?
“Would it be 100, 200, 500 wolves on the landscape?” said Buckley of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The new Mexican wolf recovery planning team will attempt to answer that question because a previous plan for the recovery program didn’t, he said.
A 1982 Fish and Wildlife Service plan for the Mexican wolf failed to specify recovery criteria, according to the agency’s 2010 Mexican Wolf Conservation Assessment, which concludes that the wolves now in the wild are threatened by illegal shooting and the lack of an adequate recovery plan.
On Feb. 22, the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Planning Team, composed of a group of cattlemen, hunters, conservationists and representatives of a handful of state and federal agencies, met for the first time in Albuquerque to begin the two-year process of drawing up a revised and more detailed recovery plan.
In 1982, “there were no Mexican wolves in the wild anywhere, and it wasn’t foreseen that there would be,” said Eva Sargent, who represents Defenders of Wildlife on the recovery planning team. “The idea for this team is to write a proper recovery plan with goals of how to get there and de-listing criteria.”
Cowan, who is a member of the recovery planning team, said she hopes the team will create a recovery plan that will make ranchers’ needs a top priority.
“I hope that we accomplish some sort of situation that allows ranchers and livestock producers to stay on the ground,” she said. “How do we do that? I certainly don’t have any bright ideas on that at this point in time. It’s vital that we allow the ranching industry to survive in that area.”
But the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the most zealous voices for wolf recovery, claims the team is stacked against conservation interests.
“The selection of participants was heavily influenced by politics,” said Michael Robinson, conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Our organization is the reason that Mexican wolves are in the wild now. By any stretch of the term ‘stakeholder,’ we qualify, but we’ve been excluded because we believe very strongly in upholding the science. There are others on the team who take the same view, but they are very few.”
The team is full of well-qualified scientists, he said, and he hopes wolf biology won’t get watered down on the team amid ranchers’ concerns.
Even though Cowan and other ranchers are participating on the team, another group of ranchers, led by APWE and the Gila Livestock Growers, hopes a judge will stop any effort to continue the Mexican wolf recovery program.
Last year, those groups and Otero and Catron counties filed a lawsuit aiming for a court ruling allowing ranchers to kill Mexican wolves they believed were responsible for livestock depredations. The lawsuit claimed that no problem wolves had been removed from the wild since 2007, and the ranchers want the right to defend their cattle from attack.
Part of the ranchers’ anger stems from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s abandonment of a “three strikes” rule in 2009, which allowed the agency to kill or trap wolves that had attacked livestock three times.
Cowan’s group didn’t join the lawsuit because it felt it was time to give up on taking its cause to the courtroom.
“New Mexico Cattle Growers has already participated in two lawsuits on this issue and we lost them both and we didn’t feel we had the funds to devote to another lawsuit in that venue,” Cowan said.
In February, the rancher groups and Catron and Otero counties withdrew their suit on a technicality, but they’re planning to re-file soon.
“It was a fatal flaw on our part,” Klumker said. Environmentalists “were really crowing and happy that we dropped the case, but we’re going to slam them again. We’re going to file it right back at the dirty bastards.”
Bobby Magill can be found online at www.bobbymagill.com.

2011-03-01T16:45:00.001-07:00

Western Watersheds Project Victory Stops Corporate Ranching on 450,000 Acres of Public Land in Southern Idaho
~ Jon Marvel

Friends,

On February 28, 2011 Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the United States District Court for Idaho agreed with Western Watersheds Project and reimposed an injunction stopping livestock grazing on 17 grazing allotments covering over 450,000 acres of public land in the Jarbidge Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management in southern Idaho.

The allotments closed under this injunction contain some of the most important remaining habitat for sage grouse, desert bighorn sheep, the threatened plant species slickspot peppergrass as well as native redband trout, pygmy rabbits and pronghorn antelope.

Jarbidge BLM Allotments closed by the decision .
Click to view interactive map

Western Watersheds Project welcomes this Court Order (pdf) and looks forward to the Bureau of Land Management finally reforming its illegal actions that have led to this outcome.

Western Watersheds Project sends thanks to our excellent legal counsel in this matter Todd Tucci of Advocates For The West in Boise and to WWP Biodiversity Director Katie Fite for years of hard and often unrewarded work in the Jarbidge Field Office.

Thank you !

Here is Western Watersheds Project's News Release on this important victory:

Western Watersheds Project Wins A Federal Court Injunction Stopping Livestock Grazing on over 450,000 Acres of Public Land in Southern Idaho

Greater sage grouse, pygmy rabbit and Slickspot peppergrass have won a reprieve from livestock grazing which has decimated their populations and destroyed their habitat. Late yesterday, Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the federal District for Idaho held BLM, various Simplot corporate entities, and other corporate ranching operations to the terms of an earlier agreement, and again enjoined livestock grazing on 17 livestock grazing allotments in southern Idaho.

“Instead of negotiating a reasonable compromise to allow some grazing to continue in these areas, BLM, Simplot and other ranchers gambled and they lost,” said Todd C. Tucci, senior attorney for Advocates for the West, who is representing plaintiff Western Watersheds in the case. “We have been seeking common ground for the eight months, and their idea of compromise was complete capitulation. We are gratified that the court held BLM and Simplot to terms of our agreement.”

In 2005, the federal court enjoined livestock grazing on 28 grazing allotments, after finding that Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, and the BLM’s Fundamentals of Rangeland Health. Western Watersheds Project, ranchers and the BLM then entered into an agreement allowing some ongoing grazing and requiring the BLM to develop a new Resource Management Plan (RMP) for the Jarbidge Field Office as well as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for that plan. The EIS would examine the impacts of grazing on public lands in the Jarbidge Field Office of the BLM. In the interim five years, BLM has failed to issue the required EIS and RMP.

“The sage-grouse populations in the Jarbidge Field Office are in collapse,” said Jon Marvel, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project. “This reprieve – which comes at the start of the sage-grouse nesting period – will help ensure that adequate habitat exists for this keystone species. BLM cannot keep allowing the same grazing over and over, and expect a different result,” said Marvel.

Recent data from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game shows that sage-grouse populations in the Jarbidge Field Office are in a free fall, with declines of over 90% since 2006 alone. For example, in the Browns Bench area of the Field Office, total male sage-grouse lek counts are down from 185 in 2006 to 29 in 2010, and some areas are in an even steeper decline.

“It is long past time for these corporate ranching operations to take responsibility for the impacts of their grazing on wildlife habitat throughout the Jarbidge Field Office,” said Katie Fite, Biodiversity Director for Western Watersheds Project. “These corporations have refused to modify their grazing practices to adapt to the needs of these imperiled wildlife species, even in the face of undisputed scientific evidence,” said Fite.

Maybe, just maybe, this injunction will restore some order and balance to public lands grazing in the Jarbidge Field Office,” said Tucci. “We can only hope.”

#####

Read the Decision

Judge rules against BLM in grazing appeal

2011-02-22T04:14:00.000-07:00

An Interior Department judge has ruled in favor of a conservation group's appeal of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's grazing plan for a large swath of eastern Nevada.

Administrative Law Judge Andrew Pearlstein last week granted Western Watershed Projects' motion for a summary judgment in its appeal of the BLM Ely district's grazing plan for 1.3 million acres of public land in White Pine County.

Jon Marvel, the group's executive director, praised the ruling, saying it makes clear that the BLM is legally required to consider management alternatives that reduce or remove livestock grazing where conflicts with wildlife exist.

He said domestic sheep grazing permitted on eight affected allotments threatens the spread of deadly disease to Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. Sheep grazing also affects sage grouse, pygmy rabbits, soils and vegetation, he added.

"We look forward to reviewing BLM's court-ordered analysis of the benefit to wildlife that removing livestock grazing on these 1.3 million acres of public land promises," Marvel said in a statement.

BLM spokesman Chris Hanefeld said the agency hasn't decided whether to appeal the ruling. If the agency fails to appeal, it must prepare a new environmental assessment for the eight allotments that addresses such alternatives as reducing or removing livestock.

"I don't know what direction we'll take yet," Hanefeld told The Associated Press. "This sort of ruling doesn't happen very often, but it's not unprecedented."

In his decision, Pearlstein noted the need for BLM to apply a "rule of reason" in considering alternatives in its environmental assessments, particularly in cases with competing resource values such as wildlife.

"BLM's extreme bias toward livestock grazing and its mismanagement of public lands in the Ely district has continued to ignore livestock grazing impacts to native wildlife on these remote public lands for long enough," said Katie Fite, biodiversity director for Western Watersheds Project.

Asbill wants feds to quit seizing cattle

2011-02-14T04:40:00.000-07:00

CARLSBAD — The federal government has been called many things, with the latest being "cattle rustlers."

Sen. Vernon Asbill, R-Carlsbad, has introduced legislation that would prevent the federal government from seizing cattle on federal leased land when the rancher's lease is revoked as a result of a dispute between a federal agency and the lease holder.

Senate Bill 13 requires that livestock shipped or driven out of district - or out of state - be inspected by a state brand inspector. The inspector must make a complete inspection record that will remain on file for three years. Livestock may not change hands prior to issuance of the brand inspector's certificate.

The bill also addresses the circumstance of livestock seized by the federal government. It prevents a state brand inspector from issuing a brand inspection certificate for livestock seized by federal land managers unless the owner consents, the owner is unknown, or the federal government has obtained a court order from a court of competent jurisdiction.

According to the Office of the Courts, "A court of competent jurisdiction is simply a court that has jurisdiction to hear the claim brought before it."

"The federal government will not able to seize livestock on federally leased land in New Mexico," Asbill said. "This so-called cattle rustling by the feds will not happen in New Mexico. The feds will have to abide by this new law and stop the confiscation of livestock without permission.

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"Yes, there are cases in southwestern New Mexico where this has happened. This bill is meant to ensure due process is followed by the federal government in cases where disputes occur between those who are leasing and the government."

In an opinion from the Office of the Court pertaining to SB 13, livestock inspectors must obtain a warrant from a magistrate court prior to seizing cruelly treated livestock, but federal agencies are not generally involved in this type of case.

The AOC further states that although the federal government may adopt a position regarding the appropriate court to issue a court order, the proposed statute indicates that the federal government is to initiate proceedings to obtain the court order.

State Livestock Board officials say that current legislation is vague regarding what it should do in the event of a proposed shipment of a citizen's livestock while in dispute. Asbill's bill, they say, will remedy the situation.

Wood Houghton, Eddy County Extension Service agriculture agent, said Asbill's legislation will give state livestock inspectors authority to keep cattle in the state until the dispute between the permitee and the federal government resolves the issues or the cattle are removed by court order.

Laurie Kincaid, rancher and former Eddy County commissioner, said, "They (federal government) should have to get a court order if they are going to seize somebody's livestock. They just can't arbitrarily go and get the livestock and sell them."

Kincaid and Houghton said Asbill's legislation is a result of case several years ago that was bitterly fought against the U.S. Forest Service by a rancher with federal leased lands in the Gila National Forest.

Following an environmental impact statement and record of decision protecting the Gila trout, the rancher, Kit Laney, saw his permit to graze cattle on his federal lease drop from 1,188 to 300 head. The case ended in court, and the court re-affirmed the Forest Service's decision to revoke Laney's grazing permit.

Laney challenged the system and put cattle back on the leased allotment. The Forest Service hired a private company to round up the cattle and sell them at auction. However, New Mexico cattle yards would not take the cattle. Eventually, the cattle were transported to Oklahoma and sold without permission or legal proceedings.

USDA Forest Rule Aimed at Climate Change, Jobs

2011-02-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today released a final proposed rule to protect national forests from threats including climate change, while promoting job growth in rural areas.

The planning rule aims to increase protection for the 193 million acres (78 million hectares) of forests and grassland supervised by the U.S. Forest Service, the USDA said in a statement. The government will also require that the best available scientific data be used in making plans for land and water resources. Local information would also have to be taken into account.

The rule “will provide the tools to the Forest Service to make our forests more resilient to many threats, including pests, catastrophic fire and climate change,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters on a conference call.

While the USDA looks to seek further protection for plants and animals, Vilsack said the rule does not favor any one special interest. He said the “full suite” of multiple uses would be considered, including grazing, timber, energy and mineral interests.

The plan is open for public comment until May 16. The Forest Service is an agency of the USDA.
Bart Semcer, the senior representative of the Sierra Club in Washington, said the rule appears to be a “step in the right direction.”

“We’re pleased to see that are taking a look at climate change,” Semcer said in a telephone interview. “We’re looking forward to working with the agency to make the rule as strong as possible.”

To contact the reporters on this story: William McQuillen in Washington at bmcquillen@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net.

Oregon ranchers fear financial hit from court-ordered loss of grazing territory

2011-01-31T03:38:00.000-07:00

Rancher Ken Brooks is standing in his ranch yard near the ghost town of Fox , his eyes sweeping the timber-covered Malheur National Forest that holds the key to his future and that of 18 other Grant County ranching families.

"They're all pretty angry," he said. "We're all in the same boat. We're unsure what we're going to do. And most of all, we're unsure of the reason we have to do it."

A Dec. 30 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty prohibits the ranchers from turning their cattle out on seven summertime U.S. Forest Service grazing allotments to protect threatened Middle Columbia River steelhead.

The latest decision in a years-long battle over the effects of grazing on stream habitat bans cows on 16 percent of the 1.7 million-acre forest, which has one the largest grazing programs of any forest in the Pacific Northwest.

The ban starts in June and would affect almost 4,000 mother cows and their annual calf crop valued at $2.8 million, ranchers and forest officials said.

Environmentalists who filed the steelhead lawsuit said the Forest Service and National Marine Fisheries Service must do a better job enforcing laws to preserve stream banks from roaming cattle.

"The court makes clear that the agencies have to make steelhead protection their highest priority," said Brent Fenty , executive director of the 1,400-member Oregon Natural Desert Association.

But outside the courtroom, Grant County is bracing for the economic repercussions, said county Commissioner Boyd Briton.

"There are families involved, there are employees," Briton said. "All those cows, the feed stores, the Les Schwab tire store downtown, the grocery stores, it affects all of us."

The sprawling, mountainous county has a single stoplight, no rail or interstate highway access, only three fast-food restaurants, one theater in an old Rebekah Lodge and a mere 7,500 residents on land twice the size of Delaware.

The county already is coping with unemployment higher than 14 percent. The 19 ranchers affected by the judge's decision represent about 20 percent of those who hold grazing permits on the Malheur.

The overall hit from the ban, perhaps 60 jobs, is the equivalent of losing roughly 7,000 jobs in Multnomah County, said Mark Webb, Grant County commission chairman.

Brooks, whose family has ranched between Fox and Mount Vernon for a century, expects some of his neighbors to quit ranching. He would have to reduce his herd from 450 to 150 cows, he said.

A reduction that dramatic would force him to lay off his two cowhands, he said, including one who's worked for the family since 1975.

The judge's ruling surprised John Grubel, a Forest Service district ranger in John Day, and Spencer Hovekamp, a branch chief with the National Marine Fisheries Service in La Grande.

Both said ranchers have made significant strides in the last two years toward meeting government stream bank standards.

Hovekamp, a fish biologist who keeps track of John Day River system steelhead, said recent adult returns have been high -- mostly due to favorable ocean conditions and not, as some ranchers claim, owing to improved range management. Ranchers also blame habitat problems on wild horses and elk.

Still, they "are putting in a lot of work" riding the allotments on horseback, monitoring cattle, repairing fences and shutting gates left open by other forest users so cows and calves stay out of areas where they aren't supposed to be, said Jeff Shinn, a Forest Service spokesman in John Day.

Hovekamp also noted that some problems are out of ranchers' control, including logging reductions and wildfire suppression that contribute to canopy shade that leaves less grass for grazing.

"Where the grass remains lush and growing is near streams," he said, and that's where grazing has the biggest potential impact on fish.

The grazing ban doesn't leave them many other options, ranchers said.

Private summertime pasture is relatively scarce. More than 60 percent of Grant County is federally managed, and ranches tend to be at low elevations and devoted to summertime hay production to feed cattle in winter.

Brooks, for example, owns 9,000 acres, but he needs to set aside some to produce 800 tons of hay, and much of the rest is in parcels scattered among federal allotments. Grazing those tracts while keeping his cows off enjoined federal lands would mean building 18 miles of fence at a cost of $10,000 per mile, he said. He can't afford that.

The one hope for ranchers is if a new biological opinion can be drafted by the Forest Service and approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service before June, showing that cattle can graze on those allotments without harming fish runs.

But Hovekamp said getting that done in time "doesn't seem likely" with a large and complicated grazing program. A more reasonable deadline would be June 2012, he said.

The quandary for ranchers is what to do now:

Should they hold onto their herds, gambling that they'll find summer pasture or that the judge will relent on the timetable? Or should they sell?

"The price is highest for cow-calf pairs in January and February," Hovekamp said.

-- Richard Cockle

Grazing battles

U.S. District Judge Anser Haggerty's ruling is the latest in a series of legal squabbles over the Middle and Lower John Day River and its North Fork and Middle Fork subbasins.

2003: The Oregon Natural Desert Association, Center for Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds sued the National Marine Fisheries Service, claiming Middle Columbia steelhead -- federally listed as threatened in 1999 -- have declined below historic levels because of stream bank damage caused by livestock.

2008: A ruling by Haggerty halted grazing on 100,000 acres of the Malheur National Forest.

June 2009: Haggerty reversed the 2008 order and denied a request by environmentalists to halt grazing on another 200,000 acres on the Malheur. The reversal allowed livestock to return to the Murderer's Creek and Lower Middle Fork John Day River allotments. The judge also allowed grazing on other allotments that environmentalists wanted off-limits to cattle. At the same time, ranchers and the U.S. Forest Service agreed to rest the so-called Long Creek allotment from grazing.

2010: Haggerty closes grazing on seven Malheur allotments encompassing 283,000 acres, starting in June 2011.

2011: The Hells Canyon Preservation Council and Oregon Natural Desert Association file a separate, major lawsuit challenging the U.S. Forest Service's renewal of grazing permits on the Malheur, Wallowa-Whitman and Umatilla national forests. Environmentalists charge that grazing was improperly reauthorized on more than 250,000 acres of public lands without thoroughly assessing the effects and without adequate public disclosure, among other things.

Powell raising bar at NM Land Office

2011-01-30T20:54:00.001-07:00

SANTA FE (AP) - What matters to New Mexico Land Commissioner Ray Powell is sunshine.

He's quick to trade in his undecorated office for a few moments outside under the northern New Mexico sun.

But Powell's obsession with sunshine goes beyond being warmed up by the golden rays on this winter day. He's more interested in the kind of sunshine that will bring openness and transparency to what goes on at the State Land Office. He wants to restore confidence in the agency, protect state trust lands and continue to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars each year for public schools and other beneficiaries.

"Our objective is to put as much sunshine as we possibly can on these projects and let them live or die by their merits," he told The Associated Press during an interview. "The way we inoculate ourselves from future problems is just to have sunshine on everything that we do."

The Land Office during the previous administration was embroiled in legal battles over the exchange of trust land for private land around White Peak in northeastern New Mexico and other questions were raised about appraisals, commercial land leases and the lack of analysis on some projects.

Former Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons has defended his administration, but just this week the New Mexico Supreme Court rejected two of the White Peak land swaps that were orchestrated by Lyons.

Supporters of the swaps had argued that they would improve public access and resolve management issues. But critics turned out in force, marching on the state Capitol with protest signs and calling on lawmakers to do something to keep the state from getting what they considered to be a raw deal.

Since taking office Jan. 1, Powell and his team have been reviewing the office's policies and have placed moratoriums on pending land exchanges and planning and development leases to ensure something like White Peak doesn't happen again.

"The whole point is to look at what we're doing and how we're doing it, and if we start finding some things that just don't make sense, then we need to really deliberate on it," Powell said, likening it to his veterinary practice. "If something is bleeding, you address it or you lose the patient. We don't want to lose the opportunities, but we want to make sure the opportunities are dealt with in the most appropriate way."

Every time he thinks about the trust land that could have been lost, Powell said his blood pressure rises. Once state land is traded or sold, it's gone along with the opportunity to earn more revenue for trust beneficiaries, he said.

"We want to assure the public that their public lands are going to be there for the future and are being used in a manner that keeps them healthy and productive," he said. "I'm looking at the trust as something in perpetuity. So when we optimize our resources, we're looking at it generationally."

The Land Office, considered one of the most powerful offices in state government, wields control over more than 13 million acres of mineral estate and 9 million acres of surface estate with the potential to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Leases, rents and royalties from oil and gas, renewable energy projects, commercial developments, farms and ranches make up a large chunk of the annual revenue funneled into state coffers. During the last fiscal year, the office collected $420 million and a total of more than $3 billion over the past seven years, with most of that coming from oil and gas operations.

Most revenue generated by the office goes to trust beneficiaries — public schools, universities, hospitals, correctional facilities, water projects and public building repair and construction.

Powell, who first served as land commissioner from 1993-2002, expects to bring in more than $500 million this year.

That's money that will not have to come from the taxpayers, he said.

Oil and gas will continue to be a large source of revenue into the foreseeable future, but Powell is looking for innovative ways to bolster economic development and insulate the trust from the hills and valleys that often plague the oil and gas market.

During Powell's first stint in the Land Office, he helped craft lease agreements that resulted in state lands being used for industrial and technological parks and a massive planned commercial and residential development on the southern edge of Albuquerque.

Sunshine will help the office make more of those deals, Powell said, because the communities that will be directly impacted can weigh in on whether a proposal is worth pursuing or offer ideas for making it better.

He also vowed that decisions will be based on the legal and scientific expertise at the Land Office, not by a handful of people in the front office.

"The secondary and tertiary benefits outside the money you generate are enormous," he said. "That's why this thought process is so important and only comes by collaboration, not by hiding the ball and doing deals in the dead of night."

In his 60 years, Powell acknowledged he has become more cynical. But spending the last few years working with children on social service projects through the Jane Goodall Institute has given him a renewed perspective that will come in handy at the Land Office.

He talked about the 10- and 12-year-olds he met who, against odds, raised money for feeding the homeless or helping animals.

"My first instinct was to say 'Too big. Too grand. You can't do that.' But these young people just took on these projects because they felt it was the right thing to do for their communities," he said. "To me, that's nourishing. That's a sense of empowerment."

Rather than being powerful, Powell said he sees the Land Office as having the ability to empower local communities.

"Being in this office, you get more and more excited because you have so many opportunities to influence things in a positive way," he said.

'We Will Take a Stand'

2011-01-28T04:06:00.000-07:00

Cattlemen, new sheriff dig in heels, vow to renew fight against Forest Service

By Andrew Kasper
SUN Staff Writer

The federal Forest Service shot down earlier this month appeals from cattlemen on the Alamosa and Jarita Mesa grazing allotments that sought to preserve grazing rights the cattlemen say pre-date the Forest Service’s jurisdiction.

The Forest Service passed a decision to cut the number of cattle allowed to graze on the allotments by 18 percent over the next five years. The appeal, disputing the reductions proposed by El Rito District Head Ranger Diana Trujillo, was denied Jan. 13 by Carson National Forest Supervisor Kendall Clark. Clark upheld Trujillo’s decision to follow the recommendations of an “environmental assessment” of the area that recommended the “unsustainable” grazing numbers be reduced to lessen the ecological impacts on the land.

Neither Trujillo nor Clark returned calls for this article.

In the wake of the denial, Rio Arriba County ranchers are considering further appeals which could take them to the federal Forest Service’s regional supervisor in Albuquerque or even its national headquarters in Washington, D.C.

County Clerk Moises Morales, a member of the Northern New Mexico Stockman’s Association who owns 84 cattle in Canjilon, was angered by the decision. Although Canjilon, an area adjacent to El Rito, is not affected by the proposed reductions, Morales has threatened marches and protests against what he considers unilateral action by the Forest Service.

“We must start a march,” Morales said. “These guys think they’re gods.”

Rancher Sebedeo Chacon, who said he stands to lose 26 cattle in the reductions, has demanded the resignation of Trujillo. He has a petition from last February with over 500 signatures supporting her resignation after Trujillo and local ranchers butted heads over her management of the District.

And some cattlemen want outright defiance of the federal rules by local law enforcement. Forest Service rangers need to be deputized by Sheriff Tommy Rodella to have law enforcement authority in Rio Arriba County, according to statute.

Carlos Salazar, president of the Association, suggested Rodella consider snubbing federal agents and simply not enforce the reductions — a proposition in which Rodella expressed tentative interest.

“We are researching it, and within the parameters of the law, we will take a stand,” Rodella said.

Rodella said that policy differs from that of the former sheriff. Unlike Joe Mascareñas, Rodella said he will not deputize federal agents. Instead Rodella said he wants his own deputies to carry out enforcement on federal lands.

“It doesn’t make sense to deputize federal agents with no oversight,” Rodella said.

At its Jan. 7 meeting the County Commission expressed support for strengthening the County’s role in dealing with the federal government. County Commissioner Felipe Martinez said he wants to pass an ordinance that at least “brings the County to the table” when dealing with the federal government. Martinez said the possible ordinance may resemble one used in Otero County, but specifics have not yet been hashed out.

Rodella said he will uphold any ordinance passed by the Commission, but said in the meantime the stockmen’s problems should be addressed by a Congressional delegation.

David Sanchez, an Association Board member who supported Rodella’s bid for sheriff last spring, agreed.

“We believe the only way we’re going to stop this is through Congressional hearings and presenting the issues to the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez and the Association have already sent a letter to U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) on Jan. 10 calling for a hearing and listing the sequence of perceived injustices done to the ranchers by the Forest Service. He said there were over 2,000 permittees with cattle on federal lands in New Mexico before the 1970s; now there are roughly 600.

Sanchez hopes a Congressional hearing will at least call attention to their grievances, but said the dispute never should have progressed this far. He claimed Trujillo’s most recent decision on the Alamosa and Jarita Mesa allotments was a personal vendetta against the cattleman for a petition seeking her removal last February.

Trujillo wrote in a document outlining her decision to impose the reductions that although the reductions would appear to have a negative effect on the permittees, the expected result is a more sustainable grazing environment that would be resilient to changing weather conditions and beneficial for coming generations.

Chacon, a fifth-generation cattleman on the Jarita Mesa, said his family has grazed cattle on the land since before the Forest Service, or even the state of New Mexico, existed.

Chacon and Sanchez also argued Trujillo is not a good fit for the region and its unique, old culture of ranchers.

“She’s a very good speaker,” Chacon said. “She has a nice voice and she’s smart, but she can’t even bridle a horse.”

Chacon argued the reductions couldn’t have come at a less opportune time in light of the recent economic downturn. After the announcement of the reductions, in search of compensation, he and other ranchers from the Jarita Mesa and Alamosa Livestock Associations sent a $925,000 bill to Clark, Trujillo, the County Commissioners, former governor Bill Richardson, and other politicians.

The bill is based on amounts the ranchers calculate the two communities will lose due to the loss of 185 total cattle. Most likely the cattle that are removed from the federal land will be sent to slaughter because they are too expensive to sustain on the ranchers’ own lands, Sanchez said.

Chacon said they have received no response to the bill, and he fears the worst is yet to come.

“(The reductions are) 18 percent now,” Chacon said. “In 10 years they’ll reduce another 20 percent. There’s no hope for this community.”

Wilderness - Schools Suffer Under Obama’s Land Grabs

2011-01-27T17:29:00.001-07:00

By Rebekah Rast -

“The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt

There has not been a leader of this country that didn’t stress the importance of educating America’s youth.
Even Obama, very recently in his State of the Union address, acknowledged, “Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school education. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree. And so the question is whether all of us — as citizens, and as parents — are willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed.”
It is clear that education in this country has always been a priority.
Troubling and a bit ironic then is the fact that some states are battling with the federal government over revenue sources for education. These states aren’t in a fight to receive any handouts from the federal government; instead they are struggling to keep a revenue source that belongs to them — their land.
It wasn’t always this way. The Founding Fathers designated special territories in each state that were purposed to support schools. A short video by CLASS, Children’s Land Alliance Supporting Schools, explains that states received these lands as they entered statehood and more than 134 million acres of land were granted by Congress to support schools. By 2005, about half of all the states, mainly eastern states, had lost their school lands and funds due to mismanagement, but the remaining states have grown their funds to a total of $35 billion, compared to $210 million in 1905. Only 45 million acres of school trust lands remain in the U.S.
Though each state with a remaining trust fund handles it differently, they are all dependent upon the profits of the land to help support education. Revenues off these lands are accumulated from permits that allow grazing, ranching, farming, mining and hunting and in some cases involve selling the land to a developer for the building of a residential area or mall.
These states have made wise investments over the past century to ensure future generations have a properly funded education, but it hasn’t been easy. Many of these school trust lands are located in prime real estate locations that the federal government labels wilderness areas — areas where the land cannot be touched, taxed or profited from.
“It is a terrible truth that the federal government has more control over the economy and lands of states than elected governors and legislatures do,” says Don Todd, senior research director at Americans for Limited Government (ALG).
The federal government as of late has had a heyday labeling land as wilderness areas. And though the federal government cannot take school trust land per se, they can take all the surrounding land, thus reducing the value of the school trust land.
“When the government takes land and ties it up, that money is not going to educate our children,” says Susan Edwards, School Community Council Member in Utah for Crescent View Middle School and Alta High School. “The federal government is taking money away from our school children.”
If land belonging to the trust fund becomes locked in by land labeled as a wilderness area or land that needs to remain untouched due to an endangered species ruling, it is much harder for schools to generate funds off that land. A farmer or developer would be hesitant to purchase and invest in a parcel of land that is surrounded by federal rules and regulations.
“When the federal government declares their land off limits for productive uses, the in-held school lands cannot support our schools, and Utah’s children statewide suffer,” Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert explains to ALG.
States cannot afford to receive dwindling profits from these land trust funds. These funds are critical for schools as they finance building repairs or new technology. In the state of Utah, trust land funds are used for student’s academic success. The money might be spent to hire more classroom aids, form mentorship programs, build a computer lab or pay teachers who stay after hours to help at-risk children.
Utah’s Gov. Herbert goes on to say, “These issues are not merely rural issues or land issues. They have a direct effect on public education throughout the State of Utah. If wells are not drilled in the Uintah Basin, there will be fewer textbooks, fewer library books, fewer computers, and fewer teachers’ aides in public schools everywhere in Utah, including in the heavily populated Salt Lake Valley. The effects of these harsh restrictive federal measures will be felt by Utah’s public school children for generations, because the school trust is a permanent trust.”
The state of Utah is already at a disadvantage when it comes to funding for its education system. About two-thirds of the state, roughly 70 percent, is owned by the federal government. Though the federal government said much of this land would be sold upon the state achieving statehood and that 5 percent of the proceeds would go directly to fund education, it has yet to happen.
With two-thirds of the land already swallowed by the federal government, Utah’s education revenue comes from the land it has left. Of that land that is left, about only about 7 percent is designated as school trust land, says Cody Stewart, legislative director for Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT). The rest of land is at risk of falling into the hands of the federal government.
Utah State Senator Steve Urquhart stated on his blog, “Wilderness designation shuts down economic activity on federal and state lands. (Loss of royalties, severance tax, income tax, and sales tax). It stops motorized access to those areas, meaning most people stop going there to recreate, hunt, fish, picnic, etc. It stops oil and gas production. It stops timbering. It stops ranching. It stops most any activity that adds money to Utah’s coffers. We could be receiving serious revenues for education off those lands, but wilderness cuts that off.”
Why don’t states negotiate with the federal government and work out a land exchange? Because, Paula Plant, co-director of CLASS explains, “land exchanges are expensive and time intensive.”
She knows of a land exchange near the Colorado River corridor that has been underway for seven years. “If the federal government is going to create this many wilderness areas then it’s hard to find land to exchange,” she says. “You can’t trade land that has an endangered species; you won’t be able to do anything with it.”
Another disadvantage these school trust lands might soon face: “There is a tendency on the part of the legislators to want to use this money on other things, such as highways. There is always a fear of the state or federal government taking over the funds,” says Kirk Sitterud, Emery School District Superintendent, a rural school district in central Utah.
But for now, those Western states that retain their school trust lands hold on to them tightly — they depend on them as will future generations. But that isn’t to say they don’t feel the impact of actions already taken by the federal government.
“Education in the West is hurt, salaries for teachers in the West are hurt, the retirement system for educators in the West is hurt. The West is put at a decided disadvantage and very few people east of Denver comprehend that or understand that,” Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop told ALG. “This Administration’s policy to lock up lands and refuse to develop them to their potential, hurts kids, it hurts the education in the West, period.”
Taking a trip to Western states like Utah looks as if the federal government puts environmental policies ahead of the education system and the nation’s school children.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that the school should be “the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.” This doesn’t appear to be the thinking of the current Administration, and the nation’s school children of today and those of future generations will suffer for it.
Rebekah Rast is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau. You can follow her on Twitter at @RebekahRast.

BLM Charm Offensive Backfires, Critics Fume Over 'Wild Lands' Policy

2011-01-25T02:55:00.002-07:00

Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey's meetings with top elected leaders from Western states has failed to soothe anger over his agency's new "wild lands" policy that could extend the highest level of federal protection to millions of acres of public land.
Some who have met with the BLM director in the past week say Abbey has failed to provide key details about how the Dec. 22, 2010, executive order from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will be enforced and what impact it will have on key policies like energy development and recreation on public lands.
Utah Rep. Rob Bishop (R), who met privately with Abbey on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., said he came away "extremely frustrated" with the BLM chief's responses to fundamental questions about how the new wild lands directive will be implemented.
"I kept asking for reasons and specifics," said Bishop, chairman of the House National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee.
"'Why replace the resource management plans already in place?' They won't tell me why or what that was about," he continued.
"'How are you going to manage wild lands differently than others?' They say they'll have a new criteria or standard. 'What will that be?' They don't know, and they can't give me an example.
"'How are you going to adjust the prioritization of multiple use?' They don't know. I'm sorry, I got absolutely no answers," Bishop concluded.
The Utah Republican vowed to call top Interior officials before his subcommittee to provide more detailed answers. Meantime, he said, he and like-minded colleagues in Congress will use "whatever means of pushback is available" to keep the new wild lands policy from changing the regulatory landscape for users of public lands.
Abbey and Salazar also met this week with Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment. Simpson's office issued a statement that indicated the congressman was unmoved by the meeting and still has concerns about Interior overextending its authority on lands management.
The pressure is coming from statehouses as well.
Newly elected Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R) on Tuesday sent a letter (pdf) to Salazar asking the secretary to repeal the wild lands order lest the state's economy take a hit from new regulations created by an "administrative fiat" (E&ENews PM, Jan. 18).
In a follow-up conference call with reporters, Mead said the order "ignores the revenues our state and local governments depend upon for minerals and other development, and it fails to address the impact to ranchers and those involved in recreation."
Mead's letter came three days after Abbey sat before Utah Gov. Gary Herbert's (R) Balanced Resources Council, where senior state officials -- including Herbert and Lt. Gov. Greg Bell (R) -- grilled him for more than an hour on the new policy.
Fateful meeting
Some took as a symbolic gesture Abbey's literal misstep as approached the podium at the Utah Senate committee room in Salt Lake City, resulting in the BLM director falling face down.
The packed meeting was also punctuated by groans and jeers, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, with many in the standing-room-only crowd sporting "Stop the Land Grab" buttons.

Former Rep. Jim Hansen (R), who represented Utah's 1st congressional district from 1981 to 2002, was applauded when he told Abbey that protecting new lands without congressional approval is illegal, according to the Tribune. But the decision to invite Hansen to address the meeting was protested by council member Patrick Shea, who served briefly as BLM director under the Clinton administration.
According to others who attended the meeting, Shea stormed out after Hansen was permitted to speak.
Ted Wilson, Herbert's senior environmental adviser and chairman of the Balanced Resources Council, in an interview with Land Letter this week, downplayed the tension at the Salt Lake meeting.
"Bob's a very good guy and he tried very hard to answer the questions," Wilson said of Abbey. "I think more than anything the meeting exposed the complexity of the issue. We were hoping for easy answers, which we always do, but there aren't any and I think even director Abbey is still trying to figure it all out."
Yet some environmentalists who tried to get into the packed main meeting room but were directed to adjacent rooms where only an audio feed of the hearing was available accused state officials of stacking the meeting room with opponents to the wild lands policy.
"That meeting was designed as an opportunity to beat up on the Bureau of Land Management, and many people took advantage of that," said Heidi McIntosh, associate director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and one of the few environmentalists who got a seat in the main meeting room. "It was rigged."
Wilson scoffed at the allegation. He said opponents to the wild lands policy just arrived to the meeting earlier than SUWA and other environmentalists and got the better seats.
"We didn't have anything to do with that," he said. "The state's neutral. We're not trying to inflame anybody."
Not deterred
Celia Boddington, a BLM spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., said that the heated rhetoric from Western leaders would not shake the agency's resolve to implement and enforce the new policy to protect pristine public lands deemed to have wilderness characteristics.
Boddington said BLM experts are working to finalize the language and requirements of the wild lands order by the end of next month and the final document will contain many of the details that Western lawmakers say they want. BLM will then spend months conducting an inventory of wilderness-quality lands in each state where it has parcels.
"Whenever we do something and move forward, we're pretty certain it will attract some controversy. It's the nature of the agency," she said. "Bob Abbey wants to reach out to people, but we are moving forward."
As part of its public relations strategy, Interior this week repackaged its "wild lands" policy documents into a press release (pdf) titled "Wild Land Protection: Common Sense Management for Places Americans Love." Among other things, the release highlights editorials from national and Western newspapers praising the wild lands order.
McIntosh of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which lobbied hard to promote the new policy, said Interior is doing the right thing by pushing forward with the plan.
"I know that Bob Abbey and Interior will stick to this because they're right," McIntosh said. "And they have a lot of support."
Chilling effect on drilling
But Richard Ranger, a senior policy adviser with the American Petroleum Institute, said the wild lands policy could greatly impede energy development on public lands across the West.
Ranger said about 27 percent of the natural gas and 14 percent of the domestic crude comes from Intermountain West region, and nearly half of that production comes from wells on public lands.
"Right now, public lands in the [Intermountain West] are a key component of our domestic energy supply," Ranger said. "So we have very real concerns about the immediate and practical impacts standing in the way of new leasing in the Intermountain West."
Peter Jenks, Bishop's district director in Ogden, Utah, said some county commissioners in the district have told him that the wild lands policy has prompted BLM to re-evaluate or delay potential oil and gas leases within their counties.
"It's already having an impact," Jenks said.
But Abbey noted during last week's Balanced Resources Council meeting that 5 million acres of BLM land in the state is under lease, but only 1 million acres of leased land is in use.
And McIntosh, the SUWA official, pointed to studies showing that as much as 80 percent of BLM land in Utah is available for lease. "Something is keeping the industry from drilling," McIntosh said, "but it's not wilderness."
Click here to read Salazar's order.
Click here (pdf) to read Mead's letter.
Click here (pdf) to read the DOI press release.
Streater writes from Colorado Springs, Colo.

New rule under fire from N.M. Cattle Growers Association

2011-01-11T04:04:00.000-07:00

The New Mexico Cattle Growers Association filed a motion Friday with a state water-quality board to stop a new rule protecting headwater streams in designated national forest wilderness areas, even though ranchers are exempt from the regulation.

The association says the rule is another avenue through which environmental groups can sue the U.S. Forest Service over grazing on public forest lands in New Mexico.

Environmental advocates with WildEarth Guardians say the rule designating 199 perennial headwater streams as Outstanding National Resource Waters is a hard-won, common-sense regulation to protect stream quality. The rule was approved by the state Water Quality Control Commission Dec. 14 in a 7-3 vote.

The motion asks the commission to review the designation with an eye toward discarding parts, or all, of it.

The commission's makeup is likely to change under newly elected Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, and that will affect decisions on the rule, which was two years in the making. Of the 14 members on the board, 10 are appointed by Cabinet secretaries, such as the head of the state Environment Department, and four are appointed directly by the governor.

The headwaters petition was filed in February by the state Environment Department, the state Department of Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources, and the state Department of Game and Fish. The final rule exempts existing grazing permittees and also exempts acequias. The commission declined to expand the scope of the petition to include other streams in roadless areas.

The designation protects 700 miles of streams, 29 lakes and 6,000 acres of wetlands in federal wilderness areas in New Mexico. "The Outstanding Waters rule is a common-sense approach to protecting water and makes special provisions for existing uses. I simply see no basis for reversing it," said Bryan Bird of WildEarth Guardians. "The state bent over backwards to give a special exemption to cattle growers."

Caren Cowan, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, said the rule doesn't really protect grazing permittees.

"The rule puts the onus for compliance on the U.S. Forest Service. This creates another 'cause of action' environmental groups can use to sue the Forest Service for noncompliance."

Bird said that "when the Forest Service goes to review a grazing permit that is on an allotment with a designated ONRW stream, then the Forest Service will have to make sure there are no changes that would degrade the water."

The Cattle Growers Association wants the Water Quality Control Commission to review the rule and consider designating smaller watersheds one at a time. The motion notes the association did not protest when an outstanding waters designation was sought for the Valle Vidal and the Rio Santa Barbara.

"Local people were not unhappy or upset, so we stayed out of it," Cowan said. "If this was done basin-by-basin or wilderness-by-wilderness so those people most impacted could really participate, we wouldn't be having this fight," she said.

The association continues to maintain there's a lack of scientific evidence to prove all 199 stream systems in the petition meet criteria for outstanding waters protection.

WildEarth Guardians, the Environment Department and other parties have two weeks to respond to the motion. The commission will consider the motion at its next meeting.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.

Western Watersheds Project Files Two Federal Court Cases in Wyoming

2011-01-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

Friends, Western Watersheds Project welcomes the New Year with two new federal court cases filed in Wyoming !

WWP Challenges the Wyoming BLM Lander Field Office's Authorization of Livestock Grazing on the Green Mountain Common Allotment

WWP has conteste livestock management on the 520,000 acre Green Mountain Common allotment located south of Jeffrey City, Wyoming for more than a decade.
Last June, Administrative Law Judge Harvey Sweitzer vacated BLM's decision to authorize grazing on the allotment in response to a request for summary judgment accompanying WWP's administrative appeal. That BLM decision would have extended the failed status quo management in addition to constructing 32 miles of new fencing in an area that is currently the largest unfenced landscape on public lands in the American West.

In response to WWP's succesful administrative challenge, BLM removed from the decision the proposed new fencing but immediately reissued a new decision which includes threat of the same degradation of riparian areas and rampant trespass as has taken place in previous years. This time, WWP is taking action in federal court to force BLM to correct these environmental problems.
The case has been assigned to the new Wyoming federal District Judge Nancy Freudenthal.
Thanks to attorney Natalie Havlina of Advocates For the West for preparing and filing this Complaint, WWP's Wyoming Director Jonathan Ratner, Dr. John Carter, WWP supporter and soil scientist Don Clarke and many others for all their support and expertise ennobling this important challenge of the Bureau of Land Management on over 500,000 acres of the Green Mountain Common Allotment.

Read the Complaint

WWP Challenges Livestock Grazing on the Split Rock Allotments of Wyoming BLM's Lander Field Office

A year ago, Western Watersheds Project appealed a Bureau of Land Management decision to authorize continued livestock grazing on over 100,000 acres of public land in a group of Wyoming BLM grazing allotments known as the Split Rock Allotments.
These allotments are adjacent to the Green Mountain Common allotment and also administered by the Lander Field Office of the BLM. The allotments are permitted to a partnership of multi-millionaires including Dean Singleton, the primary owner of one of the largest media empires in the United States, the Media News Group that owns the Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News among many other holdings. Another of the permittees is Dallas Horton, a Colorado veterinarian and owner of cattle feedlots and slaughterhouses. The allotments also include the largest single sage grouse lek in all of Wyoming with several hundred male sage grouse attending each spring.
The number of cattle the BLM approved to graze on the allotments far exceeds any scientifically justified level of use that promises degraded habitat for big game, sage grouse, and other wildlife that rely on the public land.
Having exhausted administrative remedy, and with the representation of WWP's Arizona legal council Erik Ryberg and WWP's Wyoming local council Gay George, Western Watersheds Project recently filed a challenge to the Lander Field Office decision in the Wyoming federal District Court.
This case will be heard by Wyoming federal District Court Judge William F. Downes assisted by Magistrate Judge William Beaman.

Read the Complaint

Jon Marvel
Executive Director

Obama administration restores wilderness rules undone under Bush

2010-12-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

DENVER (AP) — The Obama administration plans to reverse a Bush-era policy and make millions of undeveloped acres of land once again eligible for federal wilderness protection, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday.

The agency will replace the 2003 policy adopted under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton. That policy — derided by some as the "No More Wilderness" policy — stated that new areas could not be recommended for wilderness protection by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and it opened millions of acres to potential commercial development.

That policy "frankly never should have happened and was wrong in the first place," Salazar said Thursday.

Environmental activists have been pushing for the Obama administration to restore protections for potential wilderness areas.

Salazar said the agency will review some 220 million acres of BLM land that's not currently under wilderness protection to see which should be given a new "Wild Lands" designation — a new first step for land awaiting a wilderness decision. Congress would decide whether those lands should be permanently protected, Salazar said.

Congressional Republicans pounced on the "Wild Lands" announcement as an attempt by the Obama administration to close land to development without congressional approval.

"This backdoor approach is intended to circumvent both the people who will be directly affected and Congress," said Washington Rep. Doc Hastings, a Republican tapped to lead the House Natural Resources Committee when the GOP takes control of the House in January.

The Congressional Western Caucus, an all-Republican group, also blasted the decision. "This is little more than an early Christmas present to the far left extremists who oppose the multiple use of our nation's public lands," Utah Rep. Rob Bishop said in a statement.

BLM Director Bob Abbey said it hasn't been decided how many acres are expected to be designated as "Wild Lands" and whether those acres will be off-limits to motorized recreation or commercial development while under congressional review. It's also unclear whether there will be a time limit on how long acres can be managed as "Wild Lands" before a decision is made on their future.

The BLM has six months to submit a plan for those new wilderness evaluations.

These "Wild Lands" would be separate from Wilderness Study Areas that must be authorized by Congress. Wild Lands can be designated by the BLM after a public planning process and would be managed with protective measures detailed in a land use plan.

Ranchers, oil men and others have been suspicious of federal plans to lock up land in the West, worrying that taking the BLM land out of production would kill rural economies that rely on ranchers and the oil and gas business.

Their suspicions have been heightened since memos leaked in February revealed the Obama administration was considering 14 sites in nine states for possible presidential monument declarations.

That included 2.5 million acres of northeastern Montana prairie land proposed as a possible bison range, along with sites in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Washington.

The 2003 policy was an out-of-court deal struck between Norton and then-Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt to remove protections for some 2.6 million acres of public land in that state.

The policy allowed drilling, mining and other commercial uses on land under consideration as wilderness areas.

Salazar's reversal doesn't affect about 8.7 million acres already designated as wilderness areas.

Conservationists praised the reversal, though there has been grumbling that it took the Obama administration nearly two years to overturn the Bush-era policy.

"Washington D.C. always takes longer than you want, but we're glad we've gotten here," said Suzanne Jones, regional director for The Wilderness Society.

Court: Wolf data exempt from disclosure

2010-12-06T05:14:00.001-07:00

Environmental groups are not entitled to specific locations of where wolves have killed cattle, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

In a unanimous decision, the court said the specific data sought by the organizations is exempt from disclosure under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The judge said that means the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has the information, can keep it secret.

Thursday's ruling met with disappointment from members of the groups. They said the data is needed to provide crucial information they believe ultimately would help preserve Mexican wolves in Arizona and New Mexico.

The wolf was reintroduced to eastern Arizona and western New Mexico in 1998. But efforts to preserve it in the wilderness often have run headlong into the concerns of ranchers when the animals prey on their cattle. What happens, according to Michael Robinson, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, is that wolves which are linked to cattle deaths are relocated -- or shot. He said the last census at the beginning of this year found only 42 animals in the wild, a 19 percent decline from the prior year.

Much of that, the groups argued, is because of government action.

In 2007, for example, they said 19 wolves were removed from the wild. That, they said, left a year-end population of just 52 wolves and three breeding pairs anywhere in the world.

Eva Sargent, director of southwest programs for the Defenders of Wildlife, said the data sought would help her organization work with ranchers to prevent "depredation" of cattle by wolves.

For example, she said ranchers can put extra cowboys into the field.

"Wolves are generally discouraged by humans' presence," Sargent said. She said cattle can be moved away or electric fencing can be installed.

And Sargent said there even is a way to have alarms go off when a wolf with a radio tracking collar approaches the fence to scare the animal off.

"In order to know where to center those programs, we need to know where hot spots of depredation are," Sargent said. "And they usually are hot spots, a particular ranch, a particular area."

Matt Kenna, the attorney who represented the environmental groups, said there are other uses for the information.

He pointed out that most of the losses to ranchers occurs on leased public lands and not on private property.

"When the renewals came up, or even before then, we could provide public comment on them," Kenna said. He said that could include requiring ranchers to modify their operations to reduce wolf attacks -- or even proposing that certain lands be off limits to cattle grazing.

The program run by Wildlife Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, works with ranchers and others to remove or capture wolves that are causing problems.

The environmental groups sued for the specific locations, saying these federal programs are the "largest factor limiting population growth" among the wolves.

In 2006 they filed a public records request for details of the wolf-removal program. What was not released was the specific location of the removals as computed by global positioning system coordinates.

U.S. District Court Judge John Roll ruled in Tucson last year the groups were entitled to the information. But the appellate court said that conclusion was wrong.

Judge Pamela Rymer, writing for the court, judges said the Freedom of Information Act says the making information public has an exception for data that is specifically exempt from disclosure in other statutes.

And in this case, she noted, the USDA is prohibited from releasing "geospatial information" it maintains about agricultural operations.

Rymer said "agricultural operations" include livestock. The wolf-removal program falls under that, the judge said, because the information concerns "depredations that limit the ranchers' livestock production."

And Rymer said the fact that many of these sites are on public grazing lands leased by ranchers, rather than on their private property, does not change that exemption.

CALL TO ACTION: Lame duck omnibus public lands bill

2010-11-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

Rumors are buzzing about a possible last-minute lame duck vote on an omnibus public lands bill. Last week, PLC, ASI, NCBA, and other livestock affiliates sent a letter to Interior Secretary Salazar, after his recent promise to push for an omnibus public lands bill and full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in the lame duck session. Today, we have sent two similar letters to congressional leadership: one addressed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner (cc’d are House Natural Resources Committee Members Rahall, Hastings, Grijalva, and Bishop), and the other addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (cc’d are Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Members Bingaman, Murkowski, Wyden, and Barrasso.)

We ask that you contact your senators and representatives, requesting that they oppose an omnibus public lands bill and full funding to the LWCF. As you know, both could add land to the special land designations portfolio with inadequate congressional deliberation and local stakeholder input. For more information on the potential omnibus bill, see the attached letters and this editorial by Andy Rieber from Western Livestock Journal. For more on the LWCF, also see the letters and this LINK).

Also attached is a list of candidate bills for the potential omnibus lands bill. While the list may not be comprehensive, it includes nearly 260,000 acres of proposed wilderness areas across the west. A few examples:

· Arizona’s Tumacacori Highlands (84,000 acres)

· California’s Fort Irwin, Cady, and Soda Mountain areas (346,000 acres)

· Colorado’s San Juan Mountains (33,000 acres)

· Oregon’s lower John Day River (16,000 acres)

· New Mexico’s Dona Ana County

Other states with pending wilderness legislation include Idaho, Michigan, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and West Virginia.

Also up for consideration is a bill that could designate a 110,000 acre National Conservation Area in New Mexico’s Organ / Dona Ana Mountains.

Note also the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act, which was mentioned in the BLM’s “Treasured Landscapes” leaked document for the purpose of federal land acquisition. Other bills mentioned in the leaked document also appear to be up for consideration in a possible omnibus bill. Please review the bills and contact your legislators accordingly.

Yours,

Theo

Theodora Dowling

Manager of Legislative Affairs

Public Lands Council/National Cattlemen's Beef Association

(202) 879-9135

NM Bills Favorably Reported from Committee

2010-11-29T15:22:00.001-07:00

NEW MEXICO

Cibola National Forest Expansion (H.R. 5388) On May 25, 2010, Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) introduced legislation to expand the Cibola National Forest. The bill will add the Crest of Montezuma to the north end of the Cibola National Forest and expand the existing Manzano Wilderness in the south end of the forest by aproximately 900 acres. The bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM). The House Natural Resources Committee approved this bill on July 22, 2010.

S. 84 – El Rio Grande Del Norte National Conservation Area Establishment Act (Bingaman D-NM). To establish El Rio Grande Del Norte National Conservation Area in the State of New Mexico. It would designate as the Rio Grande del Norte National Conservation Area approximately 235,980 acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in northern New Mexico, including two wilderness areas—the 8,000-acre Rio San Antonio Wilderness, currently administered as a Wilderness Study Area, and the 13,420-acre Cerro del Yuta Wilderness. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in an open business session on December 16, 2009, by voice vote of a quorum present, recommends that the Senate pass S. 874, if amended (Calendar No. 285). CBO estimates that implementing the bill would have no significant effect on the cost of administering the area. We further estimate that any costs to update the management plan for the property or modify existing maps and other materials would be minimal. Finally, because the affected land currently produces no income (and is not expected to do so in the future), CBO estimates that enacting the bill would not affect revenues or direct spending.

S. 1689 – Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act (Bingaman D-NM). The purpose of S. 1689 is to establish the 84,950-acre Organ Mountains National Conservation Area, the 75,550-acre Desert Peaks National Conservation Area, and to designate approximately 241,400 acres of public land in the State of New Mexico administered by the Bureau of Land Management as wilderness. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in an open business session on July 21, 2010, by voice vote of a quorum present, recommends that the Senate pass S. 1689, as amended (Calendar No. 596). NOTE – NO REPUBLICAN VOTE FOR OR WAS PRESENT AT THIS MARK UP. The Business Meeting was scheduled despite protests of the Ranking Member. CBO estimates that any increase in federal costs to manage those lands would not exceed $500,000 in any year. S. 1689 could reduce offsetting receipts because it would no longer allow certain lands to be disposed of or leased. Therefore pay-as-you-go procedures apply to the legislation. However, based on information from BLM, CBO estimates that any reduction in offsetting receipts would be negligible over the 2010-2020 period.

S. 3452 – Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act (Bingaman D-NM). S. 3452 would transfer administrative jurisdiction of the Valles Caldera Preserve in New Mexico from the Forest Service to the National Park Service (NPS). The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in open business session on July 21, 2010, by a voice vote of a quorum present, recommends that the Senate pass S. 3452, as amended (Calendar No. 604). NOTE – NO REPUBLICAN VOTE FOR OR WAS PRESENT AT THIS MARK UP. S. 3452 would increase discretionary spending by $16 million over the 2011-2015 period and by $16 million over the following five years. Enacting the legislation would not affect revenues and would have no net effect on direct spending; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply.

Livestock Industry Opposes Lame Duck Omnibus Public Lands Bill

2010-11-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

November 29, 2010
The Honorable Harry Reid
522 Hart Senate Office Bldg Washington, D.C. 20510

The Honorable Mitch McConnell
361-A Russell Senate Office Bldg
Washington, D.C. 20510

Re: Omnibus Public Lands Bill and Land & Water Conservation Fund

Dear Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell:

    The undersigned livestock groups are concerned with statements from the administration supporting both an omnibus public lands measure and legislation to increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Both measures could threaten the livelihoods of livestock producers during a nationwide economic recession. During these final days of the 111th U.S. Congress, we ask that you approach these matters using congressional oversight to promote limited federal spending, continued use of our natural resources, and local input in the decision-making process.
    We cannot support an omnibus lands bill, which could restrict access to millions of acres of federal land across the west by creating new land designations such as wilderness areas and National Conservation Areas. Although reports vary as to the number of bills that would be included (we have heard between 60 and 120 separate bills), multiple-use on those lands could be threatened. Livestock grazing, oil and gas leasing, logging, mining, and other business activities important to rural economies would be jeopardized. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars would be spent administering the sweeping new special land designations, year after year.
    Similarly, increasing funding to the LWCF will not only add to the national debt, but could harm productivity on our federal lands as well. Between 1965 and 2002, the LWCF—even without full funding and with the requirement of authorization from Congress for every expenditure—put $8.7 billon toward federal acquisition and “conservation” of 4.5 million acres of land. It also gave around $3.5 billion to state and local projects to set aside another 2.3 million acres. We are wary of the proposal to increase funding to the LWCF by $5 billion through year 2016, while removing the requirement of congressional approval on expenditures. Such a proposal could well pave the way for federal land agencies to acquire productive private acres without local stakeholder involvement, and to make special designations on public lands without local grassroots involvement. We believe it is critical that the local stakeholders remain part of the process of land sales and potential land use designations. The federal government owns and struggles to manage nearly 650 million acres of land—almost 30% of our nation’s land area. Our country can ill afford the added costs of LWCF acquisitions, not to mention the removal of more natural resources from productive use in the rural west.
    While we may not know how many bills would be included in an omnibus measure, this we know with certainty: every public land bill is unique and deserves thoughtful congressional deliberation and local input. While some bills may have the support of local stakeholders, others could be damaging and restrictive to the people who live adjacent to and work on that land. Furthermore, although we cannot know which or how many acres the LWCF would set aside, the citizens who comprise our rural western economies and who count on the natural resources on federal lands should be given a voice in these special designation decisions. Increasing federal spending, heightening restrictions and regulations, and bundling together and forcing through Congress masses of federal lands bills are not legislative actions we deem appropriate or necessary.
    Wise, beneficial use of our public lands’ natural resources is a means of improving the lives of not only the families of the rural west, but of people across the nation and world. We appreciate your consideration of our desire to give voice to our hardworking rural citizens and ensure their continued ability to add value through responsible productivity on public lands.
Sincerely,

American Sheep Industry Association
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
Public Lands Council
Arizona Cattle Growers’ Association
California Cattlemen’s Association
California Wool Growers Association
Colorado Cattlemen’s Association
Colorado Public Lands Council
Idaho Cattle Association
Montana Stockgrowers Association
Montana Public Lands Council
Montana Association of State Grazing Districts
Nevada Cattlemen’s Association
Oregon Cattlemen’s Association
South Dakota Cattlemen’s Association
Utah Cattlemen’s Association
Washington Cattlemen’s Association
Wyoming Stock Growers Association
Cc: Senator Bingaman, Senator Murkowski, Senator Wyden, Senator Barrasso

Outlook Dim for Lame-Duck Omnibus Lands Package

2010-11-21T02:21:00.000-07:00

Washington - by Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Congress may lose its best chance to pass a suite of public lands proposals that would protect more than 2 million acres of federal lands as wilderness if it fails to move an omnibus measure in the lame-duck session, conservation groups say.

But while a key Senate lawmaker last week said he was bundling several dozen public lands bills into a draft package, Democratic leadership is mum about whether such a measure could move amid a crowded Senate schedule of higher-profile issues including a continuing resolution, tax extensions and other measures.

"It is on a list of items that are possible for consideration during the lame duck," Regan LaChapelle, a spokeswoman for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of a draft public lands proposal by New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D). "We have a long list of items that are possible and not much time to do so."

Reid is speaking with fellow Democrats and Republicans, House leaders and the Obama administration to decide what is possible over the coming weeks, LaChapelle said.

The proposal by Bingaman, who is chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would include most of the 60-plus public lands bills his panel has passed in the 111th Congress, and none that have failed to pass, said spokesman Bill Wicker.
ALW Steve Boutcher
A proposal to add 22,000 acres of wilderness to Washington's Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area and extend the Pratt River and Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River wild and scenic rivers is likely included in a draft public lands omnibus package seeking passage in the Senate. Photo courtesy of USFS/Steve Boutcher.

Bills that have passed the committee include a proposal to designate the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico as a unit of the National Park System, a proposal to turn the Devil's Staircase in Oregon into federally protected wilderness where logging and road development would be banned, and a bill to expand the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington and extend the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River and Pratt River wild and scenic rivers.

Other bills would create new national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and wildlife sanctuaries.

"We really don't know what the prospects for a public lands bill are likely to be," said Wicker, adding that Bingaman would be talking with leadership and committee Republicans before making a decision on how to move forward. A final decision on a package could come anytime before the end of the session, Wicker said.

"Certainly the chairman would like to see all of those bills succeed," he said.

Wicker said the bill would likely be roughly one-third the size of a 2009 public lands omnibus that designated 2.1 million acres of new wilderness areas in nine states, an amount nearly equal to all the wilderness designated under the George W. Bush administration.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who voted for an earlier version of the 2009 proposal as a Democratic senator from Colorado, lauded the 2009 measure this week for formally recognizing the National Landscape Conservation System and adding 1 million acres to it (see related story).

At a summit in Las Vegas on Monday to sign an order elevating NLCS to the level of directorate, Salazar said he had to return to Washington to discuss the omnibus proposal, according to sources who attended the summit.

"He mentioned he'd like to stay. However, he needed to get back to Washington, D.C., for a series of meetings to work on an omnibus bill," said Greg Mumm, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, an Idaho-based group that promotes access for off-highway vehicle users and often opposes wilderness bills.

Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff did not confirm whether Salazar had met with Senate leadership to discuss the proposal, but said the secretary felt it was important for Interior to "serve as wise stewards of the places that matter most to Americans."

"Although we don't know at this point what specifically would be in such a package, the department and its agencies have testified in support of many measures that could be included," Barkoff said.
Some bills miss the cut

While many of the public lands bills that have passed the ENR Committee contain small-scale land swaps, boundary adjustments and trail revisions, others include sizable wilderness designations and important land and lease transfers that would either facilitate or prohibit mineral development.

Bingaman's "Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Wilderness Act," S. 1689, which was passed by the committee in the summer, would protect 270,000 acres of wilderness and 110,000 acres as a national conservation area.

Omnibus prospects are dim, however, for other large public lands bills that failed to pass the committee.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester's (D) "Forest Jobs and Recreation Act," which coupled about 680,000 acres of wilderness with a pioneering mandate to mechanically treat 100,000 acres of timber over the next 15 years failed to pass the committee, despite the support of the Obama administration (Land Letter, Oct. 21).

Aaron Murphy, a spokesman for Tester, said the senator would be exploring all legislative options for passing the bill during the lame-duck session.

Also stalled in the committee is Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson's (R) "Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act," which was blocked from a committee vote by one of the bill's sponsors, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) (Land Letter, Sept. 30).

"CIEDRA is still a top priority for Congressman Simpson," said spokeswoman Nikki Watts. "But right now they've got a whole lot of budgetary issues they're facing."

By sticking only to measures that have passed the Senate committee, some House proposals would also miss the cut, such as Rep. Jared Polis' (D-Colo.) "Eagle and Summit County Wilderness Preservation Act" in central Colorado, which includes portions of a 342,000-acre "Hidden Gems" wilderness proposal (Land Letter, Nov. 11).

"We have a chairman and ranking member who are very respectful of committee process," said Wicker, referring to Bingaman and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

Accepting bills into the package that have not passed the committee is "not a 'Pandora's Box' we care to open," he said.
A bipartisan issue?

Some wilderness advocates have stressed the need to pass public lands protections before House committees fall into the hands of Republicans, some of whom have openly criticized such bills.

"Elections matter for our public lands," said Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance executive director Scott Groene in an e-mail alert the day after the mid-term elections, according to National Parks Traveler. "Last night brought enormous change for the worse. Wilderness may be a bipartisan issue, although it fares better under one party and that party was crushed."

Indeed, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), the likely successor to chair the House Natural Resources Committee, has said he dislikes omnibus measures, preferring instead to consider individual bills on their own merits.

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who is likely to lead the panel's National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee, told Land Letter that omnibus measures have succeeded in masking bad bills among good ones and sneaking by substantive policy changes.

"Having an omnibus at all means the process failed," said Bishop, who criticized the 2009 measure for formally recognizing the NLCS, which includes 16 national monuments, 21 national conservation areas, 221 wilderness areas, 545 wilderness study areas, 2,419 miles of wild and scenic rivers and 6,000 miles of national scenic and historic trails.

The system, Bishop said, "still is a redundancy."

But Paul Spitler, national wilderness campaigns associate director for the Wilderness Society, said public lands bills have successfully garnered bipartisan support regardless of which party controls Congress.

The Senate ENR Committee and others have approved 120 bills this session that affect land, water and wildlife in 30 states, he said. Many of them are bipartisan and 28 are authored by Republicans, he said. And, Spitler noted, the last time Republicans controlled the House, Congress approved 1.8 million acres of new wilderness.

"Wilderness has historically been a very bipartisan issue, it remains a bipartisan issue today," he said, adding that the 2009 omnibus package passed the Senate with 20 Republican votes.

Secretary Salazar Establishes New Directorate For National Landscape Conservation System

2010-11-16T05:56:00.002-07:00

Elevated management focus for 27 million acres of nationally significant public lands

11/15/2010

Contact: Kendra Barkoff, DOI (202) 208-6416

LAS VEGAS, NV – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today issued a Secretarial Order elevating the Office of the National Landscape Conservation System and Community Partnerships in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to the level of a directorate within BLM.

“This action reflects the growing importance of the 27-million acre National Landscape Conservation System to local economies, to the health of communities, and to the conservation of some of America’s greatest landscapes,” Salazar said at the National Landscape Conservation System Summit in Las Vegas. “The BLM plays a special role in protecting America’s great outdoors for the benefit of all Americans – for it is the national conservation lands that contain the forests and canyons that families love to explore, the backcountry where children learn to hunt and fish, and the places that tell the story of our history and our cultures. Each of these places within the National Landscape Conservation System holds special meaning to the American people and is an engine for jobs and economic growth in local communities.”

This National Landscape Conservation System was established as an integral part of the Bureau of Land Management by the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, a bipartisan initiative that responded to the critical need, as the population of the West increases, to conserve open spaces that are a unique part of America’s heritage. As an integral part of the BLM’s multiple-use mission, conservation is a long-term investment that provides quality of life and economic benefits for current and future generations.

The system contains many of our Nation’s most treasured landscapes, including scientific, historic and cultural resources, wilderness and wilderness study areas, wild and scenic rivers, national monuments, national conservation areas, and scenic and historic trails, among others.

These lands are managed as an integral part of the larger landscape, in collaboration with the neighboring landowners and surrounding communities. The management objectives are to maintain biodiversity and promote ecological connectivity and resilience in the face of climate change. When consistent with the values for which they were designated, lands in the system may allow appropriate multiple uses, such as grazing, energy development and tourism.

Managers of the system recognize the importance of a diversity of viewpoints when considering management options. These nationally important landscapes are managed from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing upon the expertise of specialists throughout the BLM, and in coordination with the tribes, other Federal, state, and local government agencies, interested local landowners, adjacent communities, and other public and private interests.

The directorate will be called the National Landscape Conservation System and Community Partnerships. The Assistant Secretary – Land and Minerals Management is responsible for ensuring implementation of this Order within 120 days. This responsibility may be delegated, as appropriate.

The signing of the Secretarial Order followed Salazar’s remarks to a summit of the National Landscape Conservation System, attended by several hundred BLM officials and employees as well as non-government stakeholders and state and local representatives.

The Secretarial Order is available HERE.
The Secretary’s remarks are available HERE.

Oklahoma vs. the West

2010-11-08T05:05:00.000-07:00

The biggest piece of environmental legislation in decades -- the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 -- might have been "of 2008," or been passed in various forms even earlier, were it not for Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn.

The Omnibus Act bundled 164 conservation efforts into a massive package that designated 2 million acres of new wilderness and increased the wild and scenic river system by 50 percent. It helped enable buyouts of oil and gas leases in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton National Forest and ratified wilderness deals that were negotiated on the ground in Idaho's Owyhee County and Utah's Washington County. Many Western environmentalists, ranchers, county officials and other stakeholders were involved in creating the Omnibus.

But the act itself can be blamed on Coburn, which is why it's known around Capitol Hill as "Tomnibus." "What he did was put holds on virtually every bill that came out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee," says Paul Spitler, a high-ranking Wilderness Society staffer based in Washington, D.C. Coburn blocked so many individual bills in 2008 that supporters decided to lump them together into the omnibus package in early 2009, hoping to pass all 164 measures at once. They succeeded, but not without a fight.

At Coburn's insistence, the Omnibus Act was "read (on the Senate floor) until the wee hours of the morning, which dragged out the timeline for an extra day," says Spitler. "And at that point, he said, ‘OK, you guys can go home now.' "

Coburn again drew the ire of Western environmentalists in September, by holding up passage of five popular wildlife-protection bills, one of which -- the Crane Conservation Act -- was sponsored by a fellow Republican, Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo. Oregon's Sen. Jeff Merkley, California's Sen. Barbara Boxer and Washington's Sen. Maria Cantwell -- all Western Democrats -- were also among the five bills' sponsors. Probably the most popular one would have banned the "animal crush videos" that Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, describes as "the vile depictions of staged scenes in which scantily clad women maim and torture animals for the sexual gratification of viewers." Coburn said those bills were a distraction at a time when the Senate should be addressing the deficit.

"One can understand Sen. Coburn's interest in fiscal restraint," Pacelle wrote in his Humane Society blog. "But in his case, it is an obsession, and it borders on a mania."

Stories like this justify Coburn's nickname, which plays off his medical degree and the name of the villain in an old James Bond movie: "Dr. No." And "No" might as well be the middle name of Oklahoma's other ultraconservative senator, James Mountain Inhofe. Both have used their Senate tenures largely for one purpose: Obstruction. They're effective advocates for the causes they believe in, slowing or stopping legislation and regulations they oppose. They've also attracted national attention by taking contrarian, often-controversial stances, and by giving a prominent voice to beliefs that are far out of the mainstream. They help give extremism credibility.

Inhofe has spent much of his career working to undermine or totally dismantle environmental protections. As chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee from 2003 to early 2007, he often held hearings that were more like kangaroo courts. In one 2003 hearing on climate change, he pitted two climate-change deniers against one scientist representing the mainstream view. That summer he held a similarly biased hearing on mercury pollution: A lone voice expressed the majority view that mercury is toxic and regulations are needed on the power plants that release 48 tons of airborne mercury every year, while two experts testified in favor of the opposite view. The Bush administration subsequently moved to dramatically weaken Clinton-era mercury regulations, a rollback later defeated in federal court.

Inhofe also opposes efforts to protect polar bears by limiting the carbon emissions that cause climate change, denouncing them as "an attack on our economy and our energy security." As a leading climate-change denier, he's worked to block any significant action on the problem, including the environmentalists' best hope -- the cap-and-trade bill that died earlier this year -- even as climate change threatens the West, contributing to drought, a forest beetle crisis and record-breaking wildfires.

Inhofe saves some of his hottest rage for the Environmental Protection Agency, which he's called "a Gestapo bureaucracy." In 2006, when EPA staffers based in Denver went into natural gas fields with infra-red cameras to detect pollution, Inhofe attacked the agency and tried to pressure the employees to back off. In 2009, he called for a criminal investigation into the EPA, charging it with suppressing evidence that climate change doesn't amount to much. "They've been cooking that science since 1998," he told Fox News.

"He seems to really have a long-term vendetta against the EPA," says Scott Thomasson, domestic policy director for the Progressive Policy Institute, a moderate left-of-center think tank. "(It's) so deeply ingrained at this point that he has a presumption of incompetence and malice about everything that they do."

Meanwhile, Coburn, a longtime friend of the National Rifle Association, used legislative trickery to make it legal to carry loaded guns in national parks, despite the strong opposition of the National Park Service. He slipped the amendment into the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009.

Earlier this year, Coburn blocked Senate approval of a $3.4 billion payment to Native Americans to settle a class-action lawsuit over the Department of Interior's longtime mismanagement of mineral royalties on tribal lands. (That case is not yet settled.) In 2009, he tried to block Senate confirmation of Hilary Tompkins, a Stanford-educated New Mexico Navajo, as the top lawyer in Obama's Interior Department. (The Senate eventually confirmed Tompkins.) In 2008, he opposed a sweeping $35 billion improvement of the Indian Health Service, even though many Western senators of both parties backed it and a total of 83 senators voted for it.

Both of the Oklahoma senators strongly support the oil and gas industry. They've repeatedly backed federal subsidies and sought to increase drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, while resisting tougher regulations, fuel efficiency and conservation measures. Inhofe led the fight to carve out an exemption in the Safe Drinking Water Act for "fracking" -- the high-pressure pumping of chemicals to free up natural gas in underground formations, a process many Westerners believe threatens water quality. This theme of the senators' influence is felt every day in Western states where drillers are constantly claiming more of the landscape.

According to the League of Conservation Voters, during his terms in the U.S. Senate and House, Coburn has voted against environmentalists' positions from 87 to 100 percent of the time, depending on which session you focus on. Inhofe has voted against environmentalists 96 to 100 percent of the time. That's another way the Oklahoma "nos" are heard around the West.

Enviro group sues over NM, Ariz. wolf listing

2010-10-28T19:23:00.000-06:00

An environmental group has sued Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, seeking to force him to rule on a petition to list the Mexican gray wolf in New Mexico and Arizona as an endangered species separate from other gray wolves in North America.

The wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians, Nicole Rosmarino, said the Mexican gray wolves face potential extinction in the wild.

WildEarth Guardians filed its lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Phoenix, alleging Salazar's decision is overdue.

An Interior Department spokeswoman, Kendra Barkoff, said Thursday the agency cannot comment on pending litigation.

Another conservation group, the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a notice Wednesday of its intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in federal court in Washington, D.C., saying the agency failed to respond to petitions to list the wolf and three other species.

WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity and The Rewilding Institute filed petitions in August 2009 for a separate listing for the Mexican gray wolf.

The Fish and Wildlife Service agreed this August to review the status of the species.

Such a positive finding triggers a one-year status review—an in-depth look to decide if the species should be listed.

But WildEarth Guardians' lawsuit contends Salazar should have decided last November whether to review the wolves' status.

Rosmarino said he had 90 days from the date the petition was filed.

The lawsuit said Salazar should have decided by Aug. 12 whether the listing was warranted.

Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity said Fish and Wildlife "is placing the Mexican gray wolf and other endangered species at increased risk for extinction" by missing deadlines...

NM commission extends trapping ban in wolf area

2010-10-28T19:02:00.000-06:00

The New Mexico Game Commission on Thursday approved changes in state rules to temporarily ban trapping throughout the Gila and Apache national forests in southwestern New Mexico. That will allow wildlife managers time to study the risks of trapping and snaring to the Mexican gray wolf.

The prohibition will begin Nov. 1 and last at least six months while the state Game and Fish Department assesses whether some methods of trapping would pose less risk for the wolves.

The changes follow an executive order issued last summer by Gov. Bill Richardson that called for a temporary ban on trapping on the New Mexico side of an area where Mexican gray wolves have been reintroduced along the New Mexico-Arizona border.

Richardson's executive order noted that traps do not differentiate between wolves and the animals for which traps were set.

His order said there have been six confirmed and three probable Mexican gray wolves trapped in New Mexico's portion of the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area in the past eight years. Five wolves were injured by the traps, two severely enough to require leg amputations.

Injuries can harm wolves' ability to catch prey and could increase the risk of wolves preying on livestock instead of faster elk and deer, the order said.

Environmentalists applauded the commission's decision to adopt the trapping ban, calling it a milestone for wolves in the Southwest.

Mexican gray wolf found dead in NM; 4th this year

2010-10-27T04:01:00.000-06:00

By SUE MAJOR HOLMES / Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE - Another Mexican gray wolf has been found dead in southwestern New Mexico, dealing a further setback to a struggling program to reintroduce the endangered animals along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

The female wolf was found dead on Oct. 12 in Sierra County. It was the fourth wolf found dead since June.

A spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque, Tom Buckley, said the wolf's body was sent to the agency's forensics laboratory in Ashland, Ore., to find out what killed the animal.

The male wolf that had been traveling with her has not been spotted, but Buckley said there's no reason to believe something happened to him.

He said there had been no mortality signal from the male wolf's radio collar. The signal is set off when an animal does not move for a set time.

The two animals, known as Morgart's Pack, were in the Gila National Forest in September, according to the program's monthly update.

Government agencies began reintroducing Mexican gray wolves into the wild in the two states in 1998. Biologists had predicted a self-sustaining wild population of 100 wolves before now, but a count early this year found 42 between the two states, down from 52 the year before.

The subspecies of the gray wolf had been exterminated in the wild by the 1930s.

Fish and Wildlife officials announced earlier this month they were postponing the release of eight wolves in Arizona's Apache National Forest until next year. The program originally expected to release the animals this fall, but managers decided it was not the right time for a successful release. The three other wolf deaths this year include two males from Hawks Nest Pack in eastern Arizona who were found shot to death this summer, and the alpha male of the San Mateo pack in New Mexico that was found dead in June from an undetermined cause.

In addition, the alpha male from the Paradise Pack in Arizona disappeared in April. Buckley said the program still doesn't know what happened. The federal agency, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, the Arizona Game and Fish Department's Operation Game Thief and private groups and individuals have offered a reward of up to $58,000 for information leading to the conviction of anyone responsible for shooting deaths of Mexican gray wolves.

Lawsuit Puts Federal Livestock Grazing in Doubt

2010-10-22T03:49:00.000-06:00

By Myers Reece 10-21-10

Western agricultural groups say a June lawsuit filed by five environmental groups in U.S. District Court is threatening the livelihoods of more than 20,000 ranchers who use federal lands for livestock grazing.

But environmentalists counter that grazing is destructive to public lands and is burdensome to taxpayers. Their complaint seeks amendments to grazing fee regulations and requests that the National Environmental Policy Act be used in determining fees.

When announcing the lawsuit in June, Taylor McKinnon, public lands campaigns manager for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the “federal grazing program is as fiscally irresponsible as it is ecologically harmful.”

“In responding to our petition,” McKinnon said, “the government must now choose between correcting and continuing the subsidized destruction of America’s public land.”

The Montana Farm Bureau Federation announced in September that it’s one of 27 organizations, including 11 other Western farm bureaus, to intervene in the litigation. The agricultural groups are represented by the Mountain States Legal Foundation.

In an op-ed column, William Perry Pendley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation wrote that, while there have been numerous challenges to federal grazing regulations, the current lawsuit is “the biggest challenge yet” from environmental groups.

“For western ranchers and their families, the communities that depend upon them, and the wide-open landscapes that they savor and save daily, much hangs in the balance,” Pendley wrote.

Jake Cummins, executive vice president of Montana’s farm bureau, said last week if the environmental groups prevail in the lawsuit, the increase in grazing fees would be “untenable” for most ranchers. Cummins notes that 30 percent of land in Montana is federal, and in other Western states it’s twice that much.

“If you take (federal grazing) out of operation, that’s going to result in a lot of people not being able to maintain their ranching business,” Cummins said. “Ranching is a marginal business anyway, and with this you’re going to see a lot of these ranches converted to subdivisions.”

The lawsuit, filed in district court in Washington D.C., is the latest shakeup in a decades-long tussle over grazing on land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM manages more public land than any federal agency at 245 million acres. Of that, nearly 160 million acres have livestock grazing. The Forest Service manages just under 200 million acres, about half of which has grazing. Combined, the agencies administer more than 25,000 grazing permits.

Federal livestock grazing policy dates back to the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, and then later the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 and the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978. The 1978 act established a formula for determining fees on an annual basis.

Disagreements between environmentalists and ranchers over public grazing is nothing new, though the tension has been especially discernible over the last two decades dating back to the national environmental campaign “Cattle Free in ’93,” Cummins said. During that campaign, environmentalists demanded that the Clinton administration vacate all grazing permits and leases for federal lands.

While philosophies on public grazing shifted under the Clinton and Bush administrations, the fee structure remained the same. The Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition to increase grazing fees in 2005. The June complaint was filed to compel federal agencies to respond to the petition.

For 2010, the BLM and Forest Service set grazing fees at $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM). But the Center for Biological Diversity asserts that fees must be between $7.64 and $12.26 per AUM to recover costs.

Cummins said the fee system has withstood numerous challenges and was reinforced by a 1986 presidential executive order because it’s both “reasonable” and “equitable.”

“It’s a process that’s proven to be successful in the West and it’s frustrating for those of us who work in the agricultural industry to deal with this never-ending attempt to demonize ranchers and drive them off land,” Cummins said.

“Maybe if you see a cow, it offends your sensibilities,” he added. “But personally, I like steak.”

Environmentalists say livestock grazing destroys habitat and imperils wildlife, while the public foots the bill through subsidies. McKinnon said last week the complaint aims to raise fees so that full costs are recovered and not passed on to taxpayers.

“That’s why these groups have intervened, because this threatens a massive public subsidy,” McKinnon said. “There’s a whole host of costs shouldered by the public for the livestock industry using public lands.”

But Cummins said the only federal land he knows of in the Montana vicinity to be damaged by overgrazing is Yellowstone National Park, and the culprits are bison.

“Why are bison better than cattle?” he said. “That’s something that escapes me. Why is that better than having managed grazing? I challenge you to drive around the state and show me where there’s been real harm done.”

He added: “These people filing the lawsuits aren’t from Montana; they’re filing them from offices somewhere else.”

None of the five environmental groups have headquarters in Montana. The Center for Biological Diversity is based out of Tucson, Ariz., but has “250,000 members and online activists” with offices across the country.

Occasional property disputes arise when livestock are allowed to roam on federal lands. Gordon Brimhall, who owns 24 acres in the Trego area, said his neighbors have federal grazing permits and their cattle spend substantial time on his property.

Brimhall said he’s been told he should build a fence, but he said it’s not his responsibility to fork out money for a fence, adding that he’s disabled. He said he’s spoken to the cattle owners and the proper authorities but nothing’s been done.

“The other neighbors are angry too, but they’ve given up,” Brimhall said. “I’m to my wit’s end.”

Cummins said property disputes are inevitable but added that the federal agencies and lease holders work hard to prevent such problems.

“To suggest that there’s never a dispute between people who have adjoining properties – it happens but it’s generally resolved,” Cummins said.

The permits, Cummins said, “aren’t just issued willy nilly,” and the qualifying ranchers make necessary improvements to the land, including water and fences. Public lands maintained for grazing, Cummins added, often benefit wildlife as well.

Lillian Ostendorf, a rancher in southeastern Montana, said many BLM lands were initially bypassed by homesteaders because of their poor habitat. She said the only reason the BLM land that her family runs cattle on today is suitable for use – including by wildlife – is because they provide water and take care of it.

“We maintain the fences, pay for watering improvements,” Ostendorf said. “We foot the bill for that and those costs have gone up too. It’s just a poor time to be adding costs to farmers’ and ranchers’ bottom lines.”

Ostendorf said, if grazing fees are increased, the effect will be even more damaging to some of her neighbors who have far more BLM-leased land.

“It could be devastating to their operations,” she said. “This is an important issue.”

The Guy Idaho Ranchers Love to Hate

2010-10-15T04:08:00.000-06:00

Jon Marvel sees two ways to get cows and sheep to stop grazing on public lands: Politics and litigation. He chooses the latter.

By Dennis Higman, 10-14-10

“If we weren’t getting to them, they’d brush us off like a fly. After all, we’re just a little organization with 14 or 15 people, but they act like what we do is the end of the world.” Photo courtesy of Boise State.
“If we weren’t getting to them, they’d brush us off like a fly. After all, we’re just a little organization with 14 or 15 people, but they act like what we do is the end of the world.” Photo courtesy of Boise State.

There are two topics you don’t want to bring up with most Idaho ranchers: wolves and Jon Marvel, the white-haired, 63-year-old founder and executive director of the Western Watersheds Project.

Exactly what is it about this guy who looks more like a college professor than an environmental activist worthy of nstant, visceral, angry reactions from ranchers, that include “he’s an asshole” to “I hate that bastard” to “he’s an abusive guy” and other not-suitable-for-work quotations?

As it turns out, Marvel, a history graduate from the University of Chicago who founded WWP in 1993, is not at all mild-mannered unless it serves his purpose. In reality, he’s is an intense, combative man who does not believe in compromise. “You don’t influence change without directly taking on the people who oppose that change,” he says in a recent interview. “Collaboration simply gets you marginalized.”

He’s also a man who harbors a long-standing grudge with roots in an incident many, many years ago at his family cabin in Stanley, Idaho. “One day I found this rancher cutting across my land without permission, taking salt blocks to his stock. I told him to go around, go back the same way he came in and you know what he said? ‘Where did you come from?’ It was like he felt he was somehow entitled to use my private property as he saw fit.”

That initial contact led Marvel to take a closer look at what his ranching neighbors thought they were entitled to do on surrounding public land where they grazed their stock in the summer under longterm, subsidized leases (currently, it’s $1.35 for a cow or calf compared to $17 to $22 on private land). He was appalled by the activity supervised by the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the state. He saw it as the long-standing, irresponsible, wanton destruction of the land and its resources---fish, wildlife, plants and water---by cattle and sheep. He surmised this destruction was aided and abetted by complacent, complicit government agencies charged with regulation and oversight of grazing on millions of acres in the public interest.

That was a defining moment for him and the beginning of what became Western Watersheds Project---which is the second reason most Idaho ranchers hate Jon Marvel. Although the mission of WWP, headquartered in Hailey, is to “protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife through education, public policy initiatives and litigation,” its goal is to do this by getting domestic livestock off public land in the West. And while its methods certainly include some education and policy initiatives, the organization’s MO consists primarily of filing lawsuit after lawsuit, using every environmental law on the books, ranging from the Endangered Species Act to the Clean Water Act and the Federal Land Policy Management Act, among many others.

Jon Marvel, WWP staff and officials with the Forest Serveice survey cattle damage on Pine Creek in the Little Lost River Watershed. Photo by John Carter.

Jon Marvel, WWP staff and officials with the Forest Serveice survey cattle damage on Pine Creek in the Little Lost River Watershed. Photo by John Carter.

“Marvel’s nothing but a pot-smoking trust-funder who came out here from back East to change the world. He’s got millions of dollars behind him,” complains one angry Idaho rancher who wouldn’t allow his name to be printed. “If I say anything on the record, I’m just inviting one of his damn lawsuits and I can’t afford it, he said, continuing, “He’s not interested in improving the resource; he just wants people like me out of business. It’s hard enough to make any money in cattle these days.”

That kind of reaction does not displease Jon Marvel. Public lands in the West and livestock are not a viable combination and never have been, he says. It doesn’t make any sense economically or environmentally to use this arid land for grazing and he says he can prove it with reams of data and statistics: It’s too dry, harsh and fragile, only 3 percent of cattle are raised on public land anyway (most are raised on private land in East Texas and Florida), and ranching is, at best, a marginal economic activity in Idaho.

Half the ranchers who use public land for grazing are “hobbyists,” in Marvel’s view, who don’t depend on ranch income. Of the other half who do, half of those are “corporate ranchers,” he says.

“They know I’m right about this,” Marvel says. “If we weren’t getting to them, they’d brush us off like a fly. After all, we’re just a little organization with 14 or 15 people, but they act like what we do is the end of the world.”

Here, Marvel is being somewhat disingenuous. Western Watersheds has offices in nine Western states, a million-dollar budget and a formidable advisory board and staff of doctors (the academic type---botanists, biologists, ecologists), as well as an aggressive, highly effective team of public interest lawyers in Boise, Advocates for the West.

Typical is John Carter, a long-time board member and the director of WWP’s Utah Office until he recently resigned to spend more time developing his 900-acre wildlife and research preserve in southeast Idaho. Carter, a soft-spoken Southern farm boy with a degree in mechanical engineering, a Master’s in business administration and a Ph.D. in biology/ecology, started several successful engineering businesses and consulting firms involved in studies of watersheds, oil shale development and hazardous waste management before devoting his full time to authoring numerous scientific papers on range conditions in the West and becoming an expert witness for Western Watersheds.

“You know, people like to zero-in on Jon Marvel,” says Carter, whose accent and courtly manner mask a passionate, aggressive dedication to the cause, “but he’s not alone. There are a lot of highly qualified people all over the West, pushing for and dedicated to reform just like he is.

“What we’re up against is a broken, corrupt regulatory system,” Carter continues. “The environmental damage caused by livestock grazing on Western public land is irrefutable. This land needs more than a few years off. The fact is, it needs a century of rest!”

Idaho ranchers who graze livestock on public land during the summer most emphatically do not agree with any of this. “Jon Marvel’s an environmental obstructionist,” insists Carl Elsworth, Idaho Cattle Association (ICA) President. “His goal is not to help the environment or help local economies. He holds up good projects like improvement of salmon and bull trout habitat on technicalities because all he really wants to do is get cattle off public land.”

Charles Lyon, incoming ICA President, agrees. “There is no middle ground here, not as far I’m concerned. Marvel’s trying to nail us to a wall with all his lawsuits. He wants to put us out of business and we have to stand together.”

“These people (WWP) have never worked the ground a day in their life,” he says, “and if they get their way, a lot of struggling little rural communities are going to be hurt economically. There’s a good system in place, using public range in the summer and private land in the winter. You take away the public land, it will overload private land, damage its resources and a lot of small operators will get squeezed out.”

The Idaho Rangeland Resource Commission (IRRC), a state agency dedicated to providing “scientifically-based educational materials to Idaho teachers” and whose goals are, among others, “to promote public support for sustainable livestock grazing” and “responsible range stewardship,” declined to comment on Marvel and WWP, or suggest people who would.

“The IRRC works on positive stories and stays away from controversy as much as possible,” Executive Director Gretchen Hyde said in an e-mail, “and we don’t want to put anyone at risk of dealing with lawsuits (frivolous or not).”

The Forest Service, one of the primary regulatory agencies that oversee livestock grazing on public lands in Idaho and other Western States---and a constant target of Jon Marvel’s lawsuits and ire---is also gun shy. A local Idaho district ranger in that vast bureaucratic organization now needs permission from Washington, D.C., to talk to the press, and that permission was not forthcoming in time for this article.

It does pay to be wary of Marvel and the Western Watersheds Project, of course. Lawsuits to protect wolves, sage grouse, pigmy rabbits, bull trout and bighorn sheep have all been filed by WWP over the years, plus a host of other litigation, and they’ve won some significant victories.

Early on, Marvel tried to buy leases on state land in order to halt grazing on the theory that if he paid to have the land retired instead of grazed, the state was better off financially and environmentally. When his high bids were rebuffed, he took it to the Idaho Supreme Court and won. And when the State Land Board still refused to go along, he won a subsequent case in federal court using a civil rights law.

In 2005, WWP won a federal court injunction removing livestock from 800,000 acres of BLM-managed land in Idaho. And in 2007, WWP’s litigation strategy paid off in a big way when it was able to overturn Bush-era grazing regulations on 160 million acres of BLM land in 11 states.

They were also recently involved (with other parties) in a lawsuit that put wolves back on the Endangered Species list, at least temporarily, and won a case which stopped domestic sheep grazing on 65 percent of the Payette National Forest on the grounds they carried a disease that was killing Bighorn Sheep. WWP has also successfully forced the Washington State Department of Fish and Game to stop using two large tracts of its wildlife lands for cattle grazing.

Excluding revolution, there are basically two ways to initiate the kind of sweeping change Marvel is seeking: politics or litigation---and he has clearly opted for the latter. In a one-party state like Idaho, there’s little choice, he says. Lawsuits may not be the ultimate answer, Marvel concedes, but they are an effective way to focus public attention on an environmental problem, bring about change and, equally important, increase the cost of noncompliance for violators. “There just aren’t any significant examples of environmental laws being enforced without litigation or threat of litigation,” he says

More recently, however, Western Watersheds tried an alternate approach by making an agreement with the El Paso Corp. not to challenge its proposed pipeline from Wyoming to Oregon in exchange for a $15-million fund to be used for conservation easements, land purchases and a voluntary retirement of grazing permits. Ironically, a group of counties have challenged this agreement on the grounds it’s harmful to ranchers because, among other reasons, they will be pressured into selling their grazing rights by WWP lawsuits.

Not true, Marvel says: Ranchers will sell voluntarily because it’s in their best interest to sell. A WWP spokesman is quoted in the Idaho Statesman as saying it isn’t a coercive fund at all, but then goes on to note that WWP does go to court to enforce the nation’s environmental laws and “we’re holding the enforcement of existing laws over their head.”

The resistance of these county officials may be more a matter of culture than economics, John Freeman, senior fellow at the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State, said in this same article. “Culture matters.”
By culture, he explained in a subsequent interview, he means a way of life and community values. This may help to explain why the angry reaction and resistance to Jon Marvel and the Western Watersheds program goes well beyond ranchers in many rural Idaho communities.

Marvel likes to talk about “the myth of the West,” the deeply ingrained glorification of cowboys and cows, noble, independent ranchers and echoes of “Home on the Range” that has obscured the destructive reality of this bogus culture for a century. “That myth is dying fast,” he claims. “Nobody makes Westerns any more. Young people today could care less. I know change is coming.”

And to bolster his point, he cites a survey that claims being a cowboy today is considered to be the worst job in the United States. The only two Idaho cowboys this reporter knows, however, apparently didn’t take part.

These are proud, independent, hard-working, self sufficient people who clearly love what they do, and when I complained to one about how hard it was to make a living these days, he replied there were plenty of jobs out there. Like what? I challenged him. “Like this one,” he laughed.

In the final analysis, it appears that the battle lines between Jon Marvel, Western Watersheds and the ranching community have been drawn. There is precious little room for compromise on the issues, and probably no room at all for politically bipartisan solutions on the land issues he champions.

Although Hailey, Idaho, where Marvel lives and works (and where Western Watersheds was just given the “Environmental Advocate of the Year” award by that city and the surrounding communities of Ketchum and Sun Valley), might be classified as a liberal community, Idaho remains a conservative Republican state. Ranchers retain a solid base of political power here and the current governor, a rancher himself, once boasted he would be the first in line to shoot a wolf when it became legal.

Nor is the national political outlook any more promising with the current Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar, who has authority over the regulatory agencies that oversee federal public lands, is also a rancher by profession. “I’m deeply disappointed in the Obama administration,” Marvel concedes.

“There’s no change in behavior from Bush; it’s all extremely negative. I expected more, a lot more. I foolishly believed it was going to be different, but all we got were Clinton retreads. Ken Salazar has closed the door on change of any kind; it’s more of the same, an accommodation of vested interests.”

That, and the fact that upcoming November elections will, in all likelihood, make it look even darker on Marvel’s horizon, almost guarantees there will be only more contentious lawsuits and animosity ahead. The real winners look to be only one group---lawyers---who surely must rank somewhere not far below the cowboys on Jon Marvel’s survey, among the least-admired of any profession.

Resigned to Living With Wolves, More Ranchers Are Giving Deterrence Projects a Try

2010-10-15T03:12:00.000-06:00

SPRINGERVILLE, Ariz. -- On a luminous fall afternoon, a couple of Carey Dobson's sheep graze in a pasture stretching across a high valley edged with ponderosa pines. A wire fence keeps them from wandering into the adjacent road.

But this is no ordinary fence. All along its length, long slips of magenta plastic flagging wave in the wind, like streamers on a parade float. No one knows exactly why, but wolves typically stay clear of these decorated fences. Dobson put up the "fladry" and electrified the fence about three years ago after losing nine sheep to wolves in one year.

So far, the combination of visual repellent and electric shock seems to be working.

"From the time we started doing that in 2007 up to now, we've had zero wolf depredations," Dobson said, sitting at the kitchen table of his family's spacious log home on a private inholding surrounded by the Apache National Forest. "I think the fence has a lot to do with it."

A few miles away, rancher Sydney Maddock and Eddie Lee, her ranch manager, have hired a range rider -- a cowboy or cowgirl who monitors the herd -- to make sure her cattle stay safe. They have also started allowing calves to grow bigger before turning them out onto their federal grazing allotment so that they are less vulnerable to depredation.

Wolves tend to prey on young, old or weak livestock, although they do sometimes kill healthy adults.

"I don't know if it's going to work out or not," Lee said, standing around a late afternoon campfire at his camp near a cattle and horse corral. "But it's been two years, and it seems to be working."

Meanwhile, on the New Mexico side of the Mexican wolf reintroduction area, about 70 miles to the east, rancher Alan Tackman is putting up a fence to keep his cattle from wandering up the mountain toward a known wolf den.

"They're not smart enough to remember, 'A wolf ate my baby here,'" said Pat Morrison, district ranger for the Glenwood District of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, where Tackman's fence is being erected.

An elk calving area lies between the den and the fence line, and the hope is that the wolves will eat the elk calves -- typically their preferred prey -- and leave the cattle alone, Morrison said.

'Something everyone can get behind'

Such deterrence projects are slowly gaining favor with ranchers living in wolf country, and they reflect a new, more collaborative way of dealing with Mexican wolves, which the Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico in 1998.

For most of the Mexican wolf program's history, the focus has been on removing "problem" wolves that prey on livestock, either by killing the animals, relocating them in the wild, or retiring them to a holding facility. But wildlife officials and some ranchers say it is better for both livestock and wolves to prevent conflicts from happening in the first place.

"Nothing is as divisive as this," Chris Bagnoli, Mexican wolf interagency team leader for Arizona, said of the Mexican wolf reintroduction program. "But some folks have come to understand that they're here, and there are ways to live with it."

About 15 ranchers in Arizona and about a dozen in New Mexico have tried wolf deterrent strategies over the past several years, and many of them -- particularly in Arizona, where grazing is for the most part seasonal instead of year-round -- have seen some benefit.

"One of the most effective things you can do is separate cattle and wolves," said John Oakleaf, a senior Fish and Wildlife Service biologist with the Mexican wolf program. "Reducing wolf depredations -- that's a common goal for sure. That's something wolf biologists and ranchers and everyone can all get behind."

That does not mean, however, that ranchers have come to embrace having wolves in their midst.

"If they were to take the wolves out tomorrow, I'd be happy," said Barbara Mack, who has worked closely with Bagnoli to keep her 110 cattle and two dogs away from the local Blue Stem wolf pack in the Apache National Forest's rugged Alpine District. "But they are here, and we have to work with everybody to try to get along and to survive."

Antipathy toward the program is still strong, however, and some ranchers who are working with agencies and advocacy groups on deterrence projects have experienced a backlash -- even from family members.

"I got flak from my father, my neighbors," Dobson said. "But I want to stay here. I'm a fourth-generation rancher. The wolves are on us, so what are we going to do?"

But it took several years for Dobson to warm to the idea of taking a proactive approach to reducing wolf-livestock conflicts. Ten years ago, he was a vocal critic of the Mexican wolf reintroduction program.

In the winter of 2000, Dobson suspected that wolves "chewed up" the leg of a newborn stud colt. But after wildlife officials assured him there were no wolves in the area, he concluded that his guard dogs had attacked the colt and reluctantly put the dogs down. Soon after, he spotted a FWS agent in the area and was told a wolf had been shot, confirming his earlier suspicion.

"I lost a colt, two guard dogs, and I'd been lied to," he said. "I was so upset."

At the time, Dobson was so angry that he refused compensation from Defenders of Wildlife, which had set up a program to pay for confirmed wolf depredations of livestock.

But around 2006, after a spate of wolf depredations, he changed his mind and began collecting compensation while also working with Defenders and state and federal agencies on new deterrent strategies. He now receives weekly calls from FWS and the Arizona Game and Fish Department with updates on wolf activity in his area.

"I just got to the point where I'd had enough," he said. "It wasn't the wolf's fault. The wolf's an animal. It was the way things were being managed. I said, 'We need to come together and figure out what we're going to do.'"

Changes in funding

Money to fund prevention projects comes from a mix of private and government sources.

For more than a decade, Defenders of Wildlife paid ranchers for their losses and helped fund deterrence projects, but the group phased out its compensation program last month after the federal government established its own program, which will pay ranchers for livestock depredations and support conflict prevention projects.

The money for the federal interdiction fund comes from a $1 million outlay authorized under the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act and issued last April to Arizona, New Mexico and eight other Western states to help support non-lethal programs to prevent wolf-livestock conflicts (Land Letter, April 1). Arizona and New Mexico each received $140,000 to fund such efforts.

The states will add matching funds, either by direct cash payments or through in-kind payments of labor, supplies and other supports. Craig Miller, who ran Defenders of Wildlife's compensation program for the past several years, said the group contributed about $45,000 to help establish the federal interdiction fund, but will now shift focus to its own conflict prevention program. The Mexican Wolf Fund, a non-advocacy group that funds wolf deterrent projects, will also contribute to the interdiction fund.

Both Defenders and ranchers say the new federally administered program should bring some advantages. A livestock compensation board made up of a range of stakeholders, including both ranchers and wildlife advocates, will decide what types of losses and deterrence projects merit funding.

Dobson and other ranchers hope the new system will allow compensation not only for the loss of livestock, but associated losses such as lower animal weights due to stress or fewer calves resulting from the loss of a cow that would have borne offspring over the course of her life.

"It allows people to feel they have some say in what's going on," Bagnoli said.

'Everyone's getting a little smarter'

Stakeholder groups will also likely benefit from several years of trial and error in implementing conflict prevention projects. Patrick Valentino, director of the Mexican Wolf Fund, said that agency officials, funders and ranchers now have a better understanding of what works and what does not.

"Given the experience over the past few years, I think everyone's getting a little smarter, maybe combining a couple of things, like fencing with feed, or feed with range riders," said Valentino, whose organization has funded conflict prevention projects since 2006. "These programs can work well together sometimes."

Variations in livestock operations, topography and behavior of both the livestock and the wolves also need to be considered when determining which method, or combination of methods, are likely to work best, added Bagnoli.

Relocation of cattle, use of fladry, range riders, fencing and radio-alarmed guard boxes, or "RAG boxes," that emit loud noises and flashing lights have all been used in the northern Rockies as well to deter wolves, with some success (Land Letter, March 18).

In the Great Lakes region, researchers are experimenting with "howl boxes," which play digital recordings of wolf howls in the rendezvous areas of five wolf packs. The goal is to trick the wolves into believing that another pack has claimed the same territory, in hopes that they will move to other areas (Land Letter, July 29).

These deterrent strategies are essential to the recovery of Mexican wolves in the Southwest, where after 12 years, there are only about 42 wolves -- 27 in Arizona and 15 in New Mexico -- those involved with the program say.

"I think in order for wolves to achieve recovery in ecologically meaningful levels, tolerance from landowners, from people using the landscape, is the most important component," Miller of Defenders of Wildlife said. "This isn't a biological problem, it's a social problem. The real challenge is in helping humans accept wolves as part of the landscape."

Yet Miller acknowledges that deterrence projects do not always work. In some cases, wolves have lost their fear of the deterrent, or ranchers lose interest in continuing the projects, which they typically contribute some funding or labor to.

But with more than two-thirds of the Blue Range Mexican wolf recovery area permitted for grazing, they are worth a try, agency officials say. "We're trying to make both the wolf and the grazing permittees viable here," said Morrison of the Gila National Forest's Glenwood District in New Mexico.

At the same time, even some ranchers who are trying deterrence projects still actively oppose the reintroduction program.

Tackman, for instance, is named as one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in August by Catron and Otero counties and other New Mexico ranchers over changes to the program that they say have resulted in fewer removals of wolves that attack livestock. Tackman did not return calls seeking an interview for this story.

While some ranchers remain highly skeptical of conflict prevention projects, Dobson and others say the lack of depredations in areas where they have been tried demonstrates that wolves and livestock can co-exist.

Yet he wonders what will happen as wolf populations increase. FWS biologists set an informal target of 100 wolves on the landscape when the program first began, and a forthcoming update to the Mexican wolf recovery plan is likely to call for at least that many and possibly more (Land Letter, July 22).

"It can always come back and bite me on the rear. ... Everything could be taken away from ranchers," Dobson said. "But at least I know I've tried."

Reese writes from Santa Fe, N.M.

NM pushes changes to outstanding waters proposal

2010-10-12T18:10:00.000-06:00

The New Mexico Environment Department and conservation groups presented a compromise Tuesday to state regulators who are considering a proposal that would protect hundreds of miles of headwater streams, more than two dozen lakes and numerous wetlands in federal wilderness areas around New Mexico.

The department first petitioned the Water Quality Control Commission to designate headwaters in a dozen federal wilderness areas around the state as outstanding water sources, which would protect streams, lakes and wetlands by prohibiting any activities that would degrade water quality.

Under the compromise, temporary degradation of water quality would be allowed only in limited circumstances, such as during restoration or maintenance projects.

Supporters said the compromise better defines protections for outstanding waters and keeps in place the state's strict anti-degradation policy. But it immediately drew criticism from a ranchers' group that has been fighting the department's effort to designate the waterways as "outstanding national resources waters."

Dan Dolan, an attorney representing the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association, said suggesting changes to the proposal during the hearing process does not give ranchers or others who are concerned enough time to review and present their cases.

"We have the agency changing its proposal to be something that it never was in the first place and that the public never got notice of," he said. "It's just another example of an environmental agency that does not really care what the public's input is."

State officials said they have tried to address the public's concerns and that development of the initial proposal included extensive public participation.

The hearing before the commission in Santa Fe is a continuation of a proceeding that started last month. Some groups involved in the case have been negotiating changes to the proposal's language over the last three weeks, but the ranchers contend that they were left out.

The hearing was scheduled to last through Friday. It will be up to the commission to approve, modify or reject the proposal. It could be December before the commission makes a final decision in the case.

"The cattle growers are just slowing the process down and stalling it as much as they can," said Bryan Bird of WildEarth Guardians, one of the groups that negotiated the compromise. "The bottom line is that a handful of public lands ranchers are holding the entire state's clean water hostage. I think that's inappropriate."

Pointing to citizens' signatures and support from municipalities and sportsmen's groups, Bird said protecting New Mexico's headwaters will help the state prepare for growing pressure on its limited water resources.

The Richardson administration began pushing an outstanding waters designation in 2008.

After dozens of public meetings, the environment department changed its proposal a few times to address the concerns of ranchers, water associations and others. It wasn't until May that the state presented its final petition to the commission.

Energy, environment rules may roll back with new governor

2010-10-11T05:14:00.000-06:00

Neither of New Mexico's gubernatorial candidates — Democrat Diane Denish and Republican Susana Martinez — are likely to put environmental issues quite as high on their agenda as Gov. Bill Richardson.

They've already indicated they might overturn or weaken some environmental rules Richardson's administration has put in place, such as the pit rule for wastes from oil and gas production and the greenhouse gas emissions cap.

A governor can do a lot to upend or change environmental rules and orders approved under a predecessor. She can appoint her own people to commissions, direct those commissions to revisit rules and direct staff to ignore existing rules.

"There could be rollbacks of environmental regulations after the elections happen," said Jim Norton, director of the environmental protection division at the New Mexico Environment Department.

Denish at least has environment and energy listed as issues on her campaign website and provides a list of "six environmental principles to lead by" on her site and promotes the creation of "sustainable jobs."

Environment, water and energy were not "issues" topics listed on Martinez's official campaign website.

Follow the money

Thus far, oil and gas companies have been top industry donors to the Martinez campaign, giving her $481,125. Also among her major financial supporters are homebuilders ($462,801) and conservative issue groups ($250,000), according to followthemoney.org. Texas homebuilder Bob J. Perry, who funded the Swiftboat ad campaign against unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, gave her $350,000 in May.

Denish also has received money from the oil and gas industry ($71,400), much of it from companies in her hometown of Hobbs, in an area sometimes referred to as "Little Texas." Her biggest financial support has come from lawyers and lobbyists ($444,651) including labor unions, followed by real estate donors ($340,185).

Greenhouse gas cap

On some environmental issues, such as a proposed cap on greenhouse gas emissions, Martinez and Denish appear to have a similar stance at first glance. But while both oppose a state greenhouse gas cap and trade rule — they do so for different reasons.

Denish believes climate change is occurring, but that any effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must be global and national, not state-by-state.

Martinez adheres to the climate change naysayer line, saying an emissions cap is anti-business, would increase taxes and isn't based on sound science.

The New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board held two weeks of heated hearings regarding a controversial greenhouse gas emissions rule. The New Mexico Environment Department and the nonprofit New Energy Economy have proposed separate regulations that would cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Any rule, if approved, would take effect in 2012. The EIB is scheduled to vote on the Environment Department petition on Election Day, Nov. 2.

The state petition seeks to require power plants, oil refineries and gas treatment facilities that produce more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide gas annually to reduce emissions by 2 percent a year from 2012 levels and allow industries to trade carbon credits within a Western states exchange.

Pit rule

In 2008, the state Oil Conservation Commission approved a rule to intended to reduce contamination of shallow groundwater aquifers from unlined pits that hold waste from oil and gas production.

The rule — proposed by a task force of oil and gas representatives, environmentalists, ranchers and local government representatives — requires producers to line pits used for temporarily storing production waste and later to haul the waste to a licensed disposal center.

Denish says "one size doesn't fit all" when it come to governmental rules and thinks the rule should be "revisited." In addition, she wants to adopt a process to make rulemaking more predictable and fair.

Martinez claims the pit rule has driven the cost per well up by "as much as" $250,000. But according to testimony by well producers during the pit rule hearing, the costs under the new rule run an extra $35,000 and $150,000, depending on the depth of the well. The $250,000 figure is the cost of cleaning up old "legacy pits" constructed before the pit rule.

Martinez also says New Mexico was the only state to see a drop in gas production in 2009 because the pit rule chased away producers. But Kansas also saw a decline in gas production. And the sharp drop in oil and gas prices was the major cause of reduced production in 2008 and 2009, according to a report on the Economic Impact of the Oil and Gas Industry by New Mexico State University economist C. Meghan Starbuck.

Oil and gas prices dropped by 70 percent or more in the last half of 2008 and remained depressed into 2009. Oil production in New Mexico actually increased in 2008 while natural gas production has seen a decline since two years before the pit rule.

This year, oil and gas leases in New Mexico brought in a record amount of money, according to the federal Bureau of Land Management.

"The idea that we're running industry out doesn't hold water," said petroleum engineer and attorney Mark Fesmire, head of the state's Oil Conservation Division.

Before the rule, field staff from the Oil Conservation Division found 800 cases of groundwater contamination due to oil and gas wastes. Since the final version of the rule was adopted, staff have found no contamination at pit sites.

Water realities

Neither candidate, in answering a specific question about the slow progress of adjudicating water rights, proposed a specific idea to help move those cases through the courts faster.

The snail's pace of water adjudications in the last century — establishing who owns what legal rights to water resources — remains a weak link in the New Mexico's ability to manage its water for the future while protecting senior water rights.

State Engineer John D'Antonio said additional funding and the lifting of a hiring freeze would help finish adjudications more quickly. But he doesn't expect that to happen during the state's current economic doldrums.

His office is involved in a dozen active adjudications involving 72,000 water-rights holders. He said his office has 50 vacancies and the litigation division has seen a 30 percent reduction in staff. "We have a bare-bones staff for adjudications," D'Antonio said. "Our goal is to finish these adjudications before starting new ones."

The largest, potentially most volatile water rights adjudication — the Middle Rio Grande area including Albuquerque — has yet to go to court.

The Republican candidate was targeted by an unattributed video posted on YouTube that accused the El Paso native of wanting to "send New Mexico's water to Texas." The video was taken down shortly after a few newspapers and bloggers wrote about it.

Martinez would have no power to send extra water to Texas if she became New Mexico's governor, even if that was her desire. Water shares from both the Pecos and Rio Grande rivers that flow through New Mexico into Texas are governed by interstate stream compacts and multi-state commissions.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.