By Paul Rubin
published: June 10, 2010
Sue Krentz answered the phone about 6 p.m.
It was March 27, a Saturday, and she was in Phoenix, tending to her aged parents as a sister attended a conference.
Sue usually doesn't stray from her family's venerable cattle ranch in Cochise County for too long at a stretch. But she was planning on staying through the weekend, as another sister was coming into town for a visit.
She and Rob, her husband of 32 years, hadn't been on a vacation in years, what with endless tasks on the ranch, about 35 miles northeast of Douglas, Arizona, near the borders of New Mexico and Mexico.
The call was from her 27-year-old son, Frank, who also works on Krentz Ranch.
"We can't find Daddy," he told his mother.
Sue last had spoken to Rob early that morning. He had told her he planned to check on some water lines on the sprawling property, an everyday responsibility to preserve the ranch's lifeblood.
Sue packed her bags, jumped into her car, gassed up, and headed for home, trying not to panic.
"We'd been shouting for years about the Mexican drug smugglers coming through our land," she tells New Times, the first time she has spoken publicly about that day.
"Things are dangerous for ranchers and other residents. But I tried to convince myself that no one would ever hurt Rob, who was the kindest person you'd ever hope to meet."
Sue got home just before midnight.
Home is at Krentz Ranch headquarters, five bumpy miles up a dirt road off State Route 80, the major north-south route east of Douglas.
She and Rob raised their three children in their modest adobe-and-plaster home, built around the turn of the 20th Century and where Rob himself was raised.
Sue stepped outside into the chilly night to gather herself. The moon was nearly full, and the sky was flush with stars.
A helicopter soon came into view, maybe ten miles away on the south side of Route 80. It circled around briefly before descending.
Dread overwhelmed Sue.
Within minutes, family members and friends sped up the road in their all-terrain vehicles with grim news.
"Rob was dead, and someone had shot our dog Blue too," Sue says. "Blue was alive, but they had to put him down. He was a real good dog. How can I say this? There was evil out there that day."
Word of Rob Krentz's murder — the first of an Arizona border rancher in anyone's memory — flew around Cochise County within hours.
Within a day or two, the entire nation knew about it.
Krentz became an unlikely martyr, his violent death symbolizing to many everything that's wrong at the border. To them, he surely was the victim of an illegal, drug-smuggling alien.
He became the face of then-pending Senate Bill 1070, the madly controversial legislation whose point is to identify, arrest, and deport illegal aliens from Arizona.
To the crusty, close community of southern Arizona's border ranchers, Krentz was just "good old Rob," the co-patriarch, with younger brother Phil, of his family's more-than-a-century-old cattle spread.
By every account — except for unsubstantiated, anonymous comments on the internet — Rob Krentz was an old-school cowboy with no known enemies and a big heart.
The Krentz brothers seemed to come from another time and place, strapping men who performed their cattle-ranching chores without complaint, battling droughts, economic malaise, endless government regulations, and, since the mid-1990s, an onslaught of Mexican drug smugglers on their land.
It was incomprehensible to those who knew Rob Krentz that someone would murder the 58-year-old grandfather as he sat in his Polaris four-wheeler in a remote pasture.
"All we wanted was to be able to live in safety on our own land," his widow says. "We don't want anyone on our property who isn't invited — drug smugglers, Minutemen, anyone. I guess that was too much to ask."
Some details of what transpired on March 27 have emerged over time. But critical facts, including the most important one — the identity of Rob's murderer — have not.
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever held a news conference in Bisbee on the Monday after Krentz's body was found.
The somber sheriff, who liked and respected Krentz, provided details of the case, with New Times adding others from additional sources:
Rob and Phil Krentz were working on different parts of the expansive ranch that Saturday morning.
Rob called Phil on a hand-held radio (cell-phone service is spotty there) between 10 and 10:30.
Sheriff Dever tells New Times that Rob told Phil he had just seen an undocumented alien near a water well on the property. The alien appeared to be "in need of help," the sheriff recounts, and Rob asked his brother to contact Border Patrol.
Later, sheriff's investigators spoke with two ranchers who share a radio frequency with the Krentzes and other neighbors.
One of the ranchers, Fred Edington, said he was listening to the ranch radio when Rob called Phil about being out there "with one illegal or several illegals. He could not remember [how many] but remembers hearing [Rob] say an illegal was hurt and to contact Douglas Border Patrol."
Edington heard Phil respond that he couldn't hear Rob too well.
The second rancher listening in was Wendy Glenn, a lifelong Cochise County resident who lives on Malpai Ranch with her husband, Warner.
"There was no urgency in Rob's voice when he spoke with Phil," she tells New Times. "He said he had seen an illegal that looked like he might need help and that Phil should call Border Patrol. That kind of thing happens quite often here. That's right when he went missing."
The brothers were supposed to meet somewhere on the ranch about noon, but Rob didn't show and wasn't responding to Phil's repeated calls.
Phil Krentz notified other family members and friends, who cast out on their ATVs around Krentz Ranch, which covers about 65 square miles, an area about the size of Glendale, Arizona.
Time slipped away.
Dever tells New Times that he learned Rob was missing after a rancher called him at 6:15 p.m.
That is approximately when Frank Krentz called his mother in Phoenix.
The sheriff says he immediately contacted his agency's search-and-rescue team, which was training in the Cochise Stronghold area, about 90 minutes away.
Cochise County deployed six police cars and two ATVs to Krentz Ranch. The Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement agencies also responded.
It was dark by then.
Five long hours would pass before a pilot in an Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter spotted Rob Krentz's ATV south of Highway 80, still running and with its lights on.
Rob was the victim of a gunshot wound to his left side that, according to sheriff's officials, proved fatal within minutes.
His rifle and a pistol were tethered in a scabbard and holster on the ATV, unused.
Blue, his loyal 8-year-old heeler, was lying in the rear of the small vehicle, also shot. The dog was alive but mortally wounded.
The killer had about a 14-hour head start on the cops, plenty of time to get over the Mexican border, about eight miles south.
Following tire tracks, county investigators traced the ATV back about 300 yards to where Rob and the dog apparently had been shot.
There, they found three expended bullet shells — Sheriff Dever wouldn't reveal the caliber to the media. An agent from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement identified the dusty footprints of one individual at the scene.
Trackers from several agencies followed the footprints south, toward the Mexico line, where the trail ended.
"There is absolutely no reason this had to happen," Dever concluded at his news conference, "other than the bad intentions of one sick, sorry individual whom we hope to be able to catch up to very quickly."
Dever's comments raised many still-unanswered questions:
Why would anyone connected to the drug trade risk the wrath and intense scrutiny (from both sides of the border) that killing a popular rancher in cold blood would bring?
Why did the killer also shoot Blue? Had the dog come upon an advance scout for the Mexican drug cartels who smuggle in untold amounts of dope through Cochise County every year?
Why did it take so long for authorities to find Rob Krentz's body after his family had called in a missing-persons report?
As for the latter, Dever tells New Times that "Rob was found kind of down in a little arroyo. You wouldn't see him from any of the nearby roads."
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed her agency had "responded immediately to the murder. Immediately following the shooting, Customs and Border Protection [the Border Patrol] deployed additional helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to the area of the shooting. Border Patrol trackers located the footprint sign of the suspect and tracked him back into Mexico."
Not quite, says Cochise County Sheriff Dever. He says his agency requested, without success, Border Patrol "air assets" hours earlier.
Dever speculates that long-standing radio communications problems between Border Patrol stations in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and Douglas may have caused the delay.
The Border Patrol did respond by air, Dever says, but not until after the state Department of Public Safety had dispatched a Ranger helicopter from Tucson and soon found Rob's body using heat-seeking sensors and other technology.
And the biggest question, especially to politicians and the general public: Was the murderer an illegal alien?
Sheriff Dever told New Times after the shooting that "it makes sense that Rob ran into a guy who was involved in drug trafficking. The tracks tell us that the guy was heading south to Mexico, which suggests what it suggests. Whether he's an illegal or not remains to be seen. But it wouldn't surprise me."
Dever mentioned retaliation as a possible motive, saying that Phil Krentz called the Border Patrol one day before the shooting after spotting a group of what looked like undocumented immigrants on the ranch.
The agents soon arrested eight migrants and found almost 300 pounds of marijuana in the vicinity.
But federal prosecutors never filed drug-smuggling charges in the case, supposedly because they couldn't establish a direct link between the men and the pot.
The sheriff said Rob Krentz, like all border-area ranchers, had been deeply frustrated by the influx of drug smugglers onto his land.
But he noted that Rob, conversant in Spanish, was known to have helped ordinary migrants over the years by providing them with water and food.
Public interest in the Rob Krentz murder case skyrocketed.
Part of it stemmed from the remarkable timing: Senate Bill 1070 — the Arizona Legislature's thumbing its nose at the feds over illegal immigration — was nearing a final vote.
If odds of its controversial passage seemed great before the Krentz murder, it was a given afterward.
But authorities weren't prepared to say officially (they still aren't) that the homicide was committed by an undocumented alien, even if Sheriff Dever, the Krentzes, and many others seem convinced that it was.
The bill's sponsor, right-wing state Sen. Russell Pearce of Mesa, said in an interview, "The murder of Robert Krentz — whose family had been ranching in Arizona since 1907 — by illegal alien drug dealers was the final straw for many Arizonans."
Someone suggested they should dub the bill "Krentz's Law."
For its part, the Krentz family issued a statement, saying it held "no malice toward the Mexican people for this senseless act, but do hold the political forces in this country and Mexico accountable for what has happened.
"Their disregard of our repeated pleas and warning of impending violence toward our community fell on deaf ears shrouded in political correctness. As a result, we have paid the ultimate price for their negligence in credibly securing our borderlands."
A rosary for Rob Krentz was recited at St. Luke's Catholic Church in Douglas, followed by a memorial Mass at Douglas High attended by more than 1,000 people.
Afterward, close friends and family went to the old Gadsden Hotel in downtown Douglas for a private get-together.
The Arizona Cattlemen's Association soon announced a reward of $15,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Rob Krentz's killer, and the federal Department of Homeland Security later added $25,000 to the kitty.
Predictably, Gov. Jan Brewer, in a heated political fight to win the Republican primary late this summer, signed 1070 into law in late April. It is slated to go into effect July 29, though lawsuits have been filed seeking to enjoin the state from implementing it.
Rumors about the Krentz murder ran rampant on the web and in print.
According to one missive, Rob's brother and best friend Phil was the real killer, for reasons unspecified.
Another spun an elaborate yarn about how Rob had come upon an illegal alien lying on the ground saying he was sick.
It held that Rob had contacted the Border Patrol for help but that the alien shot him anyway. Mortally wounded, he called the Cochise County Sheriff's Office, and several ranchers who overheard the call "drove to his location."
Rob was dead, but the ranchers tracked the killer back to the border, where they, according to the yarn, "cornered him in a bushy draw."
Somehow, the guy evaded the makeshift posse, Border Patrol helicopters, and a bevy of law enforcement agents before fleeing to Mexico.
On May 3, the Arizona Daily Star published a story headlined, "Focus in Krentz Killing on Suspect in U.S. — Authorities Say Slaying That Sparked Outcry Over Border Security Was Not Random."
The Tucson piece cited "high-ranking government officials with credible information" who had come forward as anonymous sources "citing a desire to quell the fury over illegal immigration and drug smuggling set off by the shooting of longtime rancher Robert Krentz.
"[The sources] said Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever is investigating a person in the United States, not in Mexico, in connection with the shooting."
New Times was at Sheriff Dever's office in Bisbee on the morning this story broke, and he angrily insisted it was flat wrong.
One day later, May 4, the Star published a correction:
"The story, as originally reported, said the suspect is believed to be in the United States. It was changed to 'American' in the editing process. While the suspect is believed to be in the U.S., the nationality is unknown."
It is mid-May in Cochise County.
The Krentzes have seen politicians come to their ranch and go. The pols have paid their respects and stood before cameras to decry how the feds have ceded control of the border to Mexican drug cartels.
Political posturing on the illegal immigration issue is at an all-time high, in Arizona and nationally.
Just a few days earlier, five Arizona legislators from the Phoenix area, all conservative Republicans, dropped by to visit Sue Krentz. They were shuttled to the ranch in what Sue describes as an armored car, protected by heavily armed state troopers.
"Hope they felt safe," Sue says, smiling wryly. "They were 'fact-finding.'"
Naturally, Sue's life has been out of whack since Rob's death, and she says she hungers to find "a new normal."
But she knows that the life she knew and loved is gone, stolen from her in a moment by a murderer's bullet.
"One bad decision killed one person and impacted a lot of people for the rest of their lives," she says. "I'm a widow now — just like that. Think about it: My mom is 87 and my dad is 89, so I'm going to live 50 years or something like that by myself."
Sue is sitting at her cluttered kitchen table, which serves as the center of a whirlwind of activity.
A good friend, Judy Keeler, who lives on a ranch just inside nearby New Mexico, has come over to visit.
Sue's daughter, 25-year-old Kyle Gutierrez of Wyoming, is staying awhile at the ranch with her two young children, Robert and Madyson.
Robert, who is 4, told Sue after Rob died, "'You don't have to worry about it, Grandma. I'm gonna kill the bad guy.'"
Sue says she told the little boy, "You can't do that," explaining why revenge isn't the way to seek justice.
Sue is a sturdy woman in her mid-50s who has spent a lifetime living on ranches. It shows in her weathered hands and face, which are at the mercy of the desert sun, relentless wind, and biting winter cold.
She speaks her mind and is an unusually good listener.
Today, she's fretting about the ranch, which she alone now owns with her brother-in-law Phil and his wife, Carrie, and her sister-in-law Susan Pope and her husband, Louie.
"There is no rich uncle," she says. "This is it. It's us, making it or breaking it."
A poster of John Wayne in Western garb hangs on a wall that leads to the living room.
"That's my dad," Kyle Gutierrez says, pointing to the poster. "My dad was John Wayne. He could do anything and everything. If I had a problem, he'd know what to do. A math question, he'd figure it out in his head. He was a big man, but he really was a teddy bear. Just like John Wayne."
The room quiets.
Kyle continues: "I know his last thought was, 'Oh, shit. What's gonna happen to my family?' He didn't think about himself. He thought about her."
The young woman gestures to her mother, who is crying silently at the words.
Sue steps into the living room, where she keeps her desktop computer. Nearby, a bunch of well-worn cowboy hats hang on wall pegs — some of them were Rob's, the others her two sons'.
"You know, all of my kids are trying to be brave," she says. "I guess we don't have a choice, other than I could go crazy."
She pauses.
"Let me tell you a little bit about me and Rob, OK?"
It was a marriage of Cochise County ranching royalty when Rob Krentz and Sue Kimble got hitched in Douglas in 1977.
The Krentzes and the Kimbles are two of southeastern Arizona's most revered cattle-ranching families. Both clans' ranches are at the south end of the San Simon Valley, between the Chiricahua and Peloncillo mountain ranges.
Rob was a few years older than Sue. He was popular as a teenager, a big rancher's kid with a quietly solid way about him. He was active in 4-H and played football for the Douglas High Bulldogs.
Sue was the third of seven siblings. As a teen, she saw herself as something of a loser, an overweight girl who never went to prom.
Rob earned his nickname of "Cap'n Crunch" as an interior lineman for the Bulldogs, an unheralded team that finished second in the state in a smaller-school division in 1968, when he was a junior.
Rob enrolled at Cochise Community College after graduation and spent two years there before transferring to the University of Arizona, where he earned a degree in animal science.
He was a fine student, and Cornell University in upstate New York offered him an Ivy League postgraduate fellowship.
But Rob just wanted to be a cowboy, and he returned to the ranch that his father, Bob, was still running.
Sue Kimble attended Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff for two years before also returning home for good.
Rob and Sue had their first date on June 23, 1976, at a Douglas country bar called the Red Barn.
"It was one of those deals," Sue says. "We could have gotten married right then and there."
They waited until July 23, 1977.
"Not many people get to come home when they grow up," Sue says. "I did. I got to be a rancher's wife, and Rob turned out to be the perfect man for me. He always kept me level."
The newlyweds honeymooned in San Diego, then returned to Krentz Ranch to brand cattle for six days straight.
Such is the ranching life.
Being so close to the Mexican border, the Krentzes had frequent, usually friendly, contact with Mexicans (their daughter married a Mexican-American).
But circumstances changed for the worse in the mid-1990s.
One of the Krentzes' neighbors, Bill McDonald of the Sycamore Canyon Ranch, described what happened in a May 28 testimony before a U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs subcommittee:
"Border crossers, going both ways, are not new to our area. As long as I can remember — and long before — ranch hands and cowboys from northern Chihuahua and Sonora crossed to work in southern Arizona and New Mexico... The border was casual, and the area was peaceful for years.
"The numbers of crossers did not become problematic for local residents until about ten years ago. Large amounts of trash, cut pasture fences, floats broken off in water troughs, water lines cut and precious stored water lost, trails made by humans so deep that they start gully erosion... all of this has cost ranchers dearly in repairs, extra cattle work, and destruction of the landscape. Still, most ranchers just continued to try to live with it."
McDonald went on to say that, in the past few years, "the character of the crossers has taken an ominous turn."
He recalled that Rob Krentz's message to Border Patrol agents at a community meeting a few years earlier was that "if things continued as they were, it was inevitable that someone would be killed."
A few years ago, the Krentzes found the remains of a woman on their ranch. An undocumented migrant, she died of dehydration just yards from a water trough.
"Why did this happen?" Sue Krentz says. "How could our government let this happen to us and to her and thousands like her? No one cares."
Rob Krentz wasn't keen about expressing himself in public. But he spoke out again in May 2005, this time telling a Tucson television station that migrants had cost his family ranch up to $8 million over the previous five years.
The losses were the type described by Bill McDonald in his stark Senate testimony a few weeks ago.
Sue was more outspoken than her husband, writing to politicians and trying to get someone in authority to listen to the plight of Arizona border ranchers.
"Maybe they listened," she says, "but I can't say that anybody did anything."
Sue Krentz drives a visitor around the north part of the ranch, near her home and about ten miles from the murder site.
She knows every dip, every slippery turn on the old dirt roads. "You know your child, you know your ranch," she says.
Sue isn't carrying a firearm — never does. She says she isn't "going to live scared. I'm going to deal with what I'm going to deal with."
A stretch of the road runs through U.S. Forest Service land. Sue stops at a large metal sign that the feds erected a few years ago.
It says, "Travel Caution: Smuggling and Illegal Immigration May Be Encountered in This Area."
Sue parks and steps into a pasture crisscrossed with water lines.
"The water that our cattle and the wildlife drink comes from our private land — land that we pay taxes on, land that is ours," she says. "Is there anything wrong with that?"
Sue talks about her late husband's physical problems, how his body had been breaking down after years of grinding it out on the ranch.
Rob had back surgery in July 2009, and it was months before he could resume working full time. He and Sue regularly drove over to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where their son Andy is a physical therapist, for rehab.
In January, Rob had one of his hips replaced. His second hip had been scheduled for similar surgery in May.
"Rob's attitude helped him out with all this stuff," Sue says. "He just did what he could out there, even though he still couldn't move so much. He was pretty beat-up."
An ATV zips by in the other direction on the dirt road. A big fellow in the four-wheeler has a dog on either side of him.
He waves at Sue, and she waves back.
"That's my brother-in-law Phil," Sue says. "He's got so much more to do now that Rob is gone."
The cowboys now responsible for the day-to-day operation of Krentz Ranch are Phil, his son Ben, and Sue's son Frank.
It strikes Sue that she hasn't heard from Frank in a few hours.
"He's working today down near where Rob got shot," she says. "Stuff has to be done. But I get kind of crazy when he's out on the ranch and I don't hear from him for a while. I think he might be hurt, that somebody's done something to him."
Sue speaks of her continued faith in God, despite all that's happened to her and her family.
"I'm a Catholic, and I have to trust in what he has in store for all of us," she says. "But I am a little aggravated with my church right now."
She tells of attending a Sunday Mass with her sister, Dr. Lily Percell, in Phoenix a few weeks earlier.
The priest was sermonizing about Senate Bill 1070 and "how it's evil and [how] he picks up illegal aliens and takes them to safety, and how he supposes that makes him an illegal. I'm getting madder and madder, not because all aliens are evil people or even because I know that an illegal killed Rob. I'm mad because there's nothing coming out of his mouth that says anything about our rights, about what's happened to us, American citizens."
Sue says she and Lily walked out of the sermon and paced around the church parking lot.
Afterward, a lay pastor came out and tried to reason with the sisters.
"He told us that we all have our human dignity, that God looks at us all the same and all of that," Sue Krentz says. "I told him, 'What about my human dignity, hon? What about my husband's human dignity, getting shot in cold blood while he's out with his dog?'"
She finishes with this: "I wonder what really happened out there with Rob that day. But basically, I just wonder why."
Sheriff Larry Dever says there has never been a case in his 30-year police career that he's wanted solved more than Rob Krentz's murder.
His department's investigation continues, with the assistance of federal agencies that have more manpower and technology than are available to the financially strapped county.
"Let me put it like this," Dever says. "I have never seen one single event put such a huge exclamation to a movement, if you will, of people saying, 'Let's solve this illegal-immigration problem.'
"At one point, I thought it was very possible that we were going to see the killer tied to a fence somewhere on this side of the border dead with some incriminating evidence on him. But that hasn't happened.
"We obviously aren't rushing to judgment, and we are not going to arrest someone for the sake of arresting someone. We don't do that."
Sue Krentz reports that friends have gotten her a new dog, a "big Brazilian hound of some sort." She named him Bull and surely will come to love him.
But not a minute goes by, Sue says, that she doesn't picture Rob and Blue on their ATV, going out to do what they loved.
Rob and Blue were cremated.
"Rob told me at one point that if he died before me, he wanted his ashes spread down on the creek, a place he loved so much," Sue says. "I've got both Rob and Blue with me right now. But I'm just not ready to do that yet."
Friday, June 11, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Judge: Cattle cannot muddy Ore. steelhead streams
A federal judge has ruled that grazing on public land in the Malheur National Forest has led to degradation of steelhead streams that the U.S. Forest Service failed to protect.
Conservation groups said the ruling by U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty showed the Forest Service grazing plan allowed livestock to damage steelhead habitat over nearly half a million acres along more than 300 miles of streams in the John Day River Basin in eastern Oregon.
Livestock can damage stream banks and muddy the clear, cool water needed for steelhead, a Pacific Northwest native trout listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Brent Fenty, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, said the decision will lead to long-term improvements for managing environmentally sensitive streams.
"We want to see steelhead recover in the John Day so they can once again be a central, social, cultural and economic asset," Fenty said.
But a rancher and spokesman for other ranchers in the area said the ruling was also a win for them because it showed the agency must tell them when they need to move their cattle away from critical stream banks.
"The key is when you get to the point the cows need to be moved, they need to be moved," Ken Holliday said. "It's really the Forest Service's job to do monitoring and be watching everything. They're the ones with all the science on their side."
A number of ranchers had intervened in the lawsuit to argue the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act by arbitrarily limiting grazing on public land in the Malheur.
The judge said in the ruling that damage done to stream banks in 2007 and 2008 was "particularly deplorable" and noted "this court has repeatedly found the grazing program to be insufficiently protective of listed fish species."
The current plan could have better protected fish if it had been enforced more effectively, the judge said.
A Forest Service spokesman in Portland referred questions to the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., but officials were not available for comment after hours.
David Becker, an attorney for the Oregon Natural Desert Association, said the ruling will help guide the next biological opinion, or plan for steelhead protection, expected next spring.
He praised Haggerty for bringing ranchers, environmentalists and federal agencies together as he considered the case, including earlier rulings on grazing permits for the 13 allotments covered by the current biological opinion issued in 2007.
"Maybe the agreement that the judge had us work on for this current season is a harbinger of something we can sit down together and talk about," Becker said.
Conservation groups said the ruling by U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty showed the Forest Service grazing plan allowed livestock to damage steelhead habitat over nearly half a million acres along more than 300 miles of streams in the John Day River Basin in eastern Oregon.
Livestock can damage stream banks and muddy the clear, cool water needed for steelhead, a Pacific Northwest native trout listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Brent Fenty, executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, said the decision will lead to long-term improvements for managing environmentally sensitive streams.
"We want to see steelhead recover in the John Day so they can once again be a central, social, cultural and economic asset," Fenty said.
But a rancher and spokesman for other ranchers in the area said the ruling was also a win for them because it showed the agency must tell them when they need to move their cattle away from critical stream banks.
"The key is when you get to the point the cows need to be moved, they need to be moved," Ken Holliday said. "It's really the Forest Service's job to do monitoring and be watching everything. They're the ones with all the science on their side."
A number of ranchers had intervened in the lawsuit to argue the Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act by arbitrarily limiting grazing on public land in the Malheur.
The judge said in the ruling that damage done to stream banks in 2007 and 2008 was "particularly deplorable" and noted "this court has repeatedly found the grazing program to be insufficiently protective of listed fish species."
The current plan could have better protected fish if it had been enforced more effectively, the judge said.
A Forest Service spokesman in Portland referred questions to the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., but officials were not available for comment after hours.
David Becker, an attorney for the Oregon Natural Desert Association, said the ruling will help guide the next biological opinion, or plan for steelhead protection, expected next spring.
He praised Haggerty for bringing ranchers, environmentalists and federal agencies together as he considered the case, including earlier rulings on grazing permits for the 13 allotments covered by the current biological opinion issued in 2007.
"Maybe the agreement that the judge had us work on for this current season is a harbinger of something we can sit down together and talk about," Becker said.
Wilderness Proposal meant to ease concerns
Revisions to a proposal for creating federal wilderness in Do-a Ana County are meant to ease concerns relating to border enforcement, lawmakers said Wednesday.
U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, D-N.M., announced they plan to modify a wilderness bill they introduced last year by changing the designation of 30,000 acres in the southernmost part of the county.
They said the new proposal would classify the acreage as a restricted-use area, a new designation in which vehicle use by the general public would be banned, but law enforcement would still be able to access the land for routine patrols.
Jude McCartin, spokeswoman for Bingaman, said the change would increase the size of a buffer zone between the international border and the southernmost tip of the proposed wilderness, giving border agents "more flexibility" in their work. The initial bill included a three-mile buffer, but the restricted-use area would add another two miles to that. Either buffer would expand upon the 1/3-mile buffer that exists now under a temporary wilderness designation.
McCartin said the senators made the decision in response to concerns expressed at a February field hearing in Las Cruces about the legislation.
"Working with the Border Patrol, I believe we
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have come up with a very good resolution that both enhances our border security and protects one of New Mexico's iconic landscapes," Bingaman, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.
Wilderness proponent Nathan Small, with the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, said the announcement "makes a good bill even better" and shows that lawmakers are working with the community on the legislation.
"It's clear Sens. Bingaman and Udall have really gone the extra mile to not only address current concerns but to look far into the future about how to best protect our wilderness areas and provide for strong border security," said Small, also a Las Cruces city councilor.
Frank DuBois, with the group People for Preserving Our Western Heritage, which opposed an initial version of the legislation and instead put forward its own proposal, said he is reviewing the changes.
"I want to applaud Sen. Bingaman for holding a field hearing in Las Cruces and for recognizing border security is such an important issue to the community," he said. "However, I'm disappointed the senator didn't accept the compromise proposed by the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce to designate the Potrillos as a national conservation area, which would have protected the land but still allowed Border Patrol access to the entire area."
DuBois said he needs more time to review the changes before commenting further.
Prior to the recent revisions, Senate Bill 1689 would have created 259,000 acres of wilderness in the county, along with 100,850 acres of national conservation area, a more flexible designation. The designations cover three main areas: the Potrillo Mountains, the Organ Mountains and the Broad Canyon area.
Members of the ranching community and Las Cruces Tea Party have said they're worried a wilderness designation in southwestern Do-a Ana County, around the Potrillo Mountains, would hinder law-enforcement access to the area because of a ban on vehicle travel within wilderness. They've argued that could draw smuggling traffic.
Proponents of wilderness, however, contend the designation wouldn't hinder enforcement, thanks to a cooperative agreement among federal agencies that allows for officers involved in a pursuit to access otherwise-restricted lands.
The news release announcing the changes was accompanied by a letter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin, indicating the changes would "greatly enhance the flexibility" of the agency to work in the border area.
Also with the revisions:
• Boundaries of the proposed Organ Mountains National Conservation Area were pulled back an extra one-half mile in the area of Anthony, N.M., to allow for future development on the east side of Interstate 10.
• Boundaries of the proposed Organ Mountains National Conservation Area were pulled back by about 1,000 feet where it parallels the Interstate 10 corridor, to exclude existing flood control structures and allow for building of future flood infrastructure.
• The boundary of the proposed Desert Peaks National Conservation Area, between Las Cruces and Hatch, was pulled back by 300 feet in some places.
• The Prehistoric Trackways National Monument, northwest of Las Cruces, would be expanded by 470 acres to include "recent, new discoveries," according to Bingaman's office.
This week's changes must still be formally adopted into the legislation by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of which Bingaman is chairman.
Diana M. Alba can be reached at (575) 541-5443.
U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, D-N.M., announced they plan to modify a wilderness bill they introduced last year by changing the designation of 30,000 acres in the southernmost part of the county.
They said the new proposal would classify the acreage as a restricted-use area, a new designation in which vehicle use by the general public would be banned, but law enforcement would still be able to access the land for routine patrols.
Jude McCartin, spokeswoman for Bingaman, said the change would increase the size of a buffer zone between the international border and the southernmost tip of the proposed wilderness, giving border agents "more flexibility" in their work. The initial bill included a three-mile buffer, but the restricted-use area would add another two miles to that. Either buffer would expand upon the 1/3-mile buffer that exists now under a temporary wilderness designation.
McCartin said the senators made the decision in response to concerns expressed at a February field hearing in Las Cruces about the legislation.
"Working with the Border Patrol, I believe we
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have come up with a very good resolution that both enhances our border security and protects one of New Mexico's iconic landscapes," Bingaman, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.
Wilderness proponent Nathan Small, with the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, said the announcement "makes a good bill even better" and shows that lawmakers are working with the community on the legislation.
"It's clear Sens. Bingaman and Udall have really gone the extra mile to not only address current concerns but to look far into the future about how to best protect our wilderness areas and provide for strong border security," said Small, also a Las Cruces city councilor.
Frank DuBois, with the group People for Preserving Our Western Heritage, which opposed an initial version of the legislation and instead put forward its own proposal, said he is reviewing the changes.
"I want to applaud Sen. Bingaman for holding a field hearing in Las Cruces and for recognizing border security is such an important issue to the community," he said. "However, I'm disappointed the senator didn't accept the compromise proposed by the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce to designate the Potrillos as a national conservation area, which would have protected the land but still allowed Border Patrol access to the entire area."
DuBois said he needs more time to review the changes before commenting further.
Prior to the recent revisions, Senate Bill 1689 would have created 259,000 acres of wilderness in the county, along with 100,850 acres of national conservation area, a more flexible designation. The designations cover three main areas: the Potrillo Mountains, the Organ Mountains and the Broad Canyon area.
Members of the ranching community and Las Cruces Tea Party have said they're worried a wilderness designation in southwestern Do-a Ana County, around the Potrillo Mountains, would hinder law-enforcement access to the area because of a ban on vehicle travel within wilderness. They've argued that could draw smuggling traffic.
Proponents of wilderness, however, contend the designation wouldn't hinder enforcement, thanks to a cooperative agreement among federal agencies that allows for officers involved in a pursuit to access otherwise-restricted lands.
The news release announcing the changes was accompanied by a letter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin, indicating the changes would "greatly enhance the flexibility" of the agency to work in the border area.
Also with the revisions:
• Boundaries of the proposed Organ Mountains National Conservation Area were pulled back an extra one-half mile in the area of Anthony, N.M., to allow for future development on the east side of Interstate 10.
• Boundaries of the proposed Organ Mountains National Conservation Area were pulled back by about 1,000 feet where it parallels the Interstate 10 corridor, to exclude existing flood control structures and allow for building of future flood infrastructure.
• The boundary of the proposed Desert Peaks National Conservation Area, between Las Cruces and Hatch, was pulled back by 300 feet in some places.
• The Prehistoric Trackways National Monument, northwest of Las Cruces, would be expanded by 470 acres to include "recent, new discoveries," according to Bingaman's office.
This week's changes must still be formally adopted into the legislation by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, of which Bingaman is chairman.
Diana M. Alba can be reached at (575) 541-5443.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Wolf-recovery program now 'at risk of failure'
Twelve years after Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced in Eastern Arizona, their dwindling numbers are putting the population "at risk of failure," says a recent report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Factors such as the rigid borders of the endangered wolves' recovery area, removal of wolves to protect livestock, and illegal shooting of wolves are keeping the only wild population of Mexican gray wolves from growing, says the "conservation assessment" released last month.
After 1998, when the first 11 wolves were released in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, their numbers started growing and were expected to reach 100 wolves in 2006. The known population hit a high of 59 in 2006 but then began dropping, falling to 42 last year.
The project has cost taxpayers $20 million or more since 1998. Now officials and others are seeking a way to move the wolf program further from its origin as a way to rescue the subspecies, and instead create a viable wild population.
"It is time to shift the focus of the recovery program from the 'brink of extinction' toward pursuit of full recovery," the report concludes.
Among the initiatives under way is a proposed release of eight captive wolves into the area, which would be the most wolves released since 2003. The regional head of the Fish and Wildlife Service discussed the possible release with the directors of Arizona's and New Mexico's game and fish departments Wednesday.
Other efforts to salvage the population are less direct but perhaps as important over the long term:
• Some ranchers are adopting practices to limit contacts between their herds and wolves.
• The service is reconvening a "recovery team" and writing a new plan for the wolves to replace the existing, 1982 plan.
• Mexico, which has no known wild wolves, is planning its first release of wolves, in northeastern Sonora, which could be a key step in creating a healthy subspecies.
Closer to home, advocates on various sides of the wolf issue continue filing lawsuits, keeping the program in litigation. And some ranchers in the area continue to question the project's existence.
"The Fish and Wildlife Service would like to see us shut up and take our medicine," said Laura Schneberger, a rancher who heads the Gila Livestock Growers Association.
Problematic rules
The conservation assessment suggests the problems with the wolf population were built into it through its "removal" rules.
Under those rules, wolves that establish territories completely outside the boundaries of the Blue Range program or that establish a tendency to attack livestock are to be removed from the area. Since 1998, 144 wolves have been removed from the project area - more than the 92 that have been released in the same period.
"The No. 1 obstacle to Mexican gray wolf recovery has been removal, whether legal by the federal government or illegal in the form of poaching," said Nicole Rosmarino, the wildlife program director for an environmental group called WildEarth Guardians, which has sued over the wolf project.
Indeed, 31 wolves are known to have been shot during the life of the program, making shooting the top cause of mortality in the population. The Fish and Wildlife Service said at least two wolves were shot to death in 2009.
Service investigators are looking into the shootings and have turned over two cases to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Mexico, said Nicholas Chavez, the service's law-enforcement chief for the Southwest.
The assessment also raises the issue of the strict boundaries of the wolf recovery area as preventing population growth. Wolves are only released into a small "primary recovery area" in Eastern Arizona, along the border with New Mexico, and the farther they stray from that area, the greater the risk of being removed or picked up and put back in the primary area.
In previous years, the service has explored releasing wolves directly into the "secondary" recovery area in New Mexico, but it hasn't done so due to objections from that state, said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been a frequent litigant in the wolf program. Now the service is talking about that option again, but Robinson says he'll believe it when he sees it.
"That should have been completed in 1999 or early 2000," he said.
Livelihood concerns
Much of what the service and environmentalists are proposing, Schneberger sees as threatening to her livelihood and that of her neighbors. Like many ranchers in the area, Schneberger leases U.S. Forest Service land for grazing cattle, and she sees the service as increasingly unfriendly to their way of life.
The new conservation assessment "just gives the environmentalists more momentum to sue," she said.
Her group last month filed a notice that it intends to sue over the government's increasing reluctance to remove wolves since 2007.
The truth about the project, Schneberger said, is it's doomed by genetic limitations. Just seven wolves trapped in the 1970s are ancestors of the entire population of Mexican gray wolves, including the 42 in the project and more than 300 in captive breeding sites.
"They have plenty of space. They just can't breed," Schneberger said.
The assessment concurs that it appears some breeding pairs are producing smaller litters due to inbreeding. But the captive breeding program, which has wolves living in 48 sites in the United States and Mexico, works to maximize genetic diversity, said Peter Siminsky, a former Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum researcher who now coordinates the program from Palm Desert, Calif.
"We have a studbook - a complete genealogy of all wolves in captivity and even some in the wild, going back to the founding animals," he said.
That lets scientists ensure genetic diversity is conserved in both the captive and wild populations. The captive animals are bred to maximize genetic diversity, and wolves are released into the wild based in part on their genetic suitability.
Limiting interactions
While some ranchers fight the wolf project outright, others are adjusting their practices to limit interactions between their herds and wolves.
Craig Miller, who works in the Tucson office of Defenders of Wildlife, said he's been working with a half dozen or so ranchers to help introduce new methods, paid for in part by his group:
• Adding additional riders to accompany herds in the summer calving and grazing season, steering them away from wolves.
• Supplying portable electric fencing to help keep sheep and cattle separate from wolves.
• Consolidating the livestock breeding schedule so calves are born in the winter, so they're bigger when wolves and pups emerge from their dens in summer.
"That's a huge step toward coexistence," he said.
Release in the works
Mexico's planned release of five wolves in northeastern Sonora did not happen as scheduled in February but is still planned.
The main issue remains the objections of cattlemen, said Luís Carlos Bravo, the northwestern Mexico representative of the environmental group Naturalia. Bravo said he's hopeful that showing ranchers the protections they're offered from depredation by wolves will sway them to support the release.
The government plans to release the wolves this summer in the Sierra San Luís, a mountain range that runs from the easternmost Arizona-Mexico border south about 80 miles.
The release could be important to wolf recovery in that the population, if it takes, will be close enough that it could intermingle with the Blue Range population, but far enough away that they couldn't both be wiped out by the same epidemic or other catastrophe.
Contact reporter Tim Steller at (520) 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com
Factors such as the rigid borders of the endangered wolves' recovery area, removal of wolves to protect livestock, and illegal shooting of wolves are keeping the only wild population of Mexican gray wolves from growing, says the "conservation assessment" released last month.
After 1998, when the first 11 wolves were released in the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, their numbers started growing and were expected to reach 100 wolves in 2006. The known population hit a high of 59 in 2006 but then began dropping, falling to 42 last year.
The project has cost taxpayers $20 million or more since 1998. Now officials and others are seeking a way to move the wolf program further from its origin as a way to rescue the subspecies, and instead create a viable wild population.
"It is time to shift the focus of the recovery program from the 'brink of extinction' toward pursuit of full recovery," the report concludes.
Among the initiatives under way is a proposed release of eight captive wolves into the area, which would be the most wolves released since 2003. The regional head of the Fish and Wildlife Service discussed the possible release with the directors of Arizona's and New Mexico's game and fish departments Wednesday.
Other efforts to salvage the population are less direct but perhaps as important over the long term:
• Some ranchers are adopting practices to limit contacts between their herds and wolves.
• The service is reconvening a "recovery team" and writing a new plan for the wolves to replace the existing, 1982 plan.
• Mexico, which has no known wild wolves, is planning its first release of wolves, in northeastern Sonora, which could be a key step in creating a healthy subspecies.
Closer to home, advocates on various sides of the wolf issue continue filing lawsuits, keeping the program in litigation. And some ranchers in the area continue to question the project's existence.
"The Fish and Wildlife Service would like to see us shut up and take our medicine," said Laura Schneberger, a rancher who heads the Gila Livestock Growers Association.
Problematic rules
The conservation assessment suggests the problems with the wolf population were built into it through its "removal" rules.
Under those rules, wolves that establish territories completely outside the boundaries of the Blue Range program or that establish a tendency to attack livestock are to be removed from the area. Since 1998, 144 wolves have been removed from the project area - more than the 92 that have been released in the same period.
"The No. 1 obstacle to Mexican gray wolf recovery has been removal, whether legal by the federal government or illegal in the form of poaching," said Nicole Rosmarino, the wildlife program director for an environmental group called WildEarth Guardians, which has sued over the wolf project.
Indeed, 31 wolves are known to have been shot during the life of the program, making shooting the top cause of mortality in the population. The Fish and Wildlife Service said at least two wolves were shot to death in 2009.
Service investigators are looking into the shootings and have turned over two cases to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Mexico, said Nicholas Chavez, the service's law-enforcement chief for the Southwest.
The assessment also raises the issue of the strict boundaries of the wolf recovery area as preventing population growth. Wolves are only released into a small "primary recovery area" in Eastern Arizona, along the border with New Mexico, and the farther they stray from that area, the greater the risk of being removed or picked up and put back in the primary area.
In previous years, the service has explored releasing wolves directly into the "secondary" recovery area in New Mexico, but it hasn't done so due to objections from that state, said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been a frequent litigant in the wolf program. Now the service is talking about that option again, but Robinson says he'll believe it when he sees it.
"That should have been completed in 1999 or early 2000," he said.
Livelihood concerns
Much of what the service and environmentalists are proposing, Schneberger sees as threatening to her livelihood and that of her neighbors. Like many ranchers in the area, Schneberger leases U.S. Forest Service land for grazing cattle, and she sees the service as increasingly unfriendly to their way of life.
The new conservation assessment "just gives the environmentalists more momentum to sue," she said.
Her group last month filed a notice that it intends to sue over the government's increasing reluctance to remove wolves since 2007.
The truth about the project, Schneberger said, is it's doomed by genetic limitations. Just seven wolves trapped in the 1970s are ancestors of the entire population of Mexican gray wolves, including the 42 in the project and more than 300 in captive breeding sites.
"They have plenty of space. They just can't breed," Schneberger said.
The assessment concurs that it appears some breeding pairs are producing smaller litters due to inbreeding. But the captive breeding program, which has wolves living in 48 sites in the United States and Mexico, works to maximize genetic diversity, said Peter Siminsky, a former Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum researcher who now coordinates the program from Palm Desert, Calif.
"We have a studbook - a complete genealogy of all wolves in captivity and even some in the wild, going back to the founding animals," he said.
That lets scientists ensure genetic diversity is conserved in both the captive and wild populations. The captive animals are bred to maximize genetic diversity, and wolves are released into the wild based in part on their genetic suitability.
Limiting interactions
While some ranchers fight the wolf project outright, others are adjusting their practices to limit interactions between their herds and wolves.
Craig Miller, who works in the Tucson office of Defenders of Wildlife, said he's been working with a half dozen or so ranchers to help introduce new methods, paid for in part by his group:
• Adding additional riders to accompany herds in the summer calving and grazing season, steering them away from wolves.
• Supplying portable electric fencing to help keep sheep and cattle separate from wolves.
• Consolidating the livestock breeding schedule so calves are born in the winter, so they're bigger when wolves and pups emerge from their dens in summer.
"That's a huge step toward coexistence," he said.
Release in the works
Mexico's planned release of five wolves in northeastern Sonora did not happen as scheduled in February but is still planned.
The main issue remains the objections of cattlemen, said Luís Carlos Bravo, the northwestern Mexico representative of the environmental group Naturalia. Bravo said he's hopeful that showing ranchers the protections they're offered from depredation by wolves will sway them to support the release.
The government plans to release the wolves this summer in the Sierra San Luís, a mountain range that runs from the easternmost Arizona-Mexico border south about 80 miles.
The release could be important to wolf recovery in that the population, if it takes, will be close enough that it could intermingle with the Blue Range population, but far enough away that they couldn't both be wiped out by the same epidemic or other catastrophe.
Contact reporter Tim Steller at (520) 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The Western Watersheds Project’s Assault on Family Ranchers
Another Earth Day has come and gone. Earth Day has become a holy day of obligation for America’s secular religion, the environmentalist movement.
But hidden behind the facade of planting trees or discussing the virtues of “paper or plastic” is a well-financed global group of dedicated radicals who are bent on changing the way we live whether we like it or not. They are funded by a vast network of wealthy individuals, trust funds, and foundations who selectively give money to organizations they can control like puppets on a string (think George Soros).
One such organization has dedicated its entire existence to the warped dream of one man who says that his ultimate goal in life is to destroy families and a way of life with absolutely no regard for the economic or human cost.
Meet Jon Marvel and the Western Watersheds Project.
This is an organization that talks a big game about saving the environment but in truth has never lifted a finger or raised a dollar to mitigate the environmental issues they claim to care so much about.
This is an organization that bills itself, according to its mission statement [1], as a group dedicated “to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife through public education, public policy initiatives and litigation”
That last word “litigation” is the key, because in truth they are nothing more than a group of professional plaintiffs who have filed hundreds of lawsuits against the government and individuals to accomplish their goals. Between 2000 and 2009 they have filed 91 lawsuits and 31 appeals in Idaho alone and hundreds more throughout the West..
And this is an organization that has been funded in part with the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people to the tune of $1.2 million in Idaho Federal District courts alone by the abuse of the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), which others have written about [2] on these pages.
The Western Watersheds Project is headquartered in that playground of the rich and famous, Sun Valley, Idaho. The organizaton’s neighbors include Teresa Heinz Kerry and her husband John Kerry as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Marvel’s ultimate goal? Ending any and all economic activity on the vast public lands that make up 75% of the American West. These are lands that are rich in resources and provide recreational opportunities like hunting, fishing, and hiking. They are also a critical part of our food supply, as grazing rights make cattle and sheep ranching possible.
Marvel saves his particular venom for the ranching communities of the West who lease the public lands from the government to graze their cattle or sheep.
Marvel and WWP claim that the ranchers pay very little to the government for the right to use the land for livestock grazing and that this is a form of “welfare” to the ranchers and the cowboys who work the land.
What he won’t tell you is that the rancher who enters into a lease agreement with the federal government is taking on the same responsibilities of environmental stewardship that they would on private land.
The ranchers are responsible for all the financial costs associated with maintaining the land as well as the wildlife that inhabit it. Failure to do so can result in fines, penalties, and the loss of the permit.
So here’s a question to ponder when you look at the wild claims of WWP and other environmental outlaws when it comes to cattle grazing on America’s public lands.
If livestock grazing is destroying the public lands, how come every year the grass comes back, the streams run clear with water, and the cycle of life continues as the land yields its nutrients to produce more meat for our tables?
Many ranching families can trace their history back five or six generations. So if everything that Jon Marvel and WWP say about the alleged abuse of the land were true, they would never have lasted one generation.
This is just the beginning. In the coming weeks I will be going into greater detail about WWP and the environmental cartel that is waging their war against the American West and the people who survived and prospered against everything Mother Nature has thrown at them and who are still fighting against a man-made pestilence — radical environmentalists armed with lawsuits.
Patrick Dorinson blogs at The Cowboy Libertarian.
But hidden behind the facade of planting trees or discussing the virtues of “paper or plastic” is a well-financed global group of dedicated radicals who are bent on changing the way we live whether we like it or not. They are funded by a vast network of wealthy individuals, trust funds, and foundations who selectively give money to organizations they can control like puppets on a string (think George Soros).
One such organization has dedicated its entire existence to the warped dream of one man who says that his ultimate goal in life is to destroy families and a way of life with absolutely no regard for the economic or human cost.
Meet Jon Marvel and the Western Watersheds Project.
This is an organization that talks a big game about saving the environment but in truth has never lifted a finger or raised a dollar to mitigate the environmental issues they claim to care so much about.
This is an organization that bills itself, according to its mission statement [1], as a group dedicated “to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife through public education, public policy initiatives and litigation”
That last word “litigation” is the key, because in truth they are nothing more than a group of professional plaintiffs who have filed hundreds of lawsuits against the government and individuals to accomplish their goals. Between 2000 and 2009 they have filed 91 lawsuits and 31 appeals in Idaho alone and hundreds more throughout the West..
And this is an organization that has been funded in part with the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people to the tune of $1.2 million in Idaho Federal District courts alone by the abuse of the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), which others have written about [2] on these pages.
The Western Watersheds Project is headquartered in that playground of the rich and famous, Sun Valley, Idaho. The organizaton’s neighbors include Teresa Heinz Kerry and her husband John Kerry as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Marvel’s ultimate goal? Ending any and all economic activity on the vast public lands that make up 75% of the American West. These are lands that are rich in resources and provide recreational opportunities like hunting, fishing, and hiking. They are also a critical part of our food supply, as grazing rights make cattle and sheep ranching possible.
Marvel saves his particular venom for the ranching communities of the West who lease the public lands from the government to graze their cattle or sheep.
Marvel and WWP claim that the ranchers pay very little to the government for the right to use the land for livestock grazing and that this is a form of “welfare” to the ranchers and the cowboys who work the land.
What he won’t tell you is that the rancher who enters into a lease agreement with the federal government is taking on the same responsibilities of environmental stewardship that they would on private land.
The ranchers are responsible for all the financial costs associated with maintaining the land as well as the wildlife that inhabit it. Failure to do so can result in fines, penalties, and the loss of the permit.
So here’s a question to ponder when you look at the wild claims of WWP and other environmental outlaws when it comes to cattle grazing on America’s public lands.
If livestock grazing is destroying the public lands, how come every year the grass comes back, the streams run clear with water, and the cycle of life continues as the land yields its nutrients to produce more meat for our tables?
Many ranching families can trace their history back five or six generations. So if everything that Jon Marvel and WWP say about the alleged abuse of the land were true, they would never have lasted one generation.
This is just the beginning. In the coming weeks I will be going into greater detail about WWP and the environmental cartel that is waging their war against the American West and the people who survived and prospered against everything Mother Nature has thrown at them and who are still fighting against a man-made pestilence — radical environmentalists armed with lawsuits.
Patrick Dorinson blogs at The Cowboy Libertarian.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Obama admin. holds meetings on 'Great Outdoors'
On the edges of a vast landscape that measures in the millions of acres and stretches north through a wilderness area and a scenic national park, ranchers and environmentalists have been able to agree on a lot lately.
The work done to preserve land in northwestern Montana's "Crown of the Continent" was made the shining example Tuesday of what the Obama Administration hopes to achieve with its new "America's Great Outdoors Initiative."
The conservation effort has focused on voluntary land sales of 310,000 acres from a large timber company, deals to retire mining and oil projects and conservation agreements with ranchers and land owners in developing homemade plans for a working landscape in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
The varied interests behind the effort also agree the Obama Administration should make sure its new initiative doesn't force land conservation ideas from big cities down the throats of rural residents.
"Urban-based conservation movements have really only succeeded in alienating the very best allies: our ranchers, our loggers, our sportsmen and our farmers," said Melanie Parker, who lives in the scenic Swan Valley and has played an integral role in getting loggers and environmentalists in the area to talk with one another.
The administration assured all involved that its initiative will rely on the local ideas gathered in a nationwide listening tour launched Tuesday and Wednesday in Montana.
"The first message, clearly, is that this effort must be bottom up," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "Far be it from me, from Iowa or Washington D.C. or wherever I come from, to suggest I know better."
Montana is a state, like many in the West, where federal land management and conservation are often hotly debated and can lead to long-lasting policy stalemates.
President Barack Obama expects that the multi-agency listening sessions around the country will result in a report delivered to him by November, Vilsack said. The next event will be in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, following sessions Wednesday in Missoula, Bozeman and Helena.
Watershed preservation efforts from the Great Lakes to Chesapeake Bay will also be covered, Vilsack said. The goal is to include everything from recreation to economic development, particularly for rural areas where incomes languish compared to most urban areas.
In Montana, the administration officials were joined by the state's governor and U.S. senators. They highlighted the decade-long conservation effort around The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area and Glacier National Park that has involved longtime foes in land use battles.
Enhancing wildlife habitat was a main goal, but so was improving the local economy with ways to make sure a working landscape became a sustainable timber source for planned biomass energy production.
State and federal money was secured, but only after it was clear the effort had widespread local support after years of hammering out complex deals.
The administration's new initiative comes as Republicans and others criticize the contents of an internal Interior Department memo and other records that show the administration was considering the potential for presidential monument declarations in nine western states. Those declarations, last done in Montana under former President Bill Clinton, remain a very sore point for some westerners.
Leading Democrats said the monument declarations are not part of the agenda.
"I am opposed to the administration creating monuments," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who holds an influential role in the Senate. "This is bottom up, that was top down."
The work done to preserve land in northwestern Montana's "Crown of the Continent" was made the shining example Tuesday of what the Obama Administration hopes to achieve with its new "America's Great Outdoors Initiative."
The conservation effort has focused on voluntary land sales of 310,000 acres from a large timber company, deals to retire mining and oil projects and conservation agreements with ranchers and land owners in developing homemade plans for a working landscape in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
The varied interests behind the effort also agree the Obama Administration should make sure its new initiative doesn't force land conservation ideas from big cities down the throats of rural residents.
"Urban-based conservation movements have really only succeeded in alienating the very best allies: our ranchers, our loggers, our sportsmen and our farmers," said Melanie Parker, who lives in the scenic Swan Valley and has played an integral role in getting loggers and environmentalists in the area to talk with one another.
The administration assured all involved that its initiative will rely on the local ideas gathered in a nationwide listening tour launched Tuesday and Wednesday in Montana.
"The first message, clearly, is that this effort must be bottom up," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "Far be it from me, from Iowa or Washington D.C. or wherever I come from, to suggest I know better."
Montana is a state, like many in the West, where federal land management and conservation are often hotly debated and can lead to long-lasting policy stalemates.
President Barack Obama expects that the multi-agency listening sessions around the country will result in a report delivered to him by November, Vilsack said. The next event will be in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, following sessions Wednesday in Missoula, Bozeman and Helena.
Watershed preservation efforts from the Great Lakes to Chesapeake Bay will also be covered, Vilsack said. The goal is to include everything from recreation to economic development, particularly for rural areas where incomes languish compared to most urban areas.
In Montana, the administration officials were joined by the state's governor and U.S. senators. They highlighted the decade-long conservation effort around The Bob Marshall Wilderness Area and Glacier National Park that has involved longtime foes in land use battles.
Enhancing wildlife habitat was a main goal, but so was improving the local economy with ways to make sure a working landscape became a sustainable timber source for planned biomass energy production.
State and federal money was secured, but only after it was clear the effort had widespread local support after years of hammering out complex deals.
The administration's new initiative comes as Republicans and others criticize the contents of an internal Interior Department memo and other records that show the administration was considering the potential for presidential monument declarations in nine western states. Those declarations, last done in Montana under former President Bill Clinton, remain a very sore point for some westerners.
Leading Democrats said the monument declarations are not part of the agenda.
"I am opposed to the administration creating monuments," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who holds an influential role in the Senate. "This is bottom up, that was top down."
Lawsuit Filed to Protect Arizona Endangered Species From Cattle Grazing
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity today sued the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect an endangered species, the Chiricahua leopard frog, from livestock grazing in the Fossil Creek watershed in the Mazatzal Mountains of central Arizona.
“Cattle can wipe out endangered animals at Fossil Creek and similar sensitive areas,” said Jay Lininger, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Flagstaff. “Public agencies must protect natural treasures from excessive grazing, not sacrifice them to private interests.”
Approximately 290 cows were released into the Fossil Creek Range Allotment last September, and grazing is ongoing there now.
Last year, the Coconino National Forest approved grazing by nearly 500 head of cattle in the 42,000-acre range allotment straddling the Mogollon Rim between Camp Verde and Strawberry. A Forest Service study showed that degraded range conditions due to past grazing and ongoing drought could not support the approved grazing levels, and that adverse effects to the watershed were likely to result from more grazing.
The complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Tucson states that the Forest Service violated its management standards by allowing grazing levels in excess of what agency science shows to be the capacity of the land.
The Fish and Wildlife Service also violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to identify how many Chiricahua leopard frogs would be harmed or killed by livestock grazing — and by failing to limit that harm and mortality – as cows trample and dewater streams and wetlands.
The Fossil Creek watershed hosts the last remaining Chiricahua leopard frog habitat in the Coconino National Forest, according to federal biologists.
The grazing permit is held by J.P. Morgan & Chase Co., a multinational financial services firm.
Background
Listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 2002, the Chiricahua leopard frog needs permanent water to reproduce, making perennial Fossil Creek and 149 miles of tributary streams in surrounding uplands ideal habitat in an otherwise inhospitable desert environment.
But livestock grazing, water diversions, and dams have destroyed more than 80 percent of known habitat throughout the range of the species, which reaches from the Verde River basin into northern Mexico.
The Fish and Wildlife Service must limit “incidental take” of the frogs to avoid jeopardizing their continued existence at Fossil Creek, according to Todd Tucci, an attorney with Advocates for the West representing the Center in litigation.
But federal biologists failed to limit take when they signed off on the grazing proposal at Fossil Creek in a biological opinion issued by Fish and Wildlife last year and “clarified” in response to the Center’s notice of intent to sue in February.
“Federal biologists are ignoring the needs of Chiricahua leopard frog and letting cattle grazing drive it to extinction,” said Lininger. “Wildlife must come first in managing public lands.”
Fossil Creek was killed by civilization, restored in the new millennium, and now faces destruction by recreation and livestock grazing. Since 2004, Arizona Public Service Co. has removed two hydroelectric powerhouses and restored natural flows to the creek, and native fish species have replaced exotic ones.
“Fossil Creek is a resurrected river,” said Lininger. “But livestock grazing sets back public investment in restoration and benefits a massive bank with no stake in the local economy.”
Foresters had kept cows out of the Fossil Creek Range Allotment for part of the last decade because drought conditions and soil damage limited range capacity. Soil conditions are documented as “unsatisfactory,” “impaired,” or “inherently unstable” across 96 percent of the allotment, with only four percent of soils in “satisfactory” condition. Fully 60 to 87 percent of the allotment is in a downward range condition trend now, according to the Forest Service.
Soil erosion due to grazing and roads contributes sediment that harms aquatic life in Fossil Creek. Currently, soil loss is about 35 percent above normal, which translates into the erosion of eight tons of sediment per hectare each year.
“Cattle can wipe out endangered animals at Fossil Creek and similar sensitive areas,” said Jay Lininger, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Flagstaff. “Public agencies must protect natural treasures from excessive grazing, not sacrifice them to private interests.”
Approximately 290 cows were released into the Fossil Creek Range Allotment last September, and grazing is ongoing there now.
Last year, the Coconino National Forest approved grazing by nearly 500 head of cattle in the 42,000-acre range allotment straddling the Mogollon Rim between Camp Verde and Strawberry. A Forest Service study showed that degraded range conditions due to past grazing and ongoing drought could not support the approved grazing levels, and that adverse effects to the watershed were likely to result from more grazing.
The complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Tucson states that the Forest Service violated its management standards by allowing grazing levels in excess of what agency science shows to be the capacity of the land.
The Fish and Wildlife Service also violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to identify how many Chiricahua leopard frogs would be harmed or killed by livestock grazing — and by failing to limit that harm and mortality – as cows trample and dewater streams and wetlands.
The Fossil Creek watershed hosts the last remaining Chiricahua leopard frog habitat in the Coconino National Forest, according to federal biologists.
The grazing permit is held by J.P. Morgan & Chase Co., a multinational financial services firm.
Background
Listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 2002, the Chiricahua leopard frog needs permanent water to reproduce, making perennial Fossil Creek and 149 miles of tributary streams in surrounding uplands ideal habitat in an otherwise inhospitable desert environment.
But livestock grazing, water diversions, and dams have destroyed more than 80 percent of known habitat throughout the range of the species, which reaches from the Verde River basin into northern Mexico.
The Fish and Wildlife Service must limit “incidental take” of the frogs to avoid jeopardizing their continued existence at Fossil Creek, according to Todd Tucci, an attorney with Advocates for the West representing the Center in litigation.
But federal biologists failed to limit take when they signed off on the grazing proposal at Fossil Creek in a biological opinion issued by Fish and Wildlife last year and “clarified” in response to the Center’s notice of intent to sue in February.
“Federal biologists are ignoring the needs of Chiricahua leopard frog and letting cattle grazing drive it to extinction,” said Lininger. “Wildlife must come first in managing public lands.”
Fossil Creek was killed by civilization, restored in the new millennium, and now faces destruction by recreation and livestock grazing. Since 2004, Arizona Public Service Co. has removed two hydroelectric powerhouses and restored natural flows to the creek, and native fish species have replaced exotic ones.
“Fossil Creek is a resurrected river,” said Lininger. “But livestock grazing sets back public investment in restoration and benefits a massive bank with no stake in the local economy.”
Foresters had kept cows out of the Fossil Creek Range Allotment for part of the last decade because drought conditions and soil damage limited range capacity. Soil conditions are documented as “unsatisfactory,” “impaired,” or “inherently unstable” across 96 percent of the allotment, with only four percent of soils in “satisfactory” condition. Fully 60 to 87 percent of the allotment is in a downward range condition trend now, according to the Forest Service.
Soil erosion due to grazing and roads contributes sediment that harms aquatic life in Fossil Creek. Currently, soil loss is about 35 percent above normal, which translates into the erosion of eight tons of sediment per hectare each year.
Great Outdoors Initiative forum held in Helena
Federal officials got an earful Wednesday at a listening session in Helena on how to better protect open lands and get people, especially children, into the great outdoors as part of President Barack Obama’s Great Outdoors Initiative.
Jay Erickson with the Montana Land Reliance called for renewal of conservation-easement tax incentives, which could give ranchers more reason to keep from subdividing their property.
Bob Sanders with Ducks Unlimited wants to focus attention on preserving the wide open native prairies of Eastern Montana and the Dakotas, which he called “one of the most productive areas on Earth.”
Jim Quillin suggested keeping the management of public lands in Montana out of the hands of East and West Coast bureaucrats, while Jonathan Matthews with the Sierra Club noted that some limits to local control also are needed.
Many of those attending, though, said they would at least like to see land-management discussions begin at the local level before working their way to Washington.
Chris Bardash would like it to be a lot cheaper to recreate with his family in the national parks.
“It’s $200 a night to stay at a hotel in Yellowstone. There’s something wrong with that,” Bardash said. “When you go there with babies and grandparents, you can’t camp, but you’re priced out of staying in the hotels.”
The five men were among about 200 people who crowded into two banquet rooms at the Red Lion Colonial Inn in Helena, as one of four listening sessions held only in Montana this week on the president’s initiative. One session was held in Ovando on Tuesday, and two others were in Missoula and Bozeman on Wednesday. Additional listening sessions are expected to be scheduled in other states in the near future.
Robert Bonnie, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, said the sessions were enlightening to the dozens of federal officials attending them. Vilsack, John Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, and Nancy Sutley, chairman of the White House Council for Environmental Quality, were among top federal officials who attended Tuesday’s session.
“This has been a great day and a half,” Bonnie said at the end of Wednesday’s session. “I’ve been in conservation for 20 years and learned a lot yesterday and today.
“We’ll announce more listening sessions in other parts of the country, but felt strongly that the place to kick these off is in Montana, because of the depth of experience in these issues.”
Former Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora urged officials to encourage their forest and park employees to get out from behind their computer tubes and into the public lands, to demonstrate the behaviors the president is calling for.
“I was a Forest Service employee for 20 years, and the employees are spending about half the time they used to in the field,” Flora said. “And stop outsourcing. You’re putting in people who are not trained and with no career dedication that most federal employees have.”
Flora and others also pleaded with the federal government for a more stable funding mechanism instead of relying on one-year appropriations.
“People come up with multiyear plans, and I had to sit there like a fool saying I can fund you through September and then we are done. I can’t promise you anything. A lot of land managers feel that way,” she said.
Along those financial lines, Lynda Saul with the Department of Environmental Quality noted that they had to send about $10 million in wetland preservation funding back to the federal government because it couldn’t be used for a variety of reasons. She said more flexibility is needed with federal funding.
Ellen Simpson with Montana Wood Products and others also said that if the government wants more people to use the outdoors, they need to make it easier to get into the forests.
“We need to open, not close, access to people,” Simpson said. “How you do that is up to the land managers, but if you want people to get off the couch and outdoors, you need to make it fairly easy to do.”
Mary Sexton, director of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said the federal government also needs to move faster and be more responsive in land exchanges with the state.
“A Forest Service land exchange in the Lolo took nine years. With private parties it’s usually two years, and we just finished one with the tribes in a year,” Sexton said. “Then, in land exchanges with the BLM, they offer land nobody wants.”
Ken McDonald with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, added that the federal government also needs to change rules regarding matching-fund programs, because instead of the money going toward the highest priority projects, it often is used for those with matching state or private monies.
“So it’s used for where you can get the best match rather than what the best conservation priorities are,” McDonald said.
Jennifer Harris, a mother of three young children, added that what’s really needed to make the Great Outdoors Initiative work is to support teachers doing more hands-on applications as well as finding ways for parents to get reconnected with the land.
“We would get more users who would be more empathetic with what’s going on with the land and have a better voice on policies,” Harris said. “I think we can create some programs to take to state parks and become a model for the nation, to try to get families more connected to the outdoors.”
For more information on the initiative, go to www.doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors.
People also can send comments, along with stories of favorite places or conservation efforts, to ideas.usda.gov/ago/ideas.nsf.
Obama has asked for a report on the initiative to be submitted on him by Nov. 15.
Jay Erickson with the Montana Land Reliance called for renewal of conservation-easement tax incentives, which could give ranchers more reason to keep from subdividing their property.
Bob Sanders with Ducks Unlimited wants to focus attention on preserving the wide open native prairies of Eastern Montana and the Dakotas, which he called “one of the most productive areas on Earth.”
Jim Quillin suggested keeping the management of public lands in Montana out of the hands of East and West Coast bureaucrats, while Jonathan Matthews with the Sierra Club noted that some limits to local control also are needed.
Many of those attending, though, said they would at least like to see land-management discussions begin at the local level before working their way to Washington.
Chris Bardash would like it to be a lot cheaper to recreate with his family in the national parks.
“It’s $200 a night to stay at a hotel in Yellowstone. There’s something wrong with that,” Bardash said. “When you go there with babies and grandparents, you can’t camp, but you’re priced out of staying in the hotels.”
The five men were among about 200 people who crowded into two banquet rooms at the Red Lion Colonial Inn in Helena, as one of four listening sessions held only in Montana this week on the president’s initiative. One session was held in Ovando on Tuesday, and two others were in Missoula and Bozeman on Wednesday. Additional listening sessions are expected to be scheduled in other states in the near future.
Robert Bonnie, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, said the sessions were enlightening to the dozens of federal officials attending them. Vilsack, John Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, and Nancy Sutley, chairman of the White House Council for Environmental Quality, were among top federal officials who attended Tuesday’s session.
“This has been a great day and a half,” Bonnie said at the end of Wednesday’s session. “I’ve been in conservation for 20 years and learned a lot yesterday and today.
“We’ll announce more listening sessions in other parts of the country, but felt strongly that the place to kick these off is in Montana, because of the depth of experience in these issues.”
Former Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora urged officials to encourage their forest and park employees to get out from behind their computer tubes and into the public lands, to demonstrate the behaviors the president is calling for.
“I was a Forest Service employee for 20 years, and the employees are spending about half the time they used to in the field,” Flora said. “And stop outsourcing. You’re putting in people who are not trained and with no career dedication that most federal employees have.”
Flora and others also pleaded with the federal government for a more stable funding mechanism instead of relying on one-year appropriations.
“People come up with multiyear plans, and I had to sit there like a fool saying I can fund you through September and then we are done. I can’t promise you anything. A lot of land managers feel that way,” she said.
Along those financial lines, Lynda Saul with the Department of Environmental Quality noted that they had to send about $10 million in wetland preservation funding back to the federal government because it couldn’t be used for a variety of reasons. She said more flexibility is needed with federal funding.
Ellen Simpson with Montana Wood Products and others also said that if the government wants more people to use the outdoors, they need to make it easier to get into the forests.
“We need to open, not close, access to people,” Simpson said. “How you do that is up to the land managers, but if you want people to get off the couch and outdoors, you need to make it fairly easy to do.”
Mary Sexton, director of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, said the federal government also needs to move faster and be more responsive in land exchanges with the state.
“A Forest Service land exchange in the Lolo took nine years. With private parties it’s usually two years, and we just finished one with the tribes in a year,” Sexton said. “Then, in land exchanges with the BLM, they offer land nobody wants.”
Ken McDonald with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, added that the federal government also needs to change rules regarding matching-fund programs, because instead of the money going toward the highest priority projects, it often is used for those with matching state or private monies.
“So it’s used for where you can get the best match rather than what the best conservation priorities are,” McDonald said.
Jennifer Harris, a mother of three young children, added that what’s really needed to make the Great Outdoors Initiative work is to support teachers doing more hands-on applications as well as finding ways for parents to get reconnected with the land.
“We would get more users who would be more empathetic with what’s going on with the land and have a better voice on policies,” Harris said. “I think we can create some programs to take to state parks and become a model for the nation, to try to get families more connected to the outdoors.”
For more information on the initiative, go to www.doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors.
People also can send comments, along with stories of favorite places or conservation efforts, to ideas.usda.gov/ago/ideas.nsf.
Obama has asked for a report on the initiative to be submitted on him by Nov. 15.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Signs Point to Administration Plan to Lock Up 13M Acres of Federal Land
A leaked partial document produced by the Bureau of Land Management
and obtained by Fox News suggests the Obama administration is considering a plan to lock up 13 million acres of land -- and the Department of Interior is refusing to answer questions.
First, a little background: The federal government owns about one-third of the land in the United States -- most of it in western states. For example, 84 percent of Nevada is owned by Uncle Sam.
But the government leases large parcels of federal land for all sorts of things -- grazing, mining, exploration, recreation.
Those commercial activities create jobs and tax revenue for the states. Tax revenues from commercial activity on federal lands often pays for local schools. However, with the single stroke of his pen, President Obama can use the Antiquities of Act of 1906 to turn federal land into National Monuments.
That would effectively lock up the land from any kind of private use or development.
The plan may actually be more than 13 million acres. Republican members of the House have asked for the rest of the memo, but the Department of the Interior is refusing to hand it over.
Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said he is worried.
"When the administration is, for lack of a better word, stiffing us -- you know that causes concern," Hastings said during a hallway interview on Capitol Hill. "We do have responsibilities to our constituents to make sure that when there is a huge change on federal lands in their area, that they are part of that process. We are afraid that that process is going to be taken away from them and that's why we're asking for these documents."
Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee were unable to garner Democratic support for a resolution requiring the Department of Interior to produce some 2,000 documents it has on this matter.
The DOI did cough up 300 e-mails that Republicans say do not reveal very much.
When contacted by Fox News, the department's press secretary hinted that the GOP request is under further review.
"This is an on-going process," Kendra Barkoff wrote. "We may supplement
this response as the process is concluded."
There are those who believe these lands are precious -- and should be locked up from development. But in western states this is controversial.
Western state governors are worried that the Obama administration is going to do this quickly and quietly -- without public hearings. They want the process to be more transparent. But for now, those documents are being tightly held by the Obama Department of Interior.
and obtained by Fox News suggests the Obama administration is considering a plan to lock up 13 million acres of land -- and the Department of Interior is refusing to answer questions.
First, a little background: The federal government owns about one-third of the land in the United States -- most of it in western states. For example, 84 percent of Nevada is owned by Uncle Sam.
But the government leases large parcels of federal land for all sorts of things -- grazing, mining, exploration, recreation.
Those commercial activities create jobs and tax revenue for the states. Tax revenues from commercial activity on federal lands often pays for local schools. However, with the single stroke of his pen, President Obama can use the Antiquities of Act of 1906 to turn federal land into National Monuments.
That would effectively lock up the land from any kind of private use or development.
The plan may actually be more than 13 million acres. Republican members of the House have asked for the rest of the memo, but the Department of the Interior is refusing to hand it over.
Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said he is worried.
"When the administration is, for lack of a better word, stiffing us -- you know that causes concern," Hastings said during a hallway interview on Capitol Hill. "We do have responsibilities to our constituents to make sure that when there is a huge change on federal lands in their area, that they are part of that process. We are afraid that that process is going to be taken away from them and that's why we're asking for these documents."
Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee were unable to garner Democratic support for a resolution requiring the Department of Interior to produce some 2,000 documents it has on this matter.
The DOI did cough up 300 e-mails that Republicans say do not reveal very much.
When contacted by Fox News, the department's press secretary hinted that the GOP request is under further review.
"This is an on-going process," Kendra Barkoff wrote. "We may supplement
this response as the process is concluded."
There are those who believe these lands are precious -- and should be locked up from development. But in western states this is controversial.
Western state governors are worried that the Obama administration is going to do this quickly and quietly -- without public hearings. They want the process to be more transparent. But for now, those documents are being tightly held by the Obama Department of Interior.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Scientists use conservation lands as 'outdoor lab'
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - In the Robledo Mountains of southern New Mexico, an international team of scientists spent the past week toiling under the desert sun, searching for clues to help them better understand what life was like along a prehistoric shoreline.
Layer after layer, the mudstone at Prehistoric Trackways National Monument has offered up the tracks of reptiles and jumping insects and even the imprints of jellyfish. There are fossil logs and plants that predate the dinosaur age by tens of millions of years.
"We see this as a window to a lost world," said Jerry MacDonald, who was a student at New Mexico State University when he stumbled upon the trackways in 1987.
The monument contains some of the most scientifically significant early Permian trackways in the world. It's one of dozens of units within the National Landscape Conservation System that scientists are using as a vast outdoor laboratory.
The National Landscape Conservation System, or NLCS, is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Officials have planned a weeklong symposium in Albuquerque to highlight discoveries made within the system - from the prehistoric tracks in southern New Mexico to the fossils of new dinosaur species at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah.
"We're trying to get the word out and hopefully get people to start thinking about these lands in a different way," said Marietta Eaton, science coordinator for NLCS in Washington, D.C. "They're not just out there so you can go out and recreate. They have some amazing, amazing resources and discoveries left to be made."
Covering more than 27 million acres, the system includes 886 federally recognized areas in 12 Western states - national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, scenic and historic trails and conservation lands.
It's all managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Eaton said the conservation system guarantees that special places will be protected for generations and scientists like MacDonald won't have to worry about development or other variables interfering with long-term research projects.
Kevin Mack of The Wilderness Society said the system's simple mission statement focuses on conservation, protection and restoration of significant landscapes. The key, he said, is that it recognizes lands that have scientific value.
"What we know about the world is much different now than it was 100 years ago. These places give us a chance to continue to do that research and take a glimpse back and see the world maybe as it was and maybe learn some new things," he said.
Mack pointed to the Snowy River cave passage in southern New Mexico, where researchers have found what is believed to be the world's largest continuous mineral cave decoration - a solid river of tiny white calcite crystals that stretches more than 4.7 miles.
On the cave walls is a black manganese oxide crust that's inhabited by microorganisms.
Scientists are looking to the cave to learn more about the region's climatic history, the mysterious microbes and the relationship between ground and surface water sources.
"You've got a cave there that is unlike anything else ever seen in the world, and it's revealing dates for events that have happened climatically for tens of thousands of years. That's very profound to have that kind of information," Eaton said.
Back at the trackways monument, MacDonald recalled the first time he cracked open a slab and found a handful of consecutive tracks in pristine condition. He knew on a summer day more than 20 years ago that he was on to something.
His work paid off last year, when the area was designated as a national monument and added to the conservation system.
MacDonald was joined over the past week by scientists from England, Germany, the Smithsonian Institute and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. Their interests ranged from animal tracks to fossil plants.
"You get all of these guys coming to this new national monument and they're all working together, studying different types of fossils, and it's just really exciting," MacDonald said. "We've got all of it in one place."
Layer after layer, the mudstone at Prehistoric Trackways National Monument has offered up the tracks of reptiles and jumping insects and even the imprints of jellyfish. There are fossil logs and plants that predate the dinosaur age by tens of millions of years.
"We see this as a window to a lost world," said Jerry MacDonald, who was a student at New Mexico State University when he stumbled upon the trackways in 1987.
The monument contains some of the most scientifically significant early Permian trackways in the world. It's one of dozens of units within the National Landscape Conservation System that scientists are using as a vast outdoor laboratory.
The National Landscape Conservation System, or NLCS, is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Officials have planned a weeklong symposium in Albuquerque to highlight discoveries made within the system - from the prehistoric tracks in southern New Mexico to the fossils of new dinosaur species at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah.
"We're trying to get the word out and hopefully get people to start thinking about these lands in a different way," said Marietta Eaton, science coordinator for NLCS in Washington, D.C. "They're not just out there so you can go out and recreate. They have some amazing, amazing resources and discoveries left to be made."
Covering more than 27 million acres, the system includes 886 federally recognized areas in 12 Western states - national monuments, national conservation areas, wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, scenic and historic trails and conservation lands.
It's all managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Eaton said the conservation system guarantees that special places will be protected for generations and scientists like MacDonald won't have to worry about development or other variables interfering with long-term research projects.
Kevin Mack of The Wilderness Society said the system's simple mission statement focuses on conservation, protection and restoration of significant landscapes. The key, he said, is that it recognizes lands that have scientific value.
"What we know about the world is much different now than it was 100 years ago. These places give us a chance to continue to do that research and take a glimpse back and see the world maybe as it was and maybe learn some new things," he said.
Mack pointed to the Snowy River cave passage in southern New Mexico, where researchers have found what is believed to be the world's largest continuous mineral cave decoration - a solid river of tiny white calcite crystals that stretches more than 4.7 miles.
On the cave walls is a black manganese oxide crust that's inhabited by microorganisms.
Scientists are looking to the cave to learn more about the region's climatic history, the mysterious microbes and the relationship between ground and surface water sources.
"You've got a cave there that is unlike anything else ever seen in the world, and it's revealing dates for events that have happened climatically for tens of thousands of years. That's very profound to have that kind of information," Eaton said.
Back at the trackways monument, MacDonald recalled the first time he cracked open a slab and found a handful of consecutive tracks in pristine condition. He knew on a summer day more than 20 years ago that he was on to something.
His work paid off last year, when the area was designated as a national monument and added to the conservation system.
MacDonald was joined over the past week by scientists from England, Germany, the Smithsonian Institute and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. Their interests ranged from animal tracks to fossil plants.
"You get all of these guys coming to this new national monument and they're all working together, studying different types of fossils, and it's just really exciting," MacDonald said. "We've got all of it in one place."
Monday, May 17, 2010
Primary race set for land commissioner
The campaign trail for the five men vying to be New Mexico's next land commissioner has been tough.
First come the blank stares, then the question: So what does the land commissioner do?
Many argue the person at the helm of the State Land Office is one of the most powerful people in state government, wielding control over more than 13 million acres of mineral estate with the potential to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to New Mexico's coffers each year.
"This office has more power, as far as public lands go, than the governor or the Legislature," said Kent Salazar, a state game commissioner and regional director with the National Wildlife Federation.
Salazar and sportsmen's groups are paying attention to the race to ensure they will continue to have access to public lands for hunting, fishing and recreation. They want to make sure those lands are managed so wildlife habitat is protected.
Farmers and ranchers are also paying attention. So are renewable energy developers and the oil and natural gas industry, which contributes about 95 percent of the Land Office's revenues through leases, rents and royalties.
Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons, a Republican, cannot run again because of term limits.
Democrat Ray Powell, who was land commissioner from 1993-2002, wants another chance at the job and is running in the June 1 primary. Other Democrats on the ballot are Public Regulation Commission chairman Sandy Jones and Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry Montoya.
Matthew Rush, a Roosevelt County farmer and cattle rancher, faces former Bernalillo County GOP executive director Bob Cornelius in the Republican primary.
Lyons considers the position the best job he's ever had.
While he admits making mistakes during his tenure, Lyons said he's proud the office was able to bring in record revenues from oil and gas operations and mineral and agricultural leases.
"If we hadn't raised $3.8 billion over the last eight years, we'd be in a heck of a mess," Lyons said.
About 95 percent of the Land Office's revenues come from oil and gas operations. In the last quarter, the office reported earnings of $114 million, including $107 million from oil and gas.
Lease sale earnings are deposited into the Land Maintenance Fund. All but 2 percent is distributed to trust beneficiaries, including public schools, seven universities, New Mexico Military Institute, New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, New Mexico School for the Deaf, three hospitals, correctional facilities, water projects and public building repair and construction.
With New Mexico's continuing budget problems, a slumping economy and dwindling commodity prices, the next land commissioner can look to renewable energy and other development besides leveraging the state's oil and gas resources.
Deborah Seligman of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association said the challenge will be striking a balance among the demands.
"We have a pendulum that keeps swinging and it needs to balance out," she said.
At forums around New Mexico, landowners, sportsmen and industry groups have been pressing candidates about what kind of office they will run and how decisions regarding land swaps will be made.
Lyons has been criticized over his handling of the exchange of thousands of acres of state land around White Peak in northeastern New Mexico. The case, now being heard by the state Supreme Court, pits residents and sportsmen against one another and the state attorney general against the Land Office.
The candidates have all vowed that their dealings will be open and honest, and Salazar said that's the least voters can expect.
"Whoever gets in there has a lot of say about what goes on with our public lands, whether to sell them or whether to use and maintain them for the long term. It's a very important office," he said.
First come the blank stares, then the question: So what does the land commissioner do?
Many argue the person at the helm of the State Land Office is one of the most powerful people in state government, wielding control over more than 13 million acres of mineral estate with the potential to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to New Mexico's coffers each year.
"This office has more power, as far as public lands go, than the governor or the Legislature," said Kent Salazar, a state game commissioner and regional director with the National Wildlife Federation.
Salazar and sportsmen's groups are paying attention to the race to ensure they will continue to have access to public lands for hunting, fishing and recreation. They want to make sure those lands are managed so wildlife habitat is protected.
Farmers and ranchers are also paying attention. So are renewable energy developers and the oil and natural gas industry, which contributes about 95 percent of the Land Office's revenues through leases, rents and royalties.
Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons, a Republican, cannot run again because of term limits.
Democrat Ray Powell, who was land commissioner from 1993-2002, wants another chance at the job and is running in the June 1 primary. Other Democrats on the ballot are Public Regulation Commission chairman Sandy Jones and Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry Montoya.
Matthew Rush, a Roosevelt County farmer and cattle rancher, faces former Bernalillo County GOP executive director Bob Cornelius in the Republican primary.
Lyons considers the position the best job he's ever had.
While he admits making mistakes during his tenure, Lyons said he's proud the office was able to bring in record revenues from oil and gas operations and mineral and agricultural leases.
"If we hadn't raised $3.8 billion over the last eight years, we'd be in a heck of a mess," Lyons said.
About 95 percent of the Land Office's revenues come from oil and gas operations. In the last quarter, the office reported earnings of $114 million, including $107 million from oil and gas.
Lease sale earnings are deposited into the Land Maintenance Fund. All but 2 percent is distributed to trust beneficiaries, including public schools, seven universities, New Mexico Military Institute, New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, New Mexico School for the Deaf, three hospitals, correctional facilities, water projects and public building repair and construction.
With New Mexico's continuing budget problems, a slumping economy and dwindling commodity prices, the next land commissioner can look to renewable energy and other development besides leveraging the state's oil and gas resources.
Deborah Seligman of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association said the challenge will be striking a balance among the demands.
"We have a pendulum that keeps swinging and it needs to balance out," she said.
At forums around New Mexico, landowners, sportsmen and industry groups have been pressing candidates about what kind of office they will run and how decisions regarding land swaps will be made.
Lyons has been criticized over his handling of the exchange of thousands of acres of state land around White Peak in northeastern New Mexico. The case, now being heard by the state Supreme Court, pits residents and sportsmen against one another and the state attorney general against the Land Office.
The candidates have all vowed that their dealings will be open and honest, and Salazar said that's the least voters can expect.
"Whoever gets in there has a lot of say about what goes on with our public lands, whether to sell them or whether to use and maintain them for the long term. It's a very important office," he said.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
New Mexico Natural Heritage Conservation Act
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson recently signed the Natural Heritage Conservation Act, a bill passed during the recent legislative session to protect land, water, wildlife, and working farms and ranches across New Mexico. This new legislation, sponsored by state Senator Carlos Cisneros (D-Taos), will establish a program that will enable the state to make grants to fund conservation easement and restoration projects on private lands.
''For the first time, New Mexico will have a permanent mechanism for funding conservation projects across our state,'' said Governor Richardson at the signing ceremony for the Natural Heritage Conservation Act. ''I am also pleased that we were able to secure $5 million during the legislative session, so that we will be able to start funding these important initiatives right away.'' Despite the state's current financial problems, New Mexico House Speaker Ben Lujan (D-Santa Fe) said it was important to earmark land for conservation. At the signing ceremony, Lujan posed the question, ''If we don’t do it now, when? When the land is gone?''
With conservation easements, willing private landowners voluntarily enter into agreements with qualified conservation organizations or public agencies to restrict subdivision, development and certain incompatible uses of the land in order to protect the wildlife, agricultural, scenic open space, cultural and/or recreational values of the subject lands. Landowners who grant easements retain ownership of their land and can continue to farm, ranch and engage in other traditional forms of land use that are consistent with the purposes of the easement. They can also lease, sell or pass their land on to their heirs, but the easements run with the land and are binding on all future landowners.
''Every year, New Mexico is losing thousands of acres of productive farm and ranch land along with the associated conservation values they provide to unbridled growth and development,'' said Larry Winn, Chair of the New Mexico Soil & Water Commission. ''We view conservation easements as a way to keep agricultural land in family ownership and in production, and as an important option for farmers and ranchers to consider as an alternative to simply selling, subdividing and developing their lands.''
''Easements are as much a tax and financial planning mechanism as they are a conservation tool for private landowners,'' said Scott Wilber, Executive Director of the New Mexico Land Conservancy, a statewide non-profit land trust based in Santa Fe. He noted that landowners can receive significant federal and state tax incentives by donating part or all or the value of a conservation easement, but added that in a state like New Mexico where many of the landowners are land-rich and cash-poor, particularly within the agricultural community, tax benefits alone are not always enough to get the job done.
''Conservation easements and restoration cost money,” said Wilber. ''A combination of state funding and tax incentives will further enhance the ability of conservation organizations, public agencies, municipalities, land grants, tribes, and soil and water conservation districts to work with private landowners to conserve their lands.''
The program created by the Natural Heritage Conservation Act will also help leverage other sources of conservation funding, through federal programs such as the Land & Water Conservation Fund, the Farm Bill, the Clean Water Act, the USDA Farm & Ranchland Protection and Forest Legacy programs, as well as state wildlife grants and local conservation funding from New Mexico’s cities and counties. Studies have shown that New Mexico misses out on approximately $20 million in federal land and water conservation funding each year because it does not have adequate state matching funds. By creating this program, New Mexico is capitalizing on a major opportunity to draw more resources to the state to help preserve what makes it the ''Land of Enchantment'' – its natural, agricultural and cultural heritage.
Resource(s): http://www.nmlandconservancy.org/Publications/Images/NHCA%20PR%203-10-10.pdf
''For the first time, New Mexico will have a permanent mechanism for funding conservation projects across our state,'' said Governor Richardson at the signing ceremony for the Natural Heritage Conservation Act. ''I am also pleased that we were able to secure $5 million during the legislative session, so that we will be able to start funding these important initiatives right away.'' Despite the state's current financial problems, New Mexico House Speaker Ben Lujan (D-Santa Fe) said it was important to earmark land for conservation. At the signing ceremony, Lujan posed the question, ''If we don’t do it now, when? When the land is gone?''
With conservation easements, willing private landowners voluntarily enter into agreements with qualified conservation organizations or public agencies to restrict subdivision, development and certain incompatible uses of the land in order to protect the wildlife, agricultural, scenic open space, cultural and/or recreational values of the subject lands. Landowners who grant easements retain ownership of their land and can continue to farm, ranch and engage in other traditional forms of land use that are consistent with the purposes of the easement. They can also lease, sell or pass their land on to their heirs, but the easements run with the land and are binding on all future landowners.
''Every year, New Mexico is losing thousands of acres of productive farm and ranch land along with the associated conservation values they provide to unbridled growth and development,'' said Larry Winn, Chair of the New Mexico Soil & Water Commission. ''We view conservation easements as a way to keep agricultural land in family ownership and in production, and as an important option for farmers and ranchers to consider as an alternative to simply selling, subdividing and developing their lands.''
''Easements are as much a tax and financial planning mechanism as they are a conservation tool for private landowners,'' said Scott Wilber, Executive Director of the New Mexico Land Conservancy, a statewide non-profit land trust based in Santa Fe. He noted that landowners can receive significant federal and state tax incentives by donating part or all or the value of a conservation easement, but added that in a state like New Mexico where many of the landowners are land-rich and cash-poor, particularly within the agricultural community, tax benefits alone are not always enough to get the job done.
''Conservation easements and restoration cost money,” said Wilber. ''A combination of state funding and tax incentives will further enhance the ability of conservation organizations, public agencies, municipalities, land grants, tribes, and soil and water conservation districts to work with private landowners to conserve their lands.''
The program created by the Natural Heritage Conservation Act will also help leverage other sources of conservation funding, through federal programs such as the Land & Water Conservation Fund, the Farm Bill, the Clean Water Act, the USDA Farm & Ranchland Protection and Forest Legacy programs, as well as state wildlife grants and local conservation funding from New Mexico’s cities and counties. Studies have shown that New Mexico misses out on approximately $20 million in federal land and water conservation funding each year because it does not have adequate state matching funds. By creating this program, New Mexico is capitalizing on a major opportunity to draw more resources to the state to help preserve what makes it the ''Land of Enchantment'' – its natural, agricultural and cultural heritage.
Resource(s): http://www.nmlandconservancy.org/Publications/Images/NHCA%20PR%203-10-10.pdf
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Enviro group sues to protect endangered species
At the end of April, the Center for Biological Diversity announced it plans to sue the Forest Service for not protecting rare species on lands throughout Arizona and New Mexico.
According to Taylor McKinnon, the center’s Public Lands Campaigns Director, the agency has continued to approve projects that destroy endangered species and their habitat without undertaking the monitoring required by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Five years ago, that agency—which enforces compliance with the Endangered Species Act—ordered the Forest Service to monitor rare species and their habitats on all 11 forests in the southwest.
But in a 2008 report, the Forest Service admitted it had not completed such monitoring. The following year, it also requested that the Fish and Wildlife Service change its opinion.
“The Forest Service manages expansive acreage of forests, and that public land is the cradle of life for a whole host of native species, including threatened and endangered species,” said McKinnon. “We need the Forest Service to manage its lands in a way that sustains life, rather than dragging species further toward extinction.”
The Center’s lawsuit will involve at least nine species listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, including the Mexican spotted owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake, Chiricahua leopard frog, Apache trout, Chihuahua chub, loach minnow, spikedace and ocelot.
McKinnon also said that the agency is rolling back existing wildlife protections as it revamps individual forest plans for New Mexico and Arizona.
“We’re seeing a really sharp turn away from providing habitat and protections for threatened and endangered species, and other species, in those plans,” said McKinnon. He pointed out that though they are inadequate, the current plans—written in the 1980s—do include protection measures for wildlife and their habitat.
But within the draft plans for Arizona, including the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona, the Forest Service has essentially abandoned wildlife protections, he said. Along with the agency’s refusal to monitor the impacts of projects on endangered species, this trend of aggressive rollbacks troubles McKinnon.
“Rather than increasing and enhancing wildlife protections in the Southwest forest plans, forest plans under the Obama administration seems to be heading in the opposite direction,” he said. “They seem to be weakening those protections, and we think that’s the opposite of what wildlife in the forests need.”
Forest management plans are being updated
In 1976, Congress passed the National Forest Management Act (NMFA), which required each of the nation’s forests to have plans that would then guide local management, activities and projects.
Now the agency is updating those plans to incorporate “current thinking and current ways of doing business,” Matt Turner, head of regional planning for the agency’s Southwest Region, told the Independent. In New Mexico, for example, there are five national forests, as well as the grasslands of the Cibola National Forest. Plans for the grasslands are currently being updated and managers will soon revise the other five plans once the new national rule is in place.
One issue that has become more important in recent years, Turner said, is climate change. “Other issues, based on what was in NFMA, [include] how to address the diversity of plants and animals and maintain their sustainability,” he said. “Also, how do we restore and maintain our watersheds? How do we ensure that our communities, rural and urban, maintain their relationships with the forest? And how do the forests provide for the needs of those communities?”
The agency must also manage fire, recreation—everything from hiking and cross-country skiing to off-road vehicle travel—and business. Oil and gas development, for example, is prevalent on the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico. The planning process, he explained, provides the overall framework for the Forest Service to work on individual projects, including recreation, grazing, energy development and mining.
“Much of the beef people eat comes from cattle grazed on National Forest lands, and, not so much in the Southwest, but in other Forest Service regions, much of the wood that goes to build your homes—and keeps the price of wood construction down—comes off National Forest lands,” said Turner. “There’s quite a bit National Forest lands throughout the country provide—even if you never step foot on Forest Service land, it provides goods and services.”
Now’s the time for wilderness
In 1976, Congress also passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which guides another federal land agency—the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Among other things, that law required the BLM to inventory its lands for wilderness characteristics, and to re-examine those lands as time passed in order to designate new wilderness areas. Wilderness areas are permanently protected as off-limits to development and motorized travel.
But the Forest Service has no such mandate, said Nathan Newcomer, associate director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. It has completed what are called Roadless Area Review and Evaluations: “But they have no mandate, nothing written that says they need to look at their forests and do periodic wilderness inventories,” Newcomer told the Independent. “This rule should have that—it should direct districts to go out there and study their lands for wilderness-quality designations.”
The alliance is also looking ahead to the development of New Mexico’s individual forest plans, which will be guided by the new national rule.
Of the 9.3 million acres of National Forest lands in the state, 1.6 million of those are roadless, according to Newcomer. Although activists in New Mexico have long focused on wilderness-worthy areas on BLM lands, they’re now looking more actively at the National Forests: “The [revised plan] is one example of why we need to do that: The federal agency is giving us the opportunity,” he said. “We need to make sure that the bevy of beautiful, wild places we have in this state are left intact—not just for the people, but for the land’s sake.”
According to Taylor McKinnon, the center’s Public Lands Campaigns Director, the agency has continued to approve projects that destroy endangered species and their habitat without undertaking the monitoring required by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Five years ago, that agency—which enforces compliance with the Endangered Species Act—ordered the Forest Service to monitor rare species and their habitats on all 11 forests in the southwest.
But in a 2008 report, the Forest Service admitted it had not completed such monitoring. The following year, it also requested that the Fish and Wildlife Service change its opinion.
“The Forest Service manages expansive acreage of forests, and that public land is the cradle of life for a whole host of native species, including threatened and endangered species,” said McKinnon. “We need the Forest Service to manage its lands in a way that sustains life, rather than dragging species further toward extinction.”
The Center’s lawsuit will involve at least nine species listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act, including the Mexican spotted owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake, Chiricahua leopard frog, Apache trout, Chihuahua chub, loach minnow, spikedace and ocelot.
McKinnon also said that the agency is rolling back existing wildlife protections as it revamps individual forest plans for New Mexico and Arizona.
“We’re seeing a really sharp turn away from providing habitat and protections for threatened and endangered species, and other species, in those plans,” said McKinnon. He pointed out that though they are inadequate, the current plans—written in the 1980s—do include protection measures for wildlife and their habitat.
But within the draft plans for Arizona, including the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona, the Forest Service has essentially abandoned wildlife protections, he said. Along with the agency’s refusal to monitor the impacts of projects on endangered species, this trend of aggressive rollbacks troubles McKinnon.
“Rather than increasing and enhancing wildlife protections in the Southwest forest plans, forest plans under the Obama administration seems to be heading in the opposite direction,” he said. “They seem to be weakening those protections, and we think that’s the opposite of what wildlife in the forests need.”
Forest management plans are being updated
In 1976, Congress passed the National Forest Management Act (NMFA), which required each of the nation’s forests to have plans that would then guide local management, activities and projects.
Now the agency is updating those plans to incorporate “current thinking and current ways of doing business,” Matt Turner, head of regional planning for the agency’s Southwest Region, told the Independent. In New Mexico, for example, there are five national forests, as well as the grasslands of the Cibola National Forest. Plans for the grasslands are currently being updated and managers will soon revise the other five plans once the new national rule is in place.
One issue that has become more important in recent years, Turner said, is climate change. “Other issues, based on what was in NFMA, [include] how to address the diversity of plants and animals and maintain their sustainability,” he said. “Also, how do we restore and maintain our watersheds? How do we ensure that our communities, rural and urban, maintain their relationships with the forest? And how do the forests provide for the needs of those communities?”
The agency must also manage fire, recreation—everything from hiking and cross-country skiing to off-road vehicle travel—and business. Oil and gas development, for example, is prevalent on the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico. The planning process, he explained, provides the overall framework for the Forest Service to work on individual projects, including recreation, grazing, energy development and mining.
“Much of the beef people eat comes from cattle grazed on National Forest lands, and, not so much in the Southwest, but in other Forest Service regions, much of the wood that goes to build your homes—and keeps the price of wood construction down—comes off National Forest lands,” said Turner. “There’s quite a bit National Forest lands throughout the country provide—even if you never step foot on Forest Service land, it provides goods and services.”
Now’s the time for wilderness
In 1976, Congress also passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which guides another federal land agency—the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Among other things, that law required the BLM to inventory its lands for wilderness characteristics, and to re-examine those lands as time passed in order to designate new wilderness areas. Wilderness areas are permanently protected as off-limits to development and motorized travel.
But the Forest Service has no such mandate, said Nathan Newcomer, associate director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. It has completed what are called Roadless Area Review and Evaluations: “But they have no mandate, nothing written that says they need to look at their forests and do periodic wilderness inventories,” Newcomer told the Independent. “This rule should have that—it should direct districts to go out there and study their lands for wilderness-quality designations.”
The alliance is also looking ahead to the development of New Mexico’s individual forest plans, which will be guided by the new national rule.
Of the 9.3 million acres of National Forest lands in the state, 1.6 million of those are roadless, according to Newcomer. Although activists in New Mexico have long focused on wilderness-worthy areas on BLM lands, they’re now looking more actively at the National Forests: “The [revised plan] is one example of why we need to do that: The federal agency is giving us the opportunity,” he said. “We need to make sure that the bevy of beautiful, wild places we have in this state are left intact—not just for the people, but for the land’s sake.”
Friday, April 30, 2010
Sagebrush stirrings
By David Harrison, Stateline Staff Writer
Utah State Representative Chris Herrod has gotten a lot of attention since his bill to explore seizing federal land through eminent domain became law last month. Colleagues in other Western legislatures have called seeking tips on replicating his success in their states. And the law was a topic of discussion this week when U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar paid a visit to Salt Lake City.
A majority of the land in Utah, as in many Western states, is owned by the federal government. Herrod’s measure treats the federal government like any other property owner in the state. It allows Washington to keep the rights and title to the land but not ultimate jurisdiction over it. That jurisdiction rests with Utah, and it means that federal land holdings may be subject to state eminent domain authority.
To Herrod, the law is an expression of long-simmering anger. Last year, he watched as the new Obama administration canceled 77 leases to oil and gas companies that had been approved by President George W. Bush. Then he saw a leaked administration memo that purported to list 14 sites as possible new national monuments, two of them in Utah.
Outrage over federal land policies is nothing new in Western states, where local officials have long sought to develop public land and collect tax revenue from it. Now, with Democrats in charge in Washington and conservative activists energized in their opposition towards the Obama administration’s health care, energy and budget policies, some in the West are trying to counter what they see as federal heavy-handedness in land-use matters. Herrod, a Republican, has spoken at Tea Party rallies trying to tap into that anger, although he is wary of calling his bill a “Tea Party bill.”
“It’s a natural outflow of the frustration,” he says. “We kind of feel like we’re serfs. We have this land and we have to beg Washington to see if we can use it.”
So far, there are few signs that the West is gearing up for a full-scale renewal of the Sagebrush Rebellion, the 1970s movement that challenged Washington’s control of public lands. While numerous bills have cropped up in Western legislatures attempting to wrest control of land from the federal government, few have been as radical as Herrod’s and few have received anywhere near the same attention. By contrast, when President Bill Clinton designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on 1.9 million acres of public land in southern Utah, he touched off a fury in Western states that had many comparing it to the earlier uprising.
“I can’t see really anything in the Obama administration that would be cause to start another Sagebrush Rebellion,” says John Freemuth, a political scientist at Boise State University.
For instance, Interior Secretary Salazar is a Colorado rancher who last year decided to keep wolves off the endangered species list, furthering a Bush-era policy that angered environmentalists but pleased Western ranchers. The administration has spurned calls to list the sage grouse as an endangered species, a move that would close off vast swaths of land to development. Instead, Salazar has indicated he is willing to let states work through their own procedures for protecting the birds, which scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say need to be protected.
George Nickas, executive director of the environment group Wilderness Watch, is not worried. The Utah bill is little more than “political theater,” he says. “Every so often some of these folks in these states kind of rebel. They like to pick on the federal government and say ‘We resist any federal government control on these lands.’ My guess is it’s wrapped up in the anti-Obama, anti-federal government, anti-Washington, D.C., rhetoric that seems to be so hot right now.”
Herrod says his bill was intended to do more than send a message. He wants to use money generated from developing public lands to fund Utah schools. And he believes that if and when the law is subjected to a federal court test, it could win a 5-to-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court. Even some of Herrod’s supporters are skeptical of that view. “I’d say go for it but I think that’s a bit of a stretch,” says Lynn Luker, a lawyer and Republican state representative in Idaho.
Luker sits on the State Affairs Committee in the Idaho House, which last month approved a measure to explore suing the federal government to get control of parcels of federal land in Idaho. Members of the committee say that claiming the land could open it up for logging, which, Luker says, would reduce the risk of forest fires while also providing electricity from burning dead timber.
Other Western states are looking for ways to take on the federal government. Wyoming lawmakers approved a resolution that claimed sovereignty from Washington under the 10th Amendment. An almost identical resolution was debated but defeated in Nevada last year. Montana lawmakers voted on — and turned down — a bill to assert the state's right to manage its own wolf population.
It’s still unclear whether Utah’s sweeping eminent domain legislation is a sign of things to come. “We’ve got this sort of opening shot from the Utah Legislature, and I think it remains to be seen whether any other Western state will adopt or pursue similar sorts of policies,” says Robert Keiter, a law professor and public lands expert at the University of Utah.
Utah’s anti-Washington sentiment did not stop state officials from warmly receiving Salazar this week as he tried to smooth over differences. But lawmakers and Governor Gary Herbert grilled the interior secretary on Utah’s effort to open old roads in federally protected areas and on the new eminent domain law.
Salazar said he got the message.
Utah State Representative Chris Herrod has gotten a lot of attention since his bill to explore seizing federal land through eminent domain became law last month. Colleagues in other Western legislatures have called seeking tips on replicating his success in their states. And the law was a topic of discussion this week when U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar paid a visit to Salt Lake City.
A majority of the land in Utah, as in many Western states, is owned by the federal government. Herrod’s measure treats the federal government like any other property owner in the state. It allows Washington to keep the rights and title to the land but not ultimate jurisdiction over it. That jurisdiction rests with Utah, and it means that federal land holdings may be subject to state eminent domain authority.
To Herrod, the law is an expression of long-simmering anger. Last year, he watched as the new Obama administration canceled 77 leases to oil and gas companies that had been approved by President George W. Bush. Then he saw a leaked administration memo that purported to list 14 sites as possible new national monuments, two of them in Utah.
Outrage over federal land policies is nothing new in Western states, where local officials have long sought to develop public land and collect tax revenue from it. Now, with Democrats in charge in Washington and conservative activists energized in their opposition towards the Obama administration’s health care, energy and budget policies, some in the West are trying to counter what they see as federal heavy-handedness in land-use matters. Herrod, a Republican, has spoken at Tea Party rallies trying to tap into that anger, although he is wary of calling his bill a “Tea Party bill.”
“It’s a natural outflow of the frustration,” he says. “We kind of feel like we’re serfs. We have this land and we have to beg Washington to see if we can use it.”
So far, there are few signs that the West is gearing up for a full-scale renewal of the Sagebrush Rebellion, the 1970s movement that challenged Washington’s control of public lands. While numerous bills have cropped up in Western legislatures attempting to wrest control of land from the federal government, few have been as radical as Herrod’s and few have received anywhere near the same attention. By contrast, when President Bill Clinton designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on 1.9 million acres of public land in southern Utah, he touched off a fury in Western states that had many comparing it to the earlier uprising.
“I can’t see really anything in the Obama administration that would be cause to start another Sagebrush Rebellion,” says John Freemuth, a political scientist at Boise State University.
For instance, Interior Secretary Salazar is a Colorado rancher who last year decided to keep wolves off the endangered species list, furthering a Bush-era policy that angered environmentalists but pleased Western ranchers. The administration has spurned calls to list the sage grouse as an endangered species, a move that would close off vast swaths of land to development. Instead, Salazar has indicated he is willing to let states work through their own procedures for protecting the birds, which scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say need to be protected.
George Nickas, executive director of the environment group Wilderness Watch, is not worried. The Utah bill is little more than “political theater,” he says. “Every so often some of these folks in these states kind of rebel. They like to pick on the federal government and say ‘We resist any federal government control on these lands.’ My guess is it’s wrapped up in the anti-Obama, anti-federal government, anti-Washington, D.C., rhetoric that seems to be so hot right now.”
Herrod says his bill was intended to do more than send a message. He wants to use money generated from developing public lands to fund Utah schools. And he believes that if and when the law is subjected to a federal court test, it could win a 5-to-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court. Even some of Herrod’s supporters are skeptical of that view. “I’d say go for it but I think that’s a bit of a stretch,” says Lynn Luker, a lawyer and Republican state representative in Idaho.
Luker sits on the State Affairs Committee in the Idaho House, which last month approved a measure to explore suing the federal government to get control of parcels of federal land in Idaho. Members of the committee say that claiming the land could open it up for logging, which, Luker says, would reduce the risk of forest fires while also providing electricity from burning dead timber.
Other Western states are looking for ways to take on the federal government. Wyoming lawmakers approved a resolution that claimed sovereignty from Washington under the 10th Amendment. An almost identical resolution was debated but defeated in Nevada last year. Montana lawmakers voted on — and turned down — a bill to assert the state's right to manage its own wolf population.
It’s still unclear whether Utah’s sweeping eminent domain legislation is a sign of things to come. “We’ve got this sort of opening shot from the Utah Legislature, and I think it remains to be seen whether any other Western state will adopt or pursue similar sorts of policies,” says Robert Keiter, a law professor and public lands expert at the University of Utah.
Utah’s anti-Washington sentiment did not stop state officials from warmly receiving Salazar this week as he tried to smooth over differences. But lawmakers and Governor Gary Herbert grilled the interior secretary on Utah’s effort to open old roads in federally protected areas and on the new eminent domain law.
Salazar said he got the message.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Lawsuit to Be Launched to Protect Endangered Species in Arizona and New Mexico National Forests
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— Today the Center for Biological Diversity formally notified the U.S. Forest Service that it will sue the agency for failing to protect endangered species in Arizona and New Mexico national forests, where it continues to approve projects that destroy endangered species habitat without carrying out legally required monitoring of the species and their habitat. The lawsuit will involve at least nine threatened and endangered species, including the Mexican spotted owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, New Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake, Chiricahua leopard frog, Apache trout, Chihuahua chub, loach minnow, spikedace, and ocelot.
“The Forest Service’s refusal to honor its responsibility to monitor and protect endangered species is not only illegal but potentially devastating to wildlife,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity.
On June 10, 2005, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with enforcing the Endangered Species Act, issued a formal “biological opinion” on the impacts of implementation of forest plans for Arizona and New Mexico’s 11 national forests on threatened and endangered species. The document requires the Forest Service to monitor populations and habitats for the species that occur on the forests.
In October 2008 the Forest Service issued a report admitting that it had not done the monitoring. It also conceded that it might have exceeded the amount of harm, or “incidental take,” allowed by the biological opinion. On April 17, 2009, it requested that the Fish and Wildlife Service redo the opinion.
The Forest Service stated that it “[w]ill likely soon exceed the amount of take issued for at least one species, the Mexican spotted owl,” and that “it has become apparent that [we are] unable to fully implement and comply with the monitoring requirements associated with the Reasonable and Prudent Measures for several species (including MSO) in the [Biological Opinion].” The Fish and Wildlife Service has not responded to this letter or reinitiated formal consultation on the forest plans. Despite that, and despite its admitted failures, the Forest Service has continued to authorize forest-management activities that adversely affect the species in question.
“By refusing to monitor endangered species or ensure against their harm, the Forest Service is violating the Endangered Species Act and risks doing irreversible harm to species that are struggling to survive,” said McKinnon.
Today’s notice of intent to sue also requests that the Forest Service consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service about new information affecting endangered species. The new information includes impacts of climate change, increased threat of invasive species, severe wildfires, recent sighting of a critically endangered ocelot in southern Arizona, and new critical habitat designations for the Gila chub, southwestern willow flycatcher, loach minnow, and spikedace.
Meanwhile, the Forest Service has begun writing new forest plans for Arizona and New Mexico that roll back protections for threatened, endangered, and other species. A new draft forest plan released for the Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona eliminates virtually all forest-wide protective standards for wildlife and their habitat – including the requirement to maintain viable populations of species in the forest.
“The big picture for endangered species recovery in southwestern national forests has become pretty bleak,” said McKinnon. “The Forest Service is adding insult to injury by not only refusing to monitor threatened and endangered species, as already required under the law, but also rolling back species protections in new forest plans.”
“The Forest Service’s refusal to honor its responsibility to monitor and protect endangered species is not only illegal but potentially devastating to wildlife,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity.
On June 10, 2005, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with enforcing the Endangered Species Act, issued a formal “biological opinion” on the impacts of implementation of forest plans for Arizona and New Mexico’s 11 national forests on threatened and endangered species. The document requires the Forest Service to monitor populations and habitats for the species that occur on the forests.
In October 2008 the Forest Service issued a report admitting that it had not done the monitoring. It also conceded that it might have exceeded the amount of harm, or “incidental take,” allowed by the biological opinion. On April 17, 2009, it requested that the Fish and Wildlife Service redo the opinion.
The Forest Service stated that it “[w]ill likely soon exceed the amount of take issued for at least one species, the Mexican spotted owl,” and that “it has become apparent that [we are] unable to fully implement and comply with the monitoring requirements associated with the Reasonable and Prudent Measures for several species (including MSO) in the [Biological Opinion].” The Fish and Wildlife Service has not responded to this letter or reinitiated formal consultation on the forest plans. Despite that, and despite its admitted failures, the Forest Service has continued to authorize forest-management activities that adversely affect the species in question.
“By refusing to monitor endangered species or ensure against their harm, the Forest Service is violating the Endangered Species Act and risks doing irreversible harm to species that are struggling to survive,” said McKinnon.
Today’s notice of intent to sue also requests that the Forest Service consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service about new information affecting endangered species. The new information includes impacts of climate change, increased threat of invasive species, severe wildfires, recent sighting of a critically endangered ocelot in southern Arizona, and new critical habitat designations for the Gila chub, southwestern willow flycatcher, loach minnow, and spikedace.
Meanwhile, the Forest Service has begun writing new forest plans for Arizona and New Mexico that roll back protections for threatened, endangered, and other species. A new draft forest plan released for the Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona eliminates virtually all forest-wide protective standards for wildlife and their habitat – including the requirement to maintain viable populations of species in the forest.
“The big picture for endangered species recovery in southwestern national forests has become pretty bleak,” said McKinnon. “The Forest Service is adding insult to injury by not only refusing to monitor threatened and endangered species, as already required under the law, but also rolling back species protections in new forest plans.”
Friday, April 16, 2010
President Obama Launches Initiative to Develop a 21st Century Strategy for America’s Great Outdoors
Effort will Promote and Support Community-Level Efforts to Conserve Outdoor Spaces
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Barack Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum today establishing the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative to promote and support innovative community-level efforts to conserve outdoor spaces and to reconnect Americans to the outdoors. The President spoke before leaders representing the conservation, farming, ranching, sporting, recreation, forestry, private industry, local parks and academia communities from all 53 states and territories.
The Presidential Memorandum calls on the Secretaries of the Interior and of Agriculture, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to lead the Initiative, in coordination with the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor, Transportation, Education, and the Office of Management and Budget. The Initiative will support a 21st century conservation agenda that builds on successes in communities across the country, and will start a national dialogue about conservation that supports the efforts of private citizens and local communities.
“Today, with 80 percent of Americans living in cities and suburbs, it is more important than ever for people to have access to outdoor space. Just as we cherish our childhood memories of hiking and sledding, fishing and camping, and just as we enjoy spending time outdoors with our families, we must guard these places and traditions for new generations,” said CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley. “Through this Initiative we hope to identify new opportunities to work with Americans on a modern approach to conservation that begins at the ground level, and to reinvigorate the national conversation about our outdoors.”
“Since President Theodore Roosevelt held the first White House conference on conservation in 1908, we as Americans have taken extraordinary steps to protect our land, water, wildlife, and history for future generations, but today the places we love face new challenges that require new ideas and new strategies to solve,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. “President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative will start a much-needed dialogue about conservation in our country so that we can hear directly from Americans about the places they care about and how they are working to protect them. This is about listening, learning, and finding common-sense ways to support the good work that is happening in communities across the country.”
“President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative will play an important role in confronting the serious challenges our natural resources face today: climate change, air and water pollution, landscape fragmentation and loss of open space,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “This effort will bring Americans from across the country together to look for new approaches to protect our national treasures. And it will highlight the importance of working across ownership boundaries to restore and conserve both private and public lands in a way that recognizes that conservation and economic vitality are inextricably linked.”
“Too many of our cities have limited access to parks for children, low-income residents and communities of color. Improving access to open areas and green space in our urban communities should be a focus of a 21st century conservation strategy,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “It makes me proud that generations to come will know that we took action to preserve, restore and protect vital natural treasures.”
The full text of the Memorandum can be found at http://doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors/upload/2010outdoors-mem-rel-2.pdf
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Barack Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum today establishing the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative to promote and support innovative community-level efforts to conserve outdoor spaces and to reconnect Americans to the outdoors. The President spoke before leaders representing the conservation, farming, ranching, sporting, recreation, forestry, private industry, local parks and academia communities from all 53 states and territories.
The Presidential Memorandum calls on the Secretaries of the Interior and of Agriculture, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to lead the Initiative, in coordination with the Departments of Defense, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor, Transportation, Education, and the Office of Management and Budget. The Initiative will support a 21st century conservation agenda that builds on successes in communities across the country, and will start a national dialogue about conservation that supports the efforts of private citizens and local communities.
“Today, with 80 percent of Americans living in cities and suburbs, it is more important than ever for people to have access to outdoor space. Just as we cherish our childhood memories of hiking and sledding, fishing and camping, and just as we enjoy spending time outdoors with our families, we must guard these places and traditions for new generations,” said CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley. “Through this Initiative we hope to identify new opportunities to work with Americans on a modern approach to conservation that begins at the ground level, and to reinvigorate the national conversation about our outdoors.”
“Since President Theodore Roosevelt held the first White House conference on conservation in 1908, we as Americans have taken extraordinary steps to protect our land, water, wildlife, and history for future generations, but today the places we love face new challenges that require new ideas and new strategies to solve,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. “President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative will start a much-needed dialogue about conservation in our country so that we can hear directly from Americans about the places they care about and how they are working to protect them. This is about listening, learning, and finding common-sense ways to support the good work that is happening in communities across the country.”
“President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative will play an important role in confronting the serious challenges our natural resources face today: climate change, air and water pollution, landscape fragmentation and loss of open space,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “This effort will bring Americans from across the country together to look for new approaches to protect our national treasures. And it will highlight the importance of working across ownership boundaries to restore and conserve both private and public lands in a way that recognizes that conservation and economic vitality are inextricably linked.”
“Too many of our cities have limited access to parks for children, low-income residents and communities of color. Improving access to open areas and green space in our urban communities should be a focus of a 21st century conservation strategy,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “It makes me proud that generations to come will know that we took action to preserve, restore and protect vital natural treasures.”
The full text of the Memorandum can be found at http://doi.gov/americasgreatoutdoors/upload/2010outdoors-mem-rel-2.pdf
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Idaho rancher may lose grazing permit
Mike Hanley, a well-known rancher who helped Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo pass legislation to protect ranching and wilderness in the remote southwest corner of the state, could lose his privileges on public land.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has proposed denying a permit to Hanley, who lives in Jordan Valley, Ore., and grazes his cattle in Owyhee County. Hanley is a historian and author who reached out to environmentalists seeking common ground on wilderness and grazing issues in Owyhee County.
He said he could not talk about the BLM decision, which he is appealing, upon advice of his lawyer. But he said it had nothing to do with the legislation passed in 2009, which he still supports.
It has a lot to do with the Western Watersheds Project, which had challenged 68 grazing permits in Owyhee County demanding the BLM do extensive environmental reviews to protect water quality and endangered species. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill had upheld these challenges, and upon further lawsuits Hanley and others had been forced to reduce grazing.
Now he is in the same boat as Jon Marvel and Western Watersheds Project. The BLM has proposed taking away the project's grazing permit on federal lands connected with its Greenfire Preserve near Challis. Hanley's situation demonstrates that it's not easy for the BLM to take away the permits from either ranchers or the project.
BLM Owyhee Field Manager Buddy Green said in his decision that from 2002 to 2009, Hanley "repeatedly grazed the Trout Springs Allotment outside the season of use," put out more cows than he was allowed, and had cows on the allotment in 2009 when it was closed.
"This conduct is unacceptable, and therefore I have concluded that Hanley Ranch Partnership's record of performance under the existing federal grazing permit/authorization has been unsatisfactory," Green said.
Green also said Hanley had been out of compliance repeatedly from 1992 to 2001.
Hanley's attorney, Alan Schroeder, has filed a response saying that the BLM's decision would harm Hanley's ability to graze his cattle on his private property and that fencing off that property from the public land, assuming he could do that legally, would cost him more than $30,000.
The case now is before the Department of Interior's Office Hearings and Appeals.
Katie Fite, Western Watershed Project's Biodiversity director, said Hanley has been able to continuously flout grazing rules because of years of political interference. A host of BLM range conservationists and managers were transferred when they tried to enforce the terms of the permits over the last two decades, she said.
"They had a lot of political power when Larry Craig was still around," Fite said, referring to the former U.S. senator from Idaho.
But now, after more than 10 years of litigation, WWP has won a settlement from the BLM that it would end grazing practices Fite said dramatically lowered the water table, dried up streams in the Trout Springs area, and threatened the rare redband trout that live there.
"You're talking a millennium before it recovers," Fite said.
Schroeder declined comment, saying he did not want to fight his case in the media.
Hanley's appeal now will be decided by an administrative law judge.
Rocky Barker: 377-6484
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has proposed denying a permit to Hanley, who lives in Jordan Valley, Ore., and grazes his cattle in Owyhee County. Hanley is a historian and author who reached out to environmentalists seeking common ground on wilderness and grazing issues in Owyhee County.
He said he could not talk about the BLM decision, which he is appealing, upon advice of his lawyer. But he said it had nothing to do with the legislation passed in 2009, which he still supports.
It has a lot to do with the Western Watersheds Project, which had challenged 68 grazing permits in Owyhee County demanding the BLM do extensive environmental reviews to protect water quality and endangered species. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill had upheld these challenges, and upon further lawsuits Hanley and others had been forced to reduce grazing.
Now he is in the same boat as Jon Marvel and Western Watersheds Project. The BLM has proposed taking away the project's grazing permit on federal lands connected with its Greenfire Preserve near Challis. Hanley's situation demonstrates that it's not easy for the BLM to take away the permits from either ranchers or the project.
BLM Owyhee Field Manager Buddy Green said in his decision that from 2002 to 2009, Hanley "repeatedly grazed the Trout Springs Allotment outside the season of use," put out more cows than he was allowed, and had cows on the allotment in 2009 when it was closed.
"This conduct is unacceptable, and therefore I have concluded that Hanley Ranch Partnership's record of performance under the existing federal grazing permit/authorization has been unsatisfactory," Green said.
Green also said Hanley had been out of compliance repeatedly from 1992 to 2001.
Hanley's attorney, Alan Schroeder, has filed a response saying that the BLM's decision would harm Hanley's ability to graze his cattle on his private property and that fencing off that property from the public land, assuming he could do that legally, would cost him more than $30,000.
The case now is before the Department of Interior's Office Hearings and Appeals.
Katie Fite, Western Watershed Project's Biodiversity director, said Hanley has been able to continuously flout grazing rules because of years of political interference. A host of BLM range conservationists and managers were transferred when they tried to enforce the terms of the permits over the last two decades, she said.
"They had a lot of political power when Larry Craig was still around," Fite said, referring to the former U.S. senator from Idaho.
But now, after more than 10 years of litigation, WWP has won a settlement from the BLM that it would end grazing practices Fite said dramatically lowered the water table, dried up streams in the Trout Springs area, and threatened the rare redband trout that live there.
"You're talking a millennium before it recovers," Fite said.
Schroeder declined comment, saying he did not want to fight his case in the media.
Hanley's appeal now will be decided by an administrative law judge.
Rocky Barker: 377-6484
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Judge hears grazing arguments
How to gauge harm to threatened steelhead was a central question in a three-way courtroom battle last week between ranchers, environmentalists and the federal government.
U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty heard arguments in the case Tuesday, March 30, in Portland.
The debate stems from a legal challenge against cattle grazing in Eastern Oregon's Malheur National Forest. An environmental group, the Oregon Natural Desert Association, claims the federal government violated the Endangered Species Act by permitting grazing to degrade steelhead habitat in the national forest.
A key measure of cattle grazing's impact on steelhead is bank alteration, which is basically the percentage of the streambank that's altered by hoof prints.
Ranchers on 13 allotments in the forest are expected to keep bank alteration below 10 percent to 20 percent, depending on the area, as part of the federal requirements that allow grazing.
The environmental group claims that exceeding those thresholds is equivalent to killing steelhead, an "unlawful take" that constitutes a violation of the Endangered Species Act.
Ranchers who rely on the forest to graze their cattle allege those thresholds were arbitrarily set by the federal government and aren't based on the best available science, as required by the ESA.
"There isn't a connection between bank alteration and actual death and injury to steelhead," said Elizabeth Howard, an attorney representing ranchers during oral arguments. "There isn't any evidence of that."
David Becker, an attorney for the Oregon Natural Desert Association, countered that bank alteration has been linked to increased sedimentation, higher stream temperature and damage to fish egg-laying habitat.
"Habitat damage occurred and that was enough to show take," said Becker.
The group claims past "exceedances" of the bank alteration thresholds indicate the federal government's grazing rules for the national forest haven't been properly enforced.
No further evidence is needed to prove a "take" of protected species, he said. "There are no photographs of sediment being knocked down and fish scrambling away."
Both the environmental group and the ranchers are challenging the validity of a "biological opinion" and related documents issued by the federal government in 2007, which set standards for grazing in the forest.
The Oregon Natural Desert Association claims the government delegated too much responsibility for riparian health to the ranchers, without reasonable assurances that its conservation measures would be followed.
The ranchers, meanwhile, contend that the federal government should use more accurate standards to measure the viability of steelhead habitat in the allotments.
"What we really should be evaluating is bank stability," said Howard, rather than bank alteration.
The federal agencies involved in the lawsuit - the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Forest Service - had to defend the bank alteration standard while acknowledging its limitations.
Stephen Odell, an attorney representing the federal government, disagreed with the ranchers' view that bank alteration is an arbitrary standard. It's a legitimate method that will continue to be used for measuring riparian health, he said.
When the thresholds for alteration are exceeded, the federal agencies evaluate the damage and find ways to remedy it in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, he said.
However, bank alteration is just one method for gauging impacts from grazing, Odell said. Other factors, such as stream vegetation, must also be considered, he said.
"Bank alteration itself is not sufficient to establish a take," Odell said.
The federal government is caught between two groups which claim its standards are either too lenient or too restrictive, he said.
In this situation, the court should defer to the agencies' expertise and let the federal government's decision stand, Odell said.
Oral arguments on the legal validity of the biological opinion were held March 30 in a federal district court in Portland.
Judge Haggerty said he's taking the matter under advisement and will "get a ruling out shortly."
Meanwhile, ranchers expect to turn cattle out on the allotments between May 15 and June 1.
U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty heard arguments in the case Tuesday, March 30, in Portland.
The debate stems from a legal challenge against cattle grazing in Eastern Oregon's Malheur National Forest. An environmental group, the Oregon Natural Desert Association, claims the federal government violated the Endangered Species Act by permitting grazing to degrade steelhead habitat in the national forest.
A key measure of cattle grazing's impact on steelhead is bank alteration, which is basically the percentage of the streambank that's altered by hoof prints.
Ranchers on 13 allotments in the forest are expected to keep bank alteration below 10 percent to 20 percent, depending on the area, as part of the federal requirements that allow grazing.
The environmental group claims that exceeding those thresholds is equivalent to killing steelhead, an "unlawful take" that constitutes a violation of the Endangered Species Act.
Ranchers who rely on the forest to graze their cattle allege those thresholds were arbitrarily set by the federal government and aren't based on the best available science, as required by the ESA.
"There isn't a connection between bank alteration and actual death and injury to steelhead," said Elizabeth Howard, an attorney representing ranchers during oral arguments. "There isn't any evidence of that."
David Becker, an attorney for the Oregon Natural Desert Association, countered that bank alteration has been linked to increased sedimentation, higher stream temperature and damage to fish egg-laying habitat.
"Habitat damage occurred and that was enough to show take," said Becker.
The group claims past "exceedances" of the bank alteration thresholds indicate the federal government's grazing rules for the national forest haven't been properly enforced.
No further evidence is needed to prove a "take" of protected species, he said. "There are no photographs of sediment being knocked down and fish scrambling away."
Both the environmental group and the ranchers are challenging the validity of a "biological opinion" and related documents issued by the federal government in 2007, which set standards for grazing in the forest.
The Oregon Natural Desert Association claims the government delegated too much responsibility for riparian health to the ranchers, without reasonable assurances that its conservation measures would be followed.
The ranchers, meanwhile, contend that the federal government should use more accurate standards to measure the viability of steelhead habitat in the allotments.
"What we really should be evaluating is bank stability," said Howard, rather than bank alteration.
The federal agencies involved in the lawsuit - the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Forest Service - had to defend the bank alteration standard while acknowledging its limitations.
Stephen Odell, an attorney representing the federal government, disagreed with the ranchers' view that bank alteration is an arbitrary standard. It's a legitimate method that will continue to be used for measuring riparian health, he said.
When the thresholds for alteration are exceeded, the federal agencies evaluate the damage and find ways to remedy it in compliance with the Endangered Species Act, he said.
However, bank alteration is just one method for gauging impacts from grazing, Odell said. Other factors, such as stream vegetation, must also be considered, he said.
"Bank alteration itself is not sufficient to establish a take," Odell said.
The federal government is caught between two groups which claim its standards are either too lenient or too restrictive, he said.
In this situation, the court should defer to the agencies' expertise and let the federal government's decision stand, Odell said.
Oral arguments on the legal validity of the biological opinion were held March 30 in a federal district court in Portland.
Judge Haggerty said he's taking the matter under advisement and will "get a ruling out shortly."
Meanwhile, ranchers expect to turn cattle out on the allotments between May 15 and June 1.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Idaho wool growers file lawsuit over bighorns
The Idaho Wool Growers Association and Shirts Brothers Sheep has filed a lawsuit against the Idaho Department of Fish and Game concerning bighorn sheep management.
The groups in the lawsuit filed earlier this week contend Fish and Game has not lived up to a 1997 agreement the groups say was designed to protect domestic sheep growers from potential adverse effects to their businesses from bighorn sheep introductions.
The groups are asking for unspecified damages "in an amount to be proven at trial."
The lawsuit comes several months after the Payette National Forest released a set of proposed updates to its plan to keep domestic sheep from intermingling with wild bighorns, citing disease transmission that kills bighorns.
One alternative in the draft calls for reducing domestic grazing by about 60 percent in Hells Canyon and allotments in the Salmon River Canyon.
"The Idaho Department of Fish and Game took no action to block the Forest Service from modifying the grazing allotments for Shirts and Shirts Brothers and took insufficient action to prevent Shirts and Shirts Brothers from being harmed by these actions," the lawsuit says.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press on Saturday.
Idaho bighorn numbers have dwindled by half since 1990, to about 3,500 animals.
The 1997 agreement with wool growers included Fish and Game, federal land management agencies, and a bighorn sheep conservation group. The lawsuit contends that in 2007 the Forest Service began reducing domestic sheep grazing to protect bighorns.
The groups in the lawsuit filed earlier this week contend Fish and Game has not lived up to a 1997 agreement the groups say was designed to protect domestic sheep growers from potential adverse effects to their businesses from bighorn sheep introductions.
The groups are asking for unspecified damages "in an amount to be proven at trial."
The lawsuit comes several months after the Payette National Forest released a set of proposed updates to its plan to keep domestic sheep from intermingling with wild bighorns, citing disease transmission that kills bighorns.
One alternative in the draft calls for reducing domestic grazing by about 60 percent in Hells Canyon and allotments in the Salmon River Canyon.
"The Idaho Department of Fish and Game took no action to block the Forest Service from modifying the grazing allotments for Shirts and Shirts Brothers and took insufficient action to prevent Shirts and Shirts Brothers from being harmed by these actions," the lawsuit says.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press on Saturday.
Idaho bighorn numbers have dwindled by half since 1990, to about 3,500 animals.
The 1997 agreement with wool growers included Fish and Game, federal land management agencies, and a bighorn sheep conservation group. The lawsuit contends that in 2007 the Forest Service began reducing domestic sheep grazing to protect bighorns.
Crapo seeks tax credits for endangered species work
In 2008, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo accomplished part of his plan to encourage landowners to work with the Endangered Species Act, securing a permanent tax deduction for species expenditures on private land.
But that was only half of what Crapo, R-Idaho, set out to do. He’s now trying once more to get Congress to approve similar tax credits, competing with a number of other tax proposals in the wake of the mortgage crisis and recession.
The senator on March 24 introduced the Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2010, which would provide credits for both habitat protection easements and restoration work. Co-sponsored by eight other senators both Republican and Democrat — including fellow Idahoan Jim Risch, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Jon Tester of Montana — it’s been referred to the Senate Finance Committee, where Crapo is a member.
The bill is another step in Crapo’s pursuit of piece-by-piece ESA reform. On Friday, he told the Times-News that he believes he has support for the bill’s substance, but is concerned its cost may once again block its passage. The credits would cost nearly $1 billion in the first five years and more than $1 billion in the second five years.
“There’s only a certain amount of flexibility in the budget for that sort of” cost, he said.
Pay-as-you-go rules — where the Senate must offset every new expense with a cut somewhere else — stopped the bill the last time and are still a concern now. But the new version’s odds might improve this fall, Crapo said, once the Senate starts looking at tax packages focused on broader issues than just mortgages. The credits, he said, would help generate natural-resources jobs in rural areas that desperately need the employment right now.
“It’s hard to predict right now how that will play out,” he said of passing the bill.
Crapo has previously said large-scale ESA reform would be very difficult. But he’s considering proposing a broader change once his tax credit passes: paring down the current “centralized command and control” approach to species listing and recovery in favor of consensus-based decisions involving local governments and groups.
Whether he pursues it will depend heavily on the makeup of Congress after this fall’s election, he said. And, of course, it will depend on when he gets the rest of his tax incentives passed.
“We’re not going to stop until we get the entire bill put into place,” he said.
Nate Poppino may be reached at npoppino@magicvalley.com or 735-3237.
But that was only half of what Crapo, R-Idaho, set out to do. He’s now trying once more to get Congress to approve similar tax credits, competing with a number of other tax proposals in the wake of the mortgage crisis and recession.
The senator on March 24 introduced the Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2010, which would provide credits for both habitat protection easements and restoration work. Co-sponsored by eight other senators both Republican and Democrat — including fellow Idahoan Jim Risch, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Jon Tester of Montana — it’s been referred to the Senate Finance Committee, where Crapo is a member.
The bill is another step in Crapo’s pursuit of piece-by-piece ESA reform. On Friday, he told the Times-News that he believes he has support for the bill’s substance, but is concerned its cost may once again block its passage. The credits would cost nearly $1 billion in the first five years and more than $1 billion in the second five years.
“There’s only a certain amount of flexibility in the budget for that sort of” cost, he said.
Pay-as-you-go rules — where the Senate must offset every new expense with a cut somewhere else — stopped the bill the last time and are still a concern now. But the new version’s odds might improve this fall, Crapo said, once the Senate starts looking at tax packages focused on broader issues than just mortgages. The credits, he said, would help generate natural-resources jobs in rural areas that desperately need the employment right now.
“It’s hard to predict right now how that will play out,” he said of passing the bill.
Crapo has previously said large-scale ESA reform would be very difficult. But he’s considering proposing a broader change once his tax credit passes: paring down the current “centralized command and control” approach to species listing and recovery in favor of consensus-based decisions involving local governments and groups.
Whether he pursues it will depend heavily on the makeup of Congress after this fall’s election, he said. And, of course, it will depend on when he gets the rest of his tax incentives passed.
“We’re not going to stop until we get the entire bill put into place,” he said.
Nate Poppino may be reached at npoppino@magicvalley.com or 735-3237.
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