Sunday, June 29, 2008

Protect N.M. Land and Its Many Uses

By Tom Cooper And Jodi Denning
People For Preserving Our Western Heritage

LAS CRUCES — The Wilderness Act of 1964 provides the framework for the use and management of designated wilderness areas. Wilderness is the most restrictive land use designation available, and one of its most contested aspects is access. Motorized vehicles and even mountain bikes and motorized wheelchairs are prohibited.

The restricted access not only affects the public, but significantly impacts law enforcement, search and rescue and firefighting activities. Wilderness areas close to the border created havens for drug trafficking and other illegal activity; concerns for citizen safety resulted in closure of those areas to the public.

Wilderness also severely limits proactive conservation and stewardship measures for the land and its wildlife. Recreation, outdoor sports and hunting are impacted, and unrealistic burdens are placed on existing ranching operations.

Wilderness designation results in numerous impacts to every individual and organization that utilizes federal land. The designation is one way to “protect” wild areas, but not the only way, as New Mexico Wilderness Alliance would have the public believe.

Our group, People for Preserving Our Western Heritage, developed an alternative proposal to protect these areas that became the basis for HR 6300.

Our objective was to provide a meaningful balance among environmental protection, water resource management, law enforcement, national security, conservation, community development, recreation and respect for private property rights.

The result is the Doña Ana County Planned Growth, Open Space And Rangeland Preservation Act of 2008, introduced by U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M. The People's Proposal would protect 302,000 acres by creating two Special Preservation Areas and four Rangeland Preservation Areas.

These lands could never be sold or exchanged and will be permanently withdrawn from the mining and mineral leasing laws — protection legislatively identical to wilderness designation.

This proposal differs from wilderness designation in that each area would be managed to protect its unique resources. Open space would be preserved and established, and historic uses of the land such as ranching, recreation and hunting would be accommodated.

The lands would be managed in a manner that protects and enhances grazing, recreation, wildlife management and scenic values under multiple-use, while conserving open space and unique resources.

The use of motorized vehicles will be allowed only on designated roads and trails. There would be exceptions as needed for administrative purposes, homeland security, law enforcement, emergency response, construction and maintenance of authorized rainfall runoff management systems or authorized rangeland improvements.
The act incorporates provisions from legislation drafted in 2005 by U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici for a land exchange for NMSU, and for the disposal of federal land identified in the Bureau of Land Management's 1993 plan.

The “People's Proposal” quickly earned significant community support, with a coalition of more than 700 businesses and organizations along with numerous professional endorsements. The concept of tailoring legislation to meet each area's specific needs, addressing identified threats and preserving beneficial historic use has been viewed with great enthusiasm.

The proposal is receiving attention throughout the West, where the never-ending flow of wilderness proposals has created public outcry and legislative logjams. We can protect our land, our natural resources and our open space without federal wilderness designations. This proposal protects not only the land itself, but also the access to the land and the beneficial stewardship and use of the land.

For a copy of the act and more information, visit www.PeopleForWesternHeritage.com.

Tom Cooper is chairman, and Jodi Denning is communications director, of People For Preserving Our Western Heritage.

PEARCE INTRODUCES LAND PROTECTION MEASURE

Plan based on community input, would result in a balanced approach

For Immediate Release
June 27, 2008
Contact: Brian Phillips
202.225.4759, brian,phillips@mail.house.gov

Washington - Congressman Steve Pearce, on June 18, 2008 introduced legislation to create special designations for land that balance open space preservation with other needs of the surrounding community. The Dona Ana County Planned Growth, Open Space And Rangeland Preservation Act of 2008 (HR 6300) would create four Rangeland Preservation Areas and two Special Preservation Areas that permanently protect open space and ensure appropriate access for public safety and other purposes.

"The issues are complex, and we have worked diligently to find a middle ground that is acceptable on all sides of the issue," said Pearce, a former small businessman. Over 700 businesses and organizations have formed a Coalition supporting this proposal. We believe it offers a compromise that would greatly benefit southern New Mexico and has great potential across the western states struggling with these issues for providing appropriate protection without creating unnecessary hardships on surrounding communities."

The debate over public lands legislation has helped to raise local citizens awareness of the importance of preserving open space and providing protection for our natural resources. Congressman Pearce has closely followed the debate that has surfaced with the competing proposals.

While many question the qualification of the lands in Dona Ana County, New Mexico under the standards established by the Wilderness Act of 1964, it is clear the community stands in solid agreement that these areas are worthy of protection from encroaching development as well as from mining and mineral leasing. The community has expressed concerns about the impact of Wilderness access restrictions on law enforcement, search and rescue operations, fire fighting, and flood control projects, as well as access for sportsmen, hunters, horseback riders and other recreationalists. The development community raised concerns about impacts on community growth. The ranching community raised concerns about their economic viability when faced with impacts from management and administration practices typically imposed within Wilderness areas.

Concerns expressed by Border Patrol organizations about impacts to Homeland Security operations raise serious issues that impact every citizen. Richard Hayes, retired Chief of Air Operations for the Border Patrol, expressed his concerns by stating "The current effort to create Wilderness along the border in Dona Ana County and ultimately the expansion of such activities along the extended border is dangerous and ill conceived."

Specifically, the legislation will allow appropriate access for recreational use of the land, such as hunting, camping, and bicycling, as well as unrestricted access for law enforcement and public safety officials. It also will benefit the economies of surrounding communities by allowing a local advisory board to participate in and provide input into the existing land disposal process managed by the Bureau of Land Management. A portion of the proceeds from sale of federal lands would be directed back into the local community. It should be noted that the Act deals only with disposal lands already identified by BLM in its 1993 Mimbres Area Resource Management Plan. The Act does not identify additional lands for disposal, and sets no timetable for disposals. Disposals will be based on the needs of the community, with input from a seven-member advisory committee consisting of a representative from the BLM, Dona Ana County, City of Las Cruces, conservationists, Elephant Butte Irrigation District, ranching, and the business community.

The legislation will provide protection and preservation of the federal lands with a model which tailors the level of protection and access based on the specific requirements for the areas and the needs of the community. The existing temporary Wilderness Study Areas can be released because appropriate protection measures will be in place.

Congressman Pearces legislation is an innovative approach blending sensible and appropriate levels of protection for our natural resources, balanced with protection of property rights, appropriate levels of access for the public and law enforcement, and continued beneficial use of these areas.

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Additional Reference material:

A 2004 US General Accounting Office (GAO) Report titled "Border Security - Agencies Need to Better Coordinate Their Strategies and Operations on Federal Lands", states: "Congress has designated areas within some federal lands as wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964 and subsequent legislation, while the Fish and Wildlife Service has designated certain areas as critical habitat for endangered and threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Federal law enforcement officers told us that these designations can hinder their efforts. For example, motorized vehicles must generally remain on designated roads in wilderness areas, and the Wilderness Act generally prohibits construction of permanent structures such as communications towers in wilderness areas."

Forest may examine cattle fence in detail
Forest Service says more analysis might be needed for fence, corrals in pronghorn path.

Bridger-Teton National Forest officials say they will likely take a closer look at the environmental consequences of building fences and a corral proposed at a grazing allotment in the Gros Ventre River drainage.

Jackson District Ranger Dale Deiter said Monday he will consider a more stringent analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act for proposal to construct a corral and two sections of fence in the pronghorn migration corridor in the Gros Ventre. Officials had previously recommended a “categorical exclusion,” a level of analysis reserved for activities that do not have a significant effect on the environment.

Deiter said the fences and the corral would likely necessitate an “environmental assessment,” a more in-depth look at the possible environmental consequences. Deiter stopped short of committing to such a study.

Deiter called grazing on the Upper Gros Ventre a “valid use.”

“It’s really just about the management we are going to employ on the land,” he said. Protecting the pronghorn migration corridor and keeping cattle on the allotment are two goals for the Forest Service, he said.

“What we’re trying to deal with is distribution on the allotment.”

The proposal comes after 550 cow-calf pairs cattle owned by ranchers Shane Christian, of Pavillion, and Jack and Amy Robinson of Jackson, repeatedly wandered off the Upper Gros Ventre allotment last summer and onto the 178,000-acre Bacon-Fish reserve. Conservation groups purchased the Bacon-Fish allotment in January 2007 to provide additional grazing opportunities for big game such as elk, and to provide options for managing large carnivores. Part of the 178,000 acres is a forage reserve where infrequent grazing could be allowed.

One new extension would link to an existing fence near Soda Creek, part of which was recently removed by conservation groups to benefit wildlife. The other, located northwest of Lake Creek, is new and would intersect a pronghorn migration corridor from the Upper Green River Valley to Grand Teton National Park.

The corral, which has already been constructed, is located near Slate Creek. The corral is necessary as a drop-off point because the upper portion of the Gros Ventre Road isn’t passable by tractor trailers hauling cattle, according to Forest Service officials and the ranchers.

Environmentalists have said the fencing and the corral could impede wildlife movement.

Conservation groups have also suggested that trailing the cattle from Slate Creek to the allotment could damage resources. Deiter agreed the land between the corral and the allotment is crucial winter range.

“I haven’t seen anything that suggests we are having impacts trailing to the allotment,” he said. “I think, for a lot of reasons, Slate Creek would be the best option” for the corral.

Gros Ventre rancher Glenn Taylor, who spoke at a meeting Monday, agreed.

“You have to have a site where you can deal with those trucks, and that’s the best site,” he said.

Greater Yellowstone Coalition representative Lloyd Dorsey urged a more comprehensive look at the fencing and the corrals.

“Isn’t the Forest Service concerned about foreclosing on options that could be looked at in a more comprehensive analysis?” he asked Deiter. “I would hope [Bridger-Teton] moves slowly when they make decisions up there that can impact public resources.”

Louise Lasley, public lands director with the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said that the Forest Service should take a better look at how unloading cattle at the corral in the spring coincides with the pronghorn migration near the corral “right at a critical bottleneck.”

When Kniffy Hamilton, forest supervisor with Bridger-Teton, asked about a removable fence on one part of the corral, Taylor objected.

“I would like to see that proposal as labor friendly as possible,” he said. “Why burden these fellas with more work than they need to do? These people aren’t trust babies; they’re trying to make a dollar out of this.”

Jack Robinson agreed. “I don’t want to be building this and taking it down every year,” he said.

Robinson also said he doesn’t expect the cattle to figure out how to stay on the Upper Gros Ventre allotment on their own.

Deiter said that the fencing might not be necessary if people would be more tolerant about cattle leaving the allotment.

After the meeting, another conservationist took issue with Deiter’s suggestion that the public tolerate some leakage of cattle onto Bacon-Fish reserve.

“The logic that permittees should somehow be exempt from their contractual obligations, that kind of attitude just doesn’t cut it with me at all,” said Jonathan Ratner, Western Watersheds Project Wyoming office director. “You need to control your livestock.”

Ratner said he’s seen tractor trailer trucks negotiate Gros Ventre road numerous times and said the corral and an associated 12-acre holding pasture belongs on private land. Further, he said calling the proposed fences “wildlife friendly” is a misnomer.

“There is no such thing as wildlife friendly fences,” he said. “All fences impact wildlife.”

Ratner also took issue with the fact that taxpayers, not the cattle owners, would pay for the fencing and corral.

“For some reason, in the livestock industry, the players have this sense of entitlement that this is just their do,” he said.

U.S. Forest Service cuts grazing on National Grasslands

...This year, Forest Service district ranger Ron Jablonski, who manages the Medora district in southwestern North Dakota, decided the drought had significantly affected grass growth in the district. He decided grazing needed to be cut 30 percent across the board in National Grasslands in Slope and Billings counties.

Jerry Lambourn, a cow-calf operator 18 miles north of Rhame, said he was “surprised” when the Little Missouri Grazing Association received a fax telling them about the 30 percent cuts.

His federal grassland pastures are in a region that received good moisture from the spring snowstorm in South Dakota.

In fact, his pastures had received “just short of 5 inches” and were green when he attended the annual meeting at the grazing association.

The fax arrived at the meeting during a break when no one was in the office. The ranchers returned and found the fax. “I was surprised because we have had a lot of moisture this spring,” Lambourn said.

That region of the southwest has been out of the extreme drought category and is currently rated in the abnormally dry category by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Pope said ranchers have always taken steps to manage the drought conditions and have been able to work with the U.S. Forest Service in the past.

He said there were 109 permittees (ranchers) in the association and 7,000 animal units. “Livestock producers were upset by the cuts because they weren't individualized

Pope thought the timing of the fax was unusual because U.S. Forest Service personnel were coming in person that afternoon to give a talk at the meeting anyway.

“The Forest Service did not come out and check the allotments with us before they decided on this 30 percent across-the-board cut,” Pope said. “With 5 inches of rain, it's not needed.”

Shakey Jacobson, a rancher northwest of Amidon who also has pastures in the federal grasslands, said the cool-season grasses were late this spring.

“We're getting good rain now,” Jacobson said. “The wheatgrass is coming up nicely.”

Jacobson, who was the past president of the association, felt the 30 percent across-the-board cut was unjustified. While some pastures in the grazing association were poor, especially on the eastern edge, others were in good condition.

Pastures in parts of the Little Missouri had gotten 4 to 5 inches, and even the drier regions in the northeastern part of the association were finally getting rain. Some regions in the far south had received more than 6 inches this spring.

“Some of the permittees are stocking lighter already, depending on the conditions of the pastures. Others are using other pastures, or taking cows to auction barns,” Pope said. “I just feel our permittees can manage the resources without having to be told they need a mandatory cut.”

Jablonski said the reason for the across-the-board cut was because livestock producers in the association had not all responded back about what they planned to do to deal with the drought this year.

“With little response, I felt compelled to make a decision and that's what I did (make a 30 percent across-the-board cut),” Jablonski said. “If we don't get more moisture, there will be additional cuts.”

He said some of the ways the U.S. Forest determines grazing cutbacks is by using various drought monitors, local forecast, hearing from producers who put in fences about how deep the subsoil moisture goes, monitoring sales at the auction barns, and trying to “keep an eye on the ground conditions.”

“We've just gone through the worst six-month drought in North Dakota,” Jablonski said. “The grass just isn't growing, and it's my responsibility to maintain those grassland resources.”

He said the Forest Service was concerned because there was little fall moisture, no winter snow and only light spring rains this year.

Jack Dahl, range specialist at the U.S. Forest Service, said he was concerned about livestock producers “starting out in a hole.” Most of the grass species have not had adequate production yet. If the grass gets behind this year, it will be even worse next year, he said.

Pope said the federal grasslands has a built-in drought management tool for producers. The tools are there that say what needs to be done in a drought situation.

If the U.S. Forest Service felt there was a drought situation, he said it would have been more appropriate to give more notice to the ranchers. That way they could “find other grass or reduce herds for sales and wouldn't be at the mercy of the markets,” he said.

Pope said the grazing association is in its 69th year, and has not encountered problems with the U.S. Forest Service before. In 2003, the association took a voluntary 25 percent cut and in 1998, it took a 20 percent cut.

Randy Gaebe, a conservationist with the Little Missouri Grazing Association, said the association went out and checked soil conditions in the allotments to see how far down the subsoil moisture was. That ranged from 4 feet to 13 inches in areas checked the week of June 9.

“We have had above average rainfall throughout most of the association,” he said.

Types of grasses that are typical in the Little Missouri are western wheatgrass, crested wheatgrass, prairie junegrass, needle and thread, threadleaf sedge, and big and little blue stem, Gaebe said. The introduced grasses were reseeded in the 30s after farmland was reclaimed.

After hearing from the grazing association that some pastures were in good condition, Forest Service personnel decided that some areas needed to be checked out.

“We're hoping it looks better,” he said.

While cattle were out grazing on the green pastures that are filled with native and introduced grasses last week, Forest Service personnel drove down to view the pastures in person. Little Missouri Grazing Association personnel went with them and showed them the pastures.

Lambourn said his neighbor did hear back from the Forest Service by last week and was told to go ahead with his original grazing plans.

Others were to be notified this week of their decisions.

Up in northwestern North Dakota in the McKenzie District, Gary Petik, U.S. Forest Service range supervisor, said he is working with the McKenzie Grazing Association on voluntary cutbacks.

“It didn't fit our situation for a flat cut,” he said. “We evaluated each pasture on its own merits.”

Most of the region lost six to seven weeks of cool season grass growth due to the lack of moisture. Livestock producers are concerned about a shorter grazing season and some have already made adjustments, he said.

“We adopted the philosophy here of take half, leave half,” Petik said, adding it's an old rule that seems to work well. Voluntary grazing cuts in his region ranged from 15 to 30 percent. One producer volunteered a 40 percent cut.

“We don't try and dictate to them what to do on their individual operations. What we say is when the grass is at 50 percent, rotate the cattle,” he said.

At the Sheyenne National Grasslands in southeastern North Dakota and much of South Dakota, there was no cuts in grazing needed.

At Buffalo Gap national grasslands in South Dakota, livestock producers took a 20 percent cut in grazing. Some took a 40 percent cut depending on the condition of the pasture.

Meanwhile, the national grasslands in Kansas is not allowing any grazing.

At Cimarron National Grassland, the 101,175 acres of land that makes up the unit has only received 2 inches of rain since Jan. 1 and a total of 4 inches since last year.

“None of the grass is growing here,” said Nancy Brewer, rangeland management specialist at Cimarron. “Everything is in the dormant stage. We have no grazing going on.”

Brewer said livestock producers in Cimarron are taking huge hits, cutting their herds or buying expensive feed. Some have been able to move herds to other locations.

She said other states are taking grazing cuts, too.

New supervisor at Lincoln National Forest

Southwestern Regional Forester Corbin Newman announced that Jacqueline "Jacque" Buchanan is now Forest Supervisor of the Lincoln National Forest headquartered in Alamogordo. She had served as deputy forest supervisor and has been acting forest supervisor since the retirement of former Lincoln National Forest Supervisor, S. E. "Lou" Woltering, who retired in April.
Buchanan has more than 20 years experience with several agencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture including the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, Farmers Home Administration, Farm Service Agency, as well as the U.S. Forest Service.
"Jacque has demonstrated that she works well with people from all walks of life, in addition to her skills in natural resources management," Newman said. "She did a good job as Glenwood District Ranger on the Gila National Forest before moving to the Lincoln National Forest, and she will do a good job as Lincoln Forest Supervisor."
Buchanan has worked closely with numerous collaborative groups throughout New Mexico, is active in the Society of Range Management and served as the President of the New Mexico Section of the Society.
Buchanan said, "Working with the public and maintaining good relations with communities, other agencies, and forest visitors is very important for me. I believe very strongly in our motto of 'Caring for the Land and Serving the People.' As Forest Supervisor of the Lincoln, I will continue to honor this commitment."
Buchanan received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture from Penn State University in 1988, after starting her college studies at Eastern New Mexico University, Portales. She has experience in rangeland, recreation and fire management, public affairs as well as her prior administrative positions. During her career, she has worked in North Carolina, Wyoming and New Mexico.

Congress Pushes to Keep Land Untamed
Bills Could Add Millions of Acres Of Wilderness

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 16, 2008; A01

INDEX, Wash. -- With little fanfare, Congress has embarked on a push to protect as many as a dozen pristine areas this year in places ranging from the glacier-fed streams of the Wild Sky Wilderness here to West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest. By the end of the year, conservation experts predict, this drive could place as much as 2 million acres of unspoiled land under federal control, a total that rivals the wilderness acreage set aside by Congress over the previous five years.

A confluence of factors is driving this wilderness renaissance: the shift in Congress from Republican to Democratic control; environmentalists' decision to take a more pragmatic approach in which they enlist local support for their proposals by making concessions to opposing interests; and some communities' recognition that intact ecosystems can often offer a greater economic payoff than extractive industries.

"It may not seem like it on most issues, but in this one arena Congress is getting things across the goal line," said Mike Matz, executive director of the advocacy group Campaign for America's Wilderness. "Nobody gets everything they want, but by coming together, talking with age-old adversaries and seeking common ground, wilderness protection is finding Main Street support and becoming motherhood-and-apple-pie."

Against the backdrop of Bush administration policies that have opened up millions of acres of public land to oil and gas exploration, logging and other commercial uses, environmental advocates and lawmakers argue that it makes sense to cordon off more of the country's most unspoiled places.

The administration has offered more than 40 million acres in the Rockies for oil and gas drilling and other "extractive" uses, according to the Wilderness Society, and it has done the same with 70 million acres in the Alaskan Arctic. In addition, the Forest Service estimates that development eliminates 6,000 acres of the open space every day.

The administration has generally favored expanding wilderness acreage, letting Congress determine which areas should be protected and how. Part of this stems from the fact that nearly all of these bills have broad constituencies, which include local faith, business and hunting groups as well as GOP officeholders. And as Bush approaches the end of his second term, he is eyeing opportunities to leave his mark on the nation's landscape.

In the first wilderness designation this year, the Wild Sky Wilderness became law in May. It set aside more than 106,000 acres of low-elevation, old-growth forest and jagged mountain peaks crisscrossed by streams that feature wild salmon and steelhead runs.

The logging business has largely died out in Index, a town less than two hours from Seattle, and residents see the wilderness as a way to promote the recreational activities that now help drive the local economy.

"In the past 30 years, we've seen this town move into an entirely recreational economy," said Bill Cross, a former city council member in Index who helped lobby for the designation. "I see Wild Sky as an extension of that."

Wilderness areas, which have the strictest level of federal protection, account for just over 107 million acres nationwide -- 4.8 percent of the nation's land mass, roughly half of it in Alaska. Federal law prohibits mechanized transport in wilderness areas, but they are open to such activities as hiking and fishing.

In recent weeks the House has passed six wilderness bills, including Wild Sky, that would protect more than 500,000 acres. The Senate Energy and Resources Committee has approved another four wilderness bills and the panel could pass more, an effort that Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said was aimed at addressing "some pent-up demand for bills that had been in the works for most of the last decade."

Although several factors have spurred the flurry of legislative activity, much of it stems from the fact that former House Resources Committee chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) -- who fiercely opposed designating any new wilderness -- lost his seat in 2006. As many as a dozen bills are expected to pass this year, and another seven have been introduced recently.

Almost all 12 have bipartisan support, and many include concessions to traditional opponents such as loggers and off-road-vehicle riders. But they also show that Democrats are intent on reasserting federal authority in the realm of conservation.

"When I changed the name from Resources to Natural Resources, it wasn't just for cosmetic reasons -- it's for what I view as the real guts of the responsibility of this committee," said Pombo's successor, Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.). "To those critics who say, 'Why do we need new wilderness?' I say these areas already are wilderness. We simply want to preserve them as they are, as they have been for generations, and preserve them for future generations."

Some environmentalists say even these measures cannot compensate for the tens of thousands of drilling permits the administration has leased in recent years. Katie McKalip, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, noted that in the past decade in Wyoming, a land area equal in size to Virginia has been leased for development.

"Our public lands, and the fish and wildlife species that depend on them, are falling victim to a management policy that effectively values one land use -- oil and gas development -- above all others," McKalip said.

Some Republicans question why the federal government would add more wilderness when it is struggling to maintain the public lands it already holds.

"If you're not preserving and taking care of what you've got, why are you adding to it?" said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who has placed parliamentary "holds" that are blocking action on several bills.

In an interview, Coburn said he has no problem with states designating wilderness areas if they are prepared to finance their upkeep, noting that the Forest Service has a multibillion-dollar backlog of projects. "If you want to do it, why shouldn't the state be doing it? If Oregon wants to create new wilderness, I'm all in favor of Oregon doing it."

But supporters of congressional action say that only the federal government has the capacity to protect the most vulnerable areas. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Rick Larsen, both Democrats from Washington state, pushed to include 30,000 acres of low-elevation areas in Wild Sky on the grounds that they were ecologically critical and close to major population centers. These areas, below 3,000 feet, have a Tolkienesque landscape, with bright green, moss-covered trees and aquamarine water that locals dub "glacier milk" because the ground-up stones from glaciers give it an ethereal color.

"We call it the cleanest, coldest, clearest river in the state," said high school science teacher Mike Town, who started pushing for wilderness protection nearly a decade ago. "If you really want to protect salmon, or even Puget Sound, the water quality of the rivers that drain into Puget Sound needs to be addressed."

Murray and Larsen, whose bill made concessions to church groups, the Boy Scouts and float-plane operators in order to forge a consensus on the bill, said it took time to convince some opponents that creating wilderness would benefit the local community. The lawmakers removed a few thousand acres from the plan to placate snowmobilers, clarified that existing float-plane use could continue and ensured that church groups and the Boy Scouts could still get access to their camping grounds.

"When you say 'wilderness,' the hair goes up on the back of their necks, and they envision chains going around trees they'll never touch," Murray recalled in an interview. "It can't just be in-your-face 'We're going to protect those areas, we don't care what you think.' "

With the support of several senior Republicans, including Sen. Larry Craig (Idaho) and then-Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, the Wild Sky bill passed the Senate three times, but Pombo repeatedly blocked it in the House.

"It was a failure of American democracy, where you had one man who prevented the will of the American people from being fulfilled," said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who battled Pombo on the Resources Committee. "What you're seeing right now is this one-man dam has broken."

Doug Scott, who has been working on wilderness bills for 30 years and is now policy director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness, said he thinks that someday the United States will complete the mission envisioned in the 1964 Wilderness Act. But it hasn't gotten there yet, he said.

"There will be a last acre -- we just won't know it's the last acre," he said. "And I don't think I'll live to see it."

American Ranching Family Wins 17-Year Battle with the Federal Government - Landmark decision in Hage v U.S. Issued by Federal Court of Claims

An epic 17-year battle between an American ranching family and the federal government has ended in favor of the family. The estates of Wayne and Jean Hage can finally claim a Fifth Amendment precedent-setting property rights victory. The court ruled that the Hages owned the water rights, ditch rights of ways, and range improvements on the federal grazing allotments. The court made clear that the government has the right to authorize grazing, but does not have the right to prevent the plaintiff from accessing their water rights on federal lands. Loren A. Smith, Senior Judge for the US Court of Federal Claims said, "As government seeks to change its policies concerning the purpose and use of public lands, private landowners have a valid claim to preserve their vested rights...the notion of private property is fundamental to the existence of our Nation...if private property is taken for public use, those citizens should be justly compensated."

Tonopah, Nevada (PRWEB) June 10, 2008 -- An epic 17-year battle between an American ranching family and the federal government has ended in favor of the family. The estates of Wayne and Jean Hage can finally claim a Fifth Amendment precedent-setting property rights victory.

Loren A. Smith, Senior Judge for the United States Court of Federal Claims issued his final opinion in Hage v. United States (Case No. 91-1470L), ending the decades-long battle by deciding that the federal government indeed took the private property rights of E. Wayne and Jean Hage and awarding them deserved compensation.

The court ruled that the Hages owned the water rights, ditch rights of ways, and range improvements on the federal grazing allotments. The court made clear that the government has the right to authorize grazing, but does not have the right to prevent the plaintiff from accessing their water rights on federal lands. (Case #91-1470L, The Estate of E. Wayne Hage and the Estate of Jean N. Hage v. The United States, June 6, 2008.)

"This decision is important to every American because it reaffirms our basic right to own property, whether you live in a major US city or rural America," commented Margaret Byfield, the Hage's third daughter and executive director of the Stewards of the Range organization which has supported the case since the beginning.

Wayne and Jean Hage filed their takings case in 1991, claiming the U.S. Forest Service had denied their rights to graze their livestock on federal land and actively prevented them from accessing and maintaining their water rights.

The family has endured 17 years of court hearings and trials, and has won at every level, including the final round. "This is clearly a victory for my parents, who never gave up," commented Ruth Agee, the second of the five Hage children. Wayne and Jean are both buried on the private meadows at Pine Creek Ranch, which will remain with the family.

Pine Creek Ranch was established in 1865, and purchased by the Hage family in 1978. The private fee lands encompass 7,000 acres, but as the court points out, "To raise cattle economically in such an arid region, Plaintiffs depend upon access to large quantities of land, including federal land, and to the limited water supply."

In 1979, one year after the family purchased the ranch trouble began with the Forest Service when the USFS allowed the release of non-indigenous elk on the Hage's Table Mountain allotment. The elk began competing with their cattle for forage and water. However, instead of controlling the elk, the Forest Service reduced and ultimately canceled the Hage's grazing permits.

Years of harassment by the federal government followed, including over 70 "visits" from the Forest Service and 40 letters charging them with various violations, which many, the court noted, were "extremely minor infractions." The court further pointed out that the Forest Service made many unreasonable requirements. "In addition, the Forest Service insisted that Plaintiffs maintain their 1866 Act ditches with nothing other than hand tools."

After the Forest Service canceled the remaining grazing permits in 1990, the family was forced to file their takings case known as Hage v. United States.

Ladd Bedford, one of the attorneys for the Hage family, who was involved in the case from its inception, noted the important precedent: "There is now a deterrent to the federal agencies. The federal government has significant exposure by way of having to pay just compensation when they deny ranchers access to their water and range improvements."

"This is an important legal victory," commented Mike Van Zandt, the other attorney who has been involved in the case since the early 1990's. "The agencies have used their regulatory power to drive ranchers out of business with no regard for their property rights, and now the court has set limits on the agency's actions."

Internationally known western artist, Jack Swanson, a long time Hage family friend said; "Two American heroes and the western rancher have been vindicated by this decision." Swanson painted the original oil painting entitled "Stewards of the Range," from which the organization took its name and raised over $100,000 for the case.

"My parents wanted resolution," commented Byfield. "They were told by the agencies that they had no property rights on the federal lands. They pursued this case so that this 60-year conflict between ranchers and agencies could be settled, and future generations of ranchers would have the security of their property rights. They succeeded."

The Court found that regulatory and physical takings occurred, and the government owes the estates of Wayne and Jean Hage $4.2 million in compensation, plus 17 years of interest and attorney's fees.

###

Nevada rancher wins property rights award

A federal judge has awarded more than $4.2 million to the estate of late Nevada rancher and private property rights advocate Wayne Hage, ruling that the U.S. Forest Service committed a constitutional "taking" of his water rights during a decades-long dispute over livestock grazing on federal land.

Calling the conflict a "drama worthy of a tragic opera and heroic characters," U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Loren A. Smith also ordered the government to pay back interest to the family of one of the leaders of the so-called "Sagebrush Rebellion" during the 1980s.

Hage's lawyer estimates the interest dating to 1991 to be an additional $4.4 million, which he said would make it the largest award ever in such a case.

"It sends a pretty important message to the government that if you screw with a small ranching family and put them out of business, you have to pay big bucks," said Lyman "Ladd" Bedford, a San Francisco-based lawyer who has argued the case since Hage first filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in 1991.

Smith, based in Washington D.C., ruled that government restrictions severely reducing water flows to Hage's land "deprived them of the water they needed for irrigation, making the ranch unviable."

"The court finds the government's actions had a severe economic impact on plaintiffs and the governments' actions rose to the level of a taking," he said in Friday's ruling.

"Whereas real property ownership is defined by a right to exclude others from that property, water ownership is defined by the right to access and use that water."

Like in similar cases in the past, the judge said the cancellation of Hage's federal grazing permit as a result of overgrazing and trespassing did not in itself amount to a "taking" prohibited under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. That's because a grazing permit is "a license, not a contract or property interest," he said.

However, Smith said the taking occurred when the Forest Service -- apparently motivated by "hostility" toward Hage -- made it impossible for him to maintain the irrigation ditches.

The ditches were regulated under the 1866 Ditch Act, which was enacted one year after the Pine Creek Ranch was founded in central Nevada. They brought water to the sprawling 7,000-acre ranch in central Nevada that Hage bought in 1978 and the 700,000 acres of national forest land where he grazed his cattle -- an area equal to about two-thirds of the size of Rhode Island.

Ed Monnig, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, said Tuesday there had been no decision made yet on whether to appeal.

"We're aware of Friday's court decision and our agency is now considering the implications of this ruling and carefully weighing options," Monnig said.

Hage, who was married to the late U.S. Idaho Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage at the time of his death in 2006, first filed a claim seeking $28 million in 1991. He said in an interview in 2004 that his case "could have a dramatic impact on Western state's rights and the proper jurisdiction of federal lands in the West."

"It's the first time in nearly a century that someone has effectively challenged the government over who owns the range rights and water rights out here on these federal lands," he told The Associated Press.

Hage had argued the proliferation of willows, pinion, juniper and other vegetation in the ditches over the years resulted in a significant reduction in the flow of water to his pastures. He said that was primarily because of the Forest Service's demand that he maintain the ditches using nothing more than hand tools.

"Extensive evidence has convinced the court that but for the government actions plaintiffs would have had the water in which they had a vested right," the judge wrote.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Especially When Your Neighbor is an Endangered Frog

First Ever "Frog Fence" to Protect the Rare Oregon Spotted Frog

CHEMULT, Ore.— A Forest Service proposal to fence cattle out of a sensitive stretch of creek in the Klamath Basin to protect the Oregon spotted frog seems to have tentative support from both ranchers and environmentalists. Last month, conservation groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, and the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center sued, arguing that federal environmental laws require the Forest Service to halt grazing when it “results in loss of species viability or creates a significant trend toward federal listing.” The decision to build the fence responds to this suit.

“This is welcome news for the Oregon spotted frog,” said Noah Greenwald, science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Once an abundant species throughout the Northwest, the frog now has so few remaining populations that every one counts.”

On Wednesday, representatives of the Center for Biological Diversity and Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics toured Jack Creek along with the Forest Service and the local rancher who runs cows on the allotment. They were there to look over the Forest Service’s solution to the problem: A three-and-a-half-mile-long fence that will exclude cattle from the frog’s breeding grounds in Jack Creek, while allowing the rancher to continue to utilize 90 percent of the allotment for cattle grazing. The Forest Service is also planning additional steps to restore frog habitat, including reintroduction of beaver, which build dams and create pools necessary for the frogs to thrive, clearing encroaching saplings from meadows, and repairing damaged stream banks. In response to the fence proposal, the conservation groups have temporarily set aside their motion for a preliminary injunction against grazing.

“I believe this is the first frog fence in the United States,” said James Johnston of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. “It is definitely the first frog fence I’ve ever inspected. I am excited to work with the Forest Service to repair streams, reintroduce beaver and more. There’s some creative work getting done by the Forest Service out here on the Chemult District.”

The Oregon spotted frog has been lost from over 90 percent of its former range in southern British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. There are fewer than 50 known sites where the frog still survives. In 1996, the Forest Service identified one of these sites on a cattle allotment along Jack Creek in the Fremont-Winema National Forest. A nearby rancher is allowed to graze more than 400 cows in the creek during the summer. The number of frog egg masses in Jack Creek — a standard measure of the health of frog populations — has declined from 335 to just 21 from 1999 to 2008.

Spotted frogs have been a Priority Two candidate species for protection under the Endangered Species Act since 1991, meaning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledges they warrant listing as an endangered species, but claims it lacks the funds to provide such protection. Under the Bush administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service has been notoriously slow at protecting candidate species, despite a steadily increasing budget for protecting new species. To date, the administration has listed only 60 U.S. species, compared to 522 under the Clinton administration and 231 under the first Bush administration. There are currently 281 species on the candidate species list. Since passage of the Act, at least 24 candidate species have gone extinct waiting for protection.

“The decline of the Oregon spotted frog in Jack Creek might have been prevented if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not delayed protection of the Oregon spotted frog,” said George Sexton, conservation director of Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center. “The Bush administration has delayed protection for the Oregon spotted frog and hundreds of other species for too long.”

ONDA wins grazing injunction
Ruling boots the cows off two forest allotments

A U.S. District Court judge is barring cows from two grazing allotments in the Malheur National Forest (MNF) this summer.

The May 16 injunction ordered by Judge Ancer L. Haggerty is intended to protect fish habitat, but observers say it comes as part of a larger movement to challenge grazing rights on public lands across the West.

"This was a real blow," said Loren Stout, a Dayville rancher who won't be able to turn his cows onto the forest as he had planned on July 15. "They are putting an industry in jeopardy."

Haggerty granted a temporary restraining order and injunction on two MNF allotments, one in the Murderers Creek area and the other on the Lower Middle Fork John Day River. The injunction affects six permittees who had been given permission to run cattle between June and October.

The injunction was sought by the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA), the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project, which contend that the grazing practices threaten habitat for steelhead and bull trout, two species of fish that are federally listed for protection. They also contend that the U.S. Forest Service isn't adequately monitoring the conditions of the allotments and any damages caused by grazing.

Their lawsuit names as defendants the U.S. Forest Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and several officials of those agencies.

The local ranchers were not named as defendants, although a group of them have status as intervenors in the case. Stout says they are caught in the middle.

"We're the puppets in this deal," said Stout. "They have used us as an easy target."

David Becker, an ONDA attorney, said the organization's litigation over grazing on the MNF dates back at least five years. The organization has challenged both the grazing practices and the Endangered Species Act assessments used by the Forest Service to support the grazing permits for the period from 2007-2011.

Becker said ONDA is concerned about 21 or 22 allotments overall. However, ONDA singled out the Murderers Creek and Lower Middle Fork allotments in this action because the organization felt there was more damage in those areas, he said.

He said a major goal is to force the Forest Service to "do a better job of managing the grazing so as to limit the harmful effects on the fish," Becker said.

ONDA charges that the Forest Service is not adequately tracking factors such as stubble height, streambank degradation, water temperature fluctuations, turbidity in streams and other factors that affect fish habitat.

Jennifer Harris, MNF public information officer, declined to comment on the specifics of the ongoing litigation. However, she said Forest officials "were disappointed" that the judge saw fit to order the injunction.

She said MNF staff are in contact with the permittees to discuss their needs and see if there are other ways to accommodate them.

"Grazing is an important program on the Forest, and it's important in the local economy," she said. "We have very good permittees."

In its lawsuit, ONDA presented photographs to the court to support claims of damage on the two allotments. Becker said the organization has been photographing streams and riparian areas in the allotments since 2004.

Ron Burnette, a Ritter-area rancher and permittee on the Lower Middle Fork unit, challenged some of that evidence in a sworn declaration presented at the hearing. Some of the photos taken on his permit area were of cattle crossings, he said.

"These are areas where the cattle are required to cross the creek," he said. "The crossings are limited but are necessary to allow for proper distribution of the cattle through the allotments."

Burnette and his wife Jolene run about 290 pairs of cows and calves on two units of the Lower Middle Fork allotment each summer. He said the Forest Service found that they met permit standards in the units last year.

Burnette and Stout both contend that factors other than cattle - such as elk and deer trails, flooding, and forest fires - affect the conditions of the habitat.

Stout said the Murderers Creek area is impacted by overpopulation of both elk and wild horses - a situation he blames on poor management by the state and federal agencies.

The ranchers also noted that last year's drought produced unusual conditions.

However, Becker said drought is no excuse for ignoring impacts of grazing.

"If we have a drought year, the conditions are going to be awfully tough on the fish, anyway," he said. ONDA believes the Forest Service should plan ahead to mitigate the ill effects in periods of drought, he said.

Stout also was critical of the Forest Service, which he said could have averted the grazing crisis. He said the agency should have been doing more active monitoring so they would have better evidence at trial.

Fearing this kind of situation, Stout and other ranchers hired their own consultants to collect data on their allotments in recent years.

"I thought we covered ourselves by hiring a range consultant," he said. "Then the court wouldn't accept her data - but it accepted ONDA's."

Stout said that while last week's ruling will affect just a handful ranchers this summer, continuing legal challenges could force some cattlemen out of business.

"We just sold off our first-calvers today," Stout said. Those are young cows that would usually be moved onto the forest allotment in July. While he is selling off some of his stock, he hopes to be able to move some others onto leased private land.

However, ranchers say that private grazing lands are in short supply.

"There's just nothing out there," Stout said.

Burnette told the court that an injunction could force him to sell his cattle.

"If we have to sell, we will lose our breeding stock," he testified. "We will not be able to generate sufficient income to pay our fixed expenses or to buy new cattle if the injunction is lifted. An injunction will effectively cause us to lose our business."

Stout said the public needs to know about what's going on in this case, as it could have far-reaching consequences. He said the way the Endangered Species Act is interpreted, it won't be just cattle ranchers taking the blame for potentially negative impacts on fish.

"People camping on the bank, fishing, or hunters - That's a 'take,'" he said.

Bill Moore, president of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association, said he was discouraged by the ruling and especially by the role the monitoring seemed to play in it.

He said inadequate monitoring gives groups like ONDA an opening to challenge grazing on public lands, without needing to prove actual damage.

"On the Malheur, ONDA and other groups are being relentless because they know that the data is incomplete," he said.

The OCA has offered to help find ways to bring about some change on the forest level, he said.

Meanwhile, he said the ruling suggests more rough times ahead for area ranchers.

"It's a bad situation," he said. "ONDA is not concerned about the schools in Grant County, the businesses in Grant County, they're concerned about their agenda."

Judge partially rejects claims over endangered falcon

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A federal judge has rejected part of a challenge by environmental groups to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to designate the northern aplomado falcon as a nonessential, experimental population in New Mexico and Arizona.

U.S. District Judge William Johnson last week denied claims that the agency violated the Endangered Species Act by not responding to a petition from the environmentalists within a set period and did not rely on the best science in designating the population in the two states as experimental.

Johnson, however, agreed with the environmentalists' argument that Fish and Wildlife unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed action on critical habitat for the bird in Texas.

He stressed that his decision meant only that Fish and Wildlife is required to answer the environmental groups' 2002 petition within 30 days. Johnson said Friday he was not requiring the agency to designate critical habitat in Texas.

WildEarth Guardians and several other groups sued the Fish and Wildlife Service and The Peregrine Fund in 2006, the same year Fish and Wildlife designated the falcons as an experimental population in New Mexico and Arizona.

The designation cleared the way for The Peregrine Fund to begin releasing captive-bred falcons in southern New Mexico in a reintroduction effort.

The environmentalists' challenge alleges the experimental designation violated federal policy and stripped the bird of needed protections under the Endangered Species Act. They want the judge to declare the designation illegal and force the agency to respond to their petition not only for critical habitat in Texas, but also in New Mexico and Arizona.

Johnson has not yet ruled on those claims.

Elizabeth Slown, spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service's Southwest Region, said Wednesday that although parts of the challenge remain, “We're pleased with the opinion and we're looking forward to the judge making his final decisions.”

Jay Tutchton, WildEarth Guardians' general counsel, said he was pleased by Johnson's ruling that the agency must respond to the critical habitat request in Texas.

“That's a good thing because most of the falcons that are known are in Texas,” he said.

Tutchton said he wasn't surprised by the rest of the ruling. “The claims we lost are claims we didn't particularly argue or are duplicative. So I am eagerly awaiting the rest of the decision,” he said.

He argued at a May 20 hearing that Fish and Wildlife's decision to designate the population as nonessential stemmed from “political, top-down pressure.”

Attorneys for the federal government and The Peregrine Fund responded that political pressure is part of the National Environmental Policy Act process and that the agency considered all comments before making a decision.

They also said it is allowed to have a preferred alternative – in this case, the nonessential, experimental designation.

Environmentalists have argued that reintroduced animals can be designated as experimental only if they're outside a species' current range. They contend there were more than two dozen falcon sightings in the two years before falcons were released in August 2006, meaning New Mexico had a population.

The government has said sightings of falcons in New Mexico didn't mean there was a breeding population.

The bird, identified by a white stripe above the eye and a brown vest, was listed as endangered in 1986. Fish and Wildlife said then that critical habitat was not prudent because there had not been any active nesting sites in the previous 25 years.

The reintroduction rule says the falcons in New Mexico or Arizona are not considered endangered but continue to have some protections. For example, it's illegal to shoot or harass the birds or to take their eggs.

The species' range once covered much of the Southwest and northern Mexico. Experts have said its numbers dwindled due to pesticides, human activities and habitat change.

Climate report adds more gloom
Review out today offers clearer picture of how warming will affect scenery familiar to Utahns

A landscape plagued with dust storms and drought, rangeland that won't support cattle, streams too hot for trout, forests felled by beetles and fire - it's all part of the scenario painted in a new report on climate change by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The projections are not exactly new.
Many of them have been reported by scientists and the media in the past five years.
But they do offer a clearer picture of how the impacts of global climate change are not limited to Arctic ice and tropical islands and that climate change will have profound impacts on the mountains, streams and range familiar to Utahns and others in the West.
"The trends are in place," said Fee Busby, a rangeland ecologist at Utah State University who has seen parts of the USDA's draft report. "The trends are going to continue."
Attempts late last week to reach the USDA's Washington office were unsuccessful. But, in advisories about the report, the agency points out that its conclusions will be used to help set priorities for "research, observation and decision support needs."
Part of a broader federal review of climate change, the 200-plus-page report focuses on the next 25 to 50 years. It had 38 authors, was reviewed by 14 scientists and uses more than 1,000 references, the agency said.
"The report has more than 80 findings on the effects of climate change in the United States," a pre-release advisory said.
Busby noted that this report follows up on a similar review done more than five years ago. In many respects, it confirms and clarifies those earlier findings, he said.
"And those [projected impacts] are going to have major impacts on the forests and rangeland and everybody who uses them," Busby said.
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has signed Utah onto the Western Climate Initiative, a multi-state effort to assess and tackle the problem on a regional basis. In addition, he convened a yearlong task force of industry, environmentalists and government agencies that have roles in dealing with climate change.
Randy Parker, executive director of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, served on the task force. And, although he remains skeptical that humans are behind climate change, he agrees that Utah's agriculture community is faced with dealing with the changes they see around them.
His organization has visited the USDA in Washington to push for planting drought-tolerant species in vulnerable rangeland.
Meanwhile, farmers are coping with delayed planting schedules and unusually dry soils, he said
"There are ecosystem impacts on whatever is happening to our climate," Parker said.
Earlier this month, the USDA's national task force on air quality met in Salt Lake City and discussed climate change, among other subjects. Some panel members said it was important that farmers play a role in shaping legislation on controlling the greenhouse gasses blamed for global warming.
It will be one way for farmers, ranchers and foresters to get credit for the positive impacts their industry has in dealing with climate change, some said.


The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expected to release its final report, "The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources and Biodiversity," today. The agency's projections say:
* Arid lands can expect increased erosion, lost species, more drought, severe rainstorms, erosion and probably an expansion of deserts.
* Rangelands so damaged that there will be major economic losses to the livestock industry, thanks to heat waves and invasive plant species.
* Forests ravaged by insect infestations and wildfire that will contribute to climate change rather than helping to solve it.
* Streams too hot and too low to support historic fish populations and diminished in their ability to provide clean water.
The report will be posted online this morning at www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/default.php.

Bush's polar bear legal disaster

As expected, the U. S. Department of the Interior added the polar bear to the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act last week. Even with the Bush administration's attempt to render the ruling toothless, this action will almost surely go down in history as the turning point in the global-warming debate.

The department concluded that the past and projected melting of sea ice in the Arctic poses an immediate threat to the polar bear's habitat. It pointed to greenhouse-gas-induced climate change as a primary cause for the recession of the sea ice, and emphasized that oil and gas development in the Arctic isn't the reason the polar bear is threatened.

Make no mistake, within a year or two, we can expect the polar bear to begin influencing everyday U. S. economic life.

The polar bear's listing wasn't intended as a back door for environmental groups to bring lawsuits against greenhouse-gas emitters, according to the ruling.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of the animal. Yet, he said, it doesn't mean the law should be used "to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles, power plants and other sources. That would be a wholly inappropriate use of the Endangered Species Act. ESA is not the right tool to set U. S. climate policy."

Georgetown University law professor Lisa Heinzerling summarized the Bush administration's actions aptly: "The Department of the Interior has, in short, worked very hard to make sure that its listing of the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act does not trigger the usual protections that act provides."

Such an action is logically and ethically indefensible. For the administration to determine that the polar bear is threatened, it had to conclude that global warming will melt the ice that polar bears need to survive. Having reached that conclusion, the Endangered Species Act requires them to take action to slow global warming. They can't decide not to do their job and enforce the law.

One can imagine that there is some not-so-clever polar bear skeptic in the White House who thought this was a brilliant manoeuvre. The fact is, if they believed that inaction was the right policy, then they should have refused to list the bear as threatened. It's ludicrous to try to have it both ways. Historians will doubtless use this cynical decision as a canonical example of what was wrong with this administration.

In the near term then, the polar bears aren't going to be saved by this government. But don't fret. If George Bush won't save the polar bear, Perry Mason will.

Environmental groups are already preparing legal challenges. Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity told USA Today last week that the Endangered Species Act requires agencies now to address greenhouse gases, and warned that "we can and will go to court to enforce the law."

When Siegel and her colleagues take that action, they will win. The U. S. government has no chance of having a court uphold its twisted logic. That is especially true because environmentalists will be able to bring lawsuits in jurisdictions of judges who are predisposed to interpret the Endangered Species Act sympathetically.

Make no mistake, within a year or two, we can expect the polar bear to begin influencing everyday U. S. economic life. Oil exploration in the Arctic will be affected, though that's not the half of it.

Lawyer and columnist Hugh Hewitt described what that new world will look like: "Environmental activists will argue that all emissions of greenhouse gases that flow as a consequence of the grant of a federal permit of any sort are now subject to review under the ESA and, crucially, that those permits cannot be issued unless and until the United States Fish & Wildlife Service reviews and approves of the requested permit."

The fact is, just about everything requires some kind of permit, so just about anything that emits greenhouse gases could be subject to a challenge. The process will rapidly spread the reach of this ruling throughout the energy industry and U. S. manufacturing.

An activist armed with a lawyer can now halt anything he wants. He might even be able to stop you from driving to work or taking a hot shower.

--- - Kevin A. Hassett is a senior fellow and director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Conservancy district sues NM Game and Fish over rodents

The New Mexico Game and Fish Department and the State Game Commission is being sued by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District over the agency's proposed recovery plan for the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse and the Arizona montane vole.

The conservancy district said Wednesday it is seeking a court order to keep the Game Commission from taking action on the plan during its meeting next week so that residents of the Middle Rio Grande Valley can have an opportunity to weigh in on the plan.

The district, in a lawsuit filed last week in state district court in Socorro, claims the plan could have a "devastating impact" on agriculture in the valley and that Game and Fish failed to get input from the residents.

Chuck DuMars, an attorney for the district, claims the plan would result in the diversion of water from agriculture to help rodents and that beaver dams would be encouraged to restore riparian habitats. However, the district usually removes beaver dams to keep its drainages operating properly.

"We're saying that before they adopt such a plan that could include diversions of water from farming and grazing operations, which are directly tied to the MRGCD's function, that we should be given proper notice and be allowed input. That didn't happen," DuMars said.

He also said Game and Fish had published legal notices about upcoming public meetings concerning the proposed plan. The problem, he said, was that the notices referred to the mouse being found in the Jemez, Sangre de Cristo, Sacramento and potentially the San Juan mountains, but not the Middle Rio Grande Valley.

DuMars said it was after the public meetings were held and the draft plan was released that the valley was mentioned.

Dan Williams, a spokesman for Game and Fish, said the agency was reviewing the lawsuit and that it had been forwarded to the state attorney general's office, which represents the Game Commission. He said he could not comment further on the pending litigation.

Both the meadow jumping mouse and the vole are classified as endangered by the Game and Fish Department. The mouse is also a candidate for possible federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Game and Fish has said that recent surveys show the number of New Mexican meadow jumping mice has dropped by at least two-thirds—and possibly as much as 90 percent—throughout the state.

Surveys also show the Arizona montane vole is found only in a very small region of Catron County and in east-central Arizona.

According to the draft recovery plan, habitat alteration due to grazing, water diversion and other recreational activities are the chief threats to both species.

BLM mulls grazing, drilling limits

Energy producers in the Powder River Basin got an unwelcome surprise this week when they found out that new drilling restrictions — possibly affecting about 1 million acres — likely will be going into effect to help protect sage grouse.

Some grazing allotments might also be impacted, according to the Buffalo field office of the Bureau of Land Management, the agency that administers the federal government’s subsurface resources in the Powder River Basin.

Paul Beels, associate field manager for the BLM, said Tuesday that the agency has decided a new management plan designed to deal with sage grouse issues is necessary to prevent the grouse from being added to the federal Endangered Species Act.

“We have been studying this now for several years and have come to the conclusion that the 1995 Resource Management Plan that we are using might not be enough to keep them from being listed,” he said.

The new restrictions will take the form of an “interim management plan,” and could include limiting oil and gas permits, limiting right-of-way grants and changing grazing leases to protect high-quality grouse habitat, Beels said.

They will be in effect for the two to three years it will take to develop and complete a new sage grouse amendment to the BLM’s management plan, “so as not to compromise the alternatives” that the plan might adopt.

He said that the boundaries of the interim management plan have not yet been determined, but are concentrated in the southwestern portion of the Basin. The proposed boundary is not contiguous, he said, and may include scattered areas outside the main boundary.

The BLM has heavily used the research from a University of Montana wildlife biology professor, Dave Naugle, whose work has suggested that up to 60 percent of active sage grouse breeding grounds, or leks, are being abandoned in areas of oil and gas development. Naugle’s work suggests that the grouse often disappear completely after abandoning their leks.

John Kennedy with the Gillette-based Kennedy Oil company said he had just heard about the plans Tuesday.

“Even though I have most of my developments up in the northeast ares near Sheridan and there are very few grouse up there doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “They could study it for a few years to decide if I have grouse and shut me down anyhow.”

Kennedy said that in the face of natural gas shortages in the country, it doesn’t make sense to him to make it harder to produce energy.

“The whole thing is over-regulation and over-reaction,” he said.

A stakeholders meeting will be at 10:30 a.m. May 28 at the Bozeman Trail Conference Center at 655 E Hart St. in Buffalo, where the public can comment on the proposed management plan.

NM judge to consider legality of endangered falcon decision

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—A decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate the northern aplomado falcon as a nonessential, experimental population in two Western states stemmed from "political, top-down pressure," a lawyer for an environmental group argued Tuesday in federal court. WildEarth Guardians, along with a handful of other groups, is suing the Fish and Wildlife Service and The Peregrine Fund, saying the designation violated federal policy and stripped the bird of needed protections under the Endangered Species Act. The environmentalists are asking U.S. District Judge William Johnson to declare the designation illegal and make the agency reconsider the bird's status in New Mexico and Arizona. They also want Johnson to force the agency to respond to a petition seeking critical habitat in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. The falcon was listed as endangered in 1986. It's range once covered much of the Southwest and northern Mexico but experts have said its numbers dwindled due to pesticides, human activities and habitat change. The Fish and Wildlife Service designated the falcons as an experimental population in New Mexico and Arizona in 2006, clearing the way for The Peregrine Fund to begin releasing captive-bred falcons in the Chihuahuan grasslands of southern New Mexico as part of a reintroduction effort. Under the reintroduction rule, any birds in New Mexico or Arizona are not considered endangered but they continue to have some protections. For example, it's still illegal to shoot or harass the birds or to take their eggs. Environmentalists contend that reintroduced animals can be designated as experimental only if they are outside the species' current range. They argue that there had been more than two dozen falcon sightings in the two years leading up to the first release, meaning there was a population in New Mexico. Jay Tutchton, WildEarth Guardians' general counsel, said Tuesday the Fish and Wildlife Service should have excluded the wild falcons in southern New Mexico when creating the special designation. "Our quarrel is where they didn't draw the line. Their decision was arbitrary," Tutchton told Johnson. "We believe it was political and there was top-down pressure." Tutchton pointed to several e-mails and letters between agency employees that raised concerns about whether the agency could legally designate the population as experimental since wild falcons had been spotted in the region. He said other documents indicated that regional Fish and Wildlife officials had decided on the designation before collecting public comment and reviewing the potential impacts of the designation as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The New Mexico Game and Fish Department, the Bureau of Land Management and other independent researchers who reviewed the designation proposal also voiced concerns about the legality of the designation and what it would mean for the wild falcons in the region, he said. Attorneys representing the federal government and The Peregrine Fund argued that political pressure is part of the NEPA process and that the agency considered all of the comments before making a decision. The attorneys also said that under the law, the agency is allowed to have a preferred alternative—in this case, the nonessential, experimental designation for birds in New Mexico and Arizona. Both sides also argued over the falcon's range and whether there has to be a certain number of breeding pairs in the area to classify the birds as a population. Defense attorneys said sightings of falcons in New Mexico didn't mean there was a breeding population. "The Fish and Wildlife Service appropriately came to the conclusion that there was not a population. It was not arbitrary and it certainly wasn't capricious," Frank Bond, an attorney for The Peregrine Fund, said of the agency's decision. Johnson repeatedly asked both parties why they were on opposite sides of the table considering that they both want to see the falcon succeed. Tutchton answered that critical habitat is necessary for the bird's success and the agency has failed to address the issue. He said The Peregrine Fund has released 1,250 falcons in Texas over the years and only 115 have survived, leading him to believe that there's a problem with the bird's habitat. "You can grow birds, release them and have a 90 percent death rate," he said. "But unless we circle back around to this habitat problem, we are never going to get off this treadmill of releasing these birds and letting them die." Bond argued that the natural attrition rate for the birds of prey is high due to predators and other factors and that there is a lack of understanding about what makes the most desirable habitat for the birds. He added that designating the birds as an experimental population ensures that other agencies, states and private landowners are more willing to participate in the reintroduction and that the birds can choose which habitat works best for them. Johnson said he plans to make a decision in the case in the next two weeks. If he decides that the agency must reconsider the experimental designation, Bond said that could bring the reintroduction program to a halt. The Peregrine Fund plans to release more captive-bred falcons in New Mexico this summer. The reintroduction effort kicked into gear in August 2006 with a release of 11 falcons on media mogul Ted Turner's Armendaris Ranch east of Truth or Consequences. That release went on to produce at least one nesting pair the next year and some wild-born chicks. In all, The Peregrine Fund has released 50 birds in New Mexico.

Divide the range?

By CHRIS MERRILL
Star-Tribune environment reporter

LANDER -- Not far southeast of here is a vestige of the old American West -- one of the largest unfenced ranges in the United States.

It's a place where 16 stockgrowers, mostly cattle ranchers, graze their animals -- and where thousands of local and nonlocal hunters, fishermen, hikers, backcountry horse riders and wildlife enthusiasts explore annually, but rarely run into one another, except by design.

It's also a place where tens of thousands of people visit every year, from all over the world, to experience a few of the last remaining unspoiled sections of the Oregon, Mormon and California trails.

But the health of the Green Mountain Common Allotment's rangeland is failing, and has been for years, officials say. The federal Bureau of Land Management is proposing to carve the allotment up into six smaller ones, and install nearly 100 miles, and about $1 million worth, of barbed-wire and electrical fences.

A 400-plus page draft of the proposed action, called an environmental assessment, was published last month by the BLM's Lander office, and the public has until June 27 to comment on the proposal and its alternatives.

Following the comment period, the BLM's Lander field manager, Bob Ross, will decide on a final management plan. Or perhaps he'll kick off a more involved environmental impact statement, which, under federal rules, requires a broader and more painstaking analysis of all of the potential impacts of an action.

At least one conservation organization, the Western Watersheds Project, plans to sue the BLM if the agency fails to do this more involved kind of study.

The Green Mountain Common Allotment is over 522,000 acres of open range, 60 miles by 20 miles. If every man, woman and child in Wyoming gathered there, each would have more than an acre of his own to stand upon.

Sections of the allotment have taken a beating from seven-plus years of drought, and more than a century of often harmful livestock grazing. Even though the BLM developed and finalized a management plan less than a decade ago, it has been forced to scrap it, and start over.

Long a source of controversy, this famously unfenced section of federally managed land might, out of necessity, be fenced into smaller sections very soon, in order to help restore critical wildlife habitat and riparian areas, officials with the Lander BLM said recently.

But Jon Marvel, a representative of the Western Watersheds Project, said to break the allotment up into six sections would be a huge blow to Western and American heritage, as well as an enormous cost to taxpayers -- and it all would be done for the sole benefit of a few cattle ranchers.

Fremont County Commissioner Doug Thompson, however, said the proposed action could actually restrict cattle ranchers on the allotment too much, and make it difficult for them to make a living there.

'Everything you do has trade-offs'

By CHRIS MERRILL
Star-Tribune environment reporter

LANDER -- The Green Mountain Common Allotment is one of the largest unfenced ranges in the nation, and the Bureau of Land Management has been struggling for more than a decade to come up with a plan to manage the half-million-acre spread.

The most recent plan, completed in 1999, almost immediately proved to be ineffective -- once the drought began in 2000 and never let up, according to Bruce Collins, regional spokesman for the BLM.

In 2002, the agency conducted an assessment of the health of the rangeland on the allotment and found that several federal standards were not being met, particularly requirements for riparian areas -- the lush, green ribbons of vegetation that run alongside streams and waterways.

Many of these riparian areas are ailing, and have been for years, BLM officials say. In an attempt to rejuvenate them, the agency is proposing to divide the allotment up into six smaller ones, and install nearly 100 miles, and about $1 million worth, of barbed-wire and electrical fences.

A 400-plus page draft of the proposed action and its alternatives was published last month by the BLM's Lander office, and the public has until June 27 to comment on it.

Robert Ross, field manager for the BLM's Lander office, said although the agency has chosen one plan as its "proposed action," at this point all of the alternatives, in his mind -- including the "conservation alternative," which could reduce permitted livestock grazing by up to 75 percent -- are equally valid. The final plan will most likely cherry-pick from all four of the alternatives.

Will new analysis suffice?

In 2005, the BLM renewed two grazing permits, even though the health of the rangeland was failing.

A coalition of four conservation groups -- the Western Watersheds Project, the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, the National Wildlife Federation and the Wyoming Outdoor Council -- sued the agency. They argued that because the land was not meeting federal standards for health, the BLM couldn't renew permits without first completing a federally required environmental study.

As part of a settlement, the BLM agreed to complete a new environmental analysis by the end of 2007, and issue a wholly new management plan by 2008, in order to ensure the land would meet rangeland health standards in the future.

The agency was a few months late on its deadline for this current draft, but is now on pace to make a new decision for the allotment in the coming months.

While officials with the BLM believe the new plan will help rehabilitate the damaged areas, conservationists want to see the agency do a more in-depth environmental analysis this time around, before drawing up another plan that fails to adequately protect wildlife and riparian zones.

Controlling cattle

Along with its value for ranchers, the Green Mountain Common Allotment is a recreation area that is home to historic, unspoiled sections of the Oregon Trail, and is a place where hikers, hunters and backcountry horse riders explore some of the largest portions of open wilderness left in the American West.

The allotment -- 86 percent federal lands, with some state and private parcels -- also provides critical habitat for great herds of antelope, mule deer and elk, and is home to three iconic herds of wild horses, some of which are descended from Spanish mustangs, Ross said.

"One of the benefits of having very little fencing out there is that it allows horses in the three main groups to interbreed and maintain genetic diversity," he said.

The proposed fencing would probably keep the three groups separate from one another, and do away with future genetic interchange, Ross said. It also would limit the horses' movement between summer and winter forage.

"Any time you talk about putting up fences, it's going to be a cause of concern for the horses," said Rubel Vigil, BLM assistant field manager at the Lander office.

The primary benefit of the new fencing, said John Likins, a rangeland management specialist with the BLM, is that it would allow for better and easier control of cattle on the range, which is essential, because uncontrolled cattle have done serious damage to riparian areas on the allotment over the past century.

"Controlling the cattle has been an issue over the years," Likins said.

Fencing would allow cattle grazers to reduce costs, and allow the BLM to meet its management goals, he said.

Of the available forage in the allotment, 81 percent is permitted for livestock, 13 percent for big game species and 6 percent for wild horses.

Bad for grouse?

The BLM's proposed action also calls for the installation of water pipelines and the development of several wells throughout the rangeland. A total of $527,000 already has been spent on range improvement projects including construction of wells, water pipelines, storage tanks and cattle guards.

"The water development allows you to redistribute the grazing, attract the animals to different places and change the grazing patters," Likins said.

While changing grazing patterns could help the riparian areas and help some fields to regrow, a down side is that it could also lead to conflicts with sage grouse habitat, Ross said.

The allotment is home to numerous sage grouse leks, the bird's breeding grounds, which could be disturbed by new grazing patterns.

"Everything you do out there has trade-offs," Likins said.

Ross said the public feedback helps the agency determine which actions to take and which to abandon.

"The public comment period is very important to us to make those kinds of assessments," he said.

Highest value?

Jon Marvel, with the Western Watersheds Project, said the current environmental assessment is inadequate when one considers the scope of the action, and the complexity of this half-million-acre piece of historic range.

Marvel said the appropriate thing for the BLM to do would be to up the ante, in terms of its level of analysis.

"First, the BLM really needs to do an environmental impact statement because of the scope of the area, because it's so many hundreds of thousands of acres," he said. "If it did, it would have to do a more thorough economic analysis, which they've given only cursory attention to in this assessment. Some of these alternatives require massive miles of fencing, plus pipelines and stock tanks, all for the sole benefit of ranchers."

One of the ongoing failures of the BLM throughout the West, Marvel argues, is its continuing lack of accountability for the cost of its projects.

"The (environmental assessment) doesn't even address what has been spent to date on that giant area in order to pretend that keeping ranching out there is economically feasible -- which, of course, it is not," Marvel said. "It's a super-dry landscape, and it has much higher value as wildlife habitat, especially for sage grouse."

As one of the biggest unfenced ranges left, it also represents a historical asset, he said.

"To just turn it into another series of pastures for cattle and sheep is to undermine the heritage of all Americans," Marvel argued. "This is a legacy landscape, and it's in the public interest not to do anything out there until it's fully examined, and the cost is made apparent so that everybody can understand why the BLM is choosing to throw money down essentially a black hole."

Restrictive for ranchers?

Fremont County Commissioner Doug Thompson said he doesn't think the proposed action is all that rancher-friendly.

And it at least has the potential to be too restrictive for stockgrowers, he said, depending on how the management plan is ultimately written and implemented.

"The one thing I've noticed is they're only allowing the permittees to utilize, at times, something like 40 percent of their permits, and there are a lot of terms and conditions coming in that are fairly restrictive," Thompson said. "It doesn't seem to reflect a good scenario for grazing, or for our county's economy."

His biggest concern, Thompson said, is that the plan will be inflexible and favor some uses over others.

A positive component of the proposed plan is the water development, he said, although it should have been done five or six years ago.

As for the proposed fencing, Thompson said it would probably be an improved way to manage cattle in the allotment.

"You break that up into six pieces, and those six pieces are still going to be huge areas," he said. "It would help mange the cattle better, and you can put in wildlife-friendly fences that don't harm anything. If you develop good water and put in some well-planned fencing out there that is wildlife-friendly, I think it'll look a lot better."

Environment reporter Chris Merrill can be reached at chris.merrill@trib.com or at (307) 267-6722.

BLM Announces Revisions to Handbook Designed to Make Environmental Reviews More Efficient

The Bureau of Land Management today announced new guidance designed to make its environmental reviews more effective and efficient.

The BLM published in the Federal Register a notice announcing the availability of the revised version of its handbook guiding implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The NEPA Handbook provides instructions, procedures, and examples for complying with the Council on Environmental Quality’s regulations and the Department of the Interior’s Departmental Manual guidance for implementing NEPA.

The objectives of the NEPA Handbook are to establish systematic practices for integrating NEPA into the planning and decisionmaking processes used by the BLM, and to promote efficiency in the preparation and documentation of NEPA compliance. The NEPA Handbook is intended for use by BLM managers, field staff, and other personnel for oversight and compliance with NEPA within their program areas.

The NEPA Handbook was last revised in 1988. The current version is the result of nearly two years of work by a diverse team of BLM specialists who drafted the revised NEPA Handbook based on changes in Departmental Manual guidance regarding implementation of NEPA for public land management.

Revisions to the 1988 NEPA Handbook were designed to support decisionmaking by BLM staff, as well as to avoid redundant or unnecessary documentation. Key changes in the new version include guidance on cumulative effects analysis; definition of issues requiring analysis; clarification of the meaning of “significant” effects; and discussion of public involvement requirements for environmental assessments and other proceedings.

In today’s notice, the BLM invites the public to share comments on the NEPA Handbook, though a formal comment period on the document was not opened.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 mandates that every Federal agency prepare a detailed statement of the effects of “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.” The NEPA process is intended to help public officials make decisions that are based on an understanding of environmental consequences, and take actions that protect, restore, and enhance the environment.

In August 2007, the BLM published a set of revisions to the Department of the Interior’s Departmental Manual, which guides the BLM’s implementation of NEPA. The revisions to the Departmental Manual have also been incorporated into the NEPA handbook.

Go here to view the manual.

Sheep ranchers back non-lethal wolf management

Local predator experts claim a federally driven program that aims to separate wolves and sheep on portions of the Sawtooth National Forest northwest of Ketchum could become a model for other wolf-occupied ranching areas throughout the West. The program, proposed by the Idaho branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, anticipates working with three local sheep ranchers who graze bands of sheep on federal grazing allotments in the Smoky and Boulder mountains. The program could begin as early as this summer. Rick Williamson, wolf management specialist for Wildlife Services in Idaho, said details still need to be ironed out with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Measures that would be implemented include herding sheep into electrified night pens at dusk, hazing wolves that venture too close to sheep bands and using radio-activated guard boxes, which blare loud sounds to deter wolves from preying on livestock. The program would involve ranchers John Faulkner of Gooding, Carey-based Lava Lake Land & Livestock and John Peavey of Carey, each of whom hold extensive grazing rights on the forest's Ketchum Ranger District. Williamson said the three ranching outfits have each thrown their support behind the innovative, non-lethal program. "They're wanting to see it happen," he said. And in a move that could boost the fledgling program, the Blaine County Commission voted Tuesday to authorize $1,500 in county funds for the potentially groundbreaking project. The commissioners based their vote on the guarantee that the funds won't be used for one of Wildlife Services' primary activities—providing lethal control of predators that prey on sheep, cattle and other livestock. Voting yes were County Commissioners Sarah Michael and Larry Schoen. Commissioner Tom Bowman, who abstained from the vote, said he would prefer to gauge local opinion on the matter before dedicating county funds to the program. Simply killing wolves that prey on livestock won't solve the problem, Schoen said. "The answer to the wolf management issue must come from the community itself," he said. For more than a decade, Blaine County commissioners have voted against funding Wildlife Services activities in the county. Unlike many Idaho counties, local commissioners have done so because they disagreed with the agency's policy of killing predators. They decided to break with the precedent of recent years after being told they could have the county funds dedicated solely for non-lethal measures taken to keep livestock and predators separate. Wildlife Services is the primary agency responsible for managing wildlife and agricultural conflicts throughout the United States. Its agents are sometimes called in to kill wolves, as well as coyotes, bobcats, black bears and other predators in Western states like Idaho. Last summer, the newly discovered Phantom Hill wolf pack was implicated in the deaths of as many as 12 sheep in the Oregon Gulch and Baker Creek area in the eastern Smoky Mountains. Rather than rely on lethal control to remove the offending wolves, federal and state wildlife officials chose to pursue non-lethal measures to keep the pack and sheep separate. When the sheep left their summer ranges as autumn turned to winter, the Phantom Hill wolves were still alive and well. Whether the pack is allowed to survive this summer will depend on a number of factors, not the least of which is the success of the new non-lethal measures implemented as part of the Wildlife Services program. Most sheep grazed on federal lands in the upper Wood River Valley are let out onto the range in early June. Though it's believed by many that other wolves do live in the valley, Williamson said the primary emphasis of the program will be on the Phantom Hill wolves. As part of the proposed local program, Wildlife Services has invited researchers from the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colo., to come to the Wood River Valley this summer to study the success of the proactive techniques. He said the program will use three paid staffers as well as volunteers and will track the success of each proactive measure implemented. "We want data," he said. "We want to be able to document all our work." In comments similar to those expressed by Schoen, Williamson said Wildlife Services must not rely just on killing wolves to solve the problem. "If we haven't tried everything, then we haven't done what we need to do," he said. Williamson said Defenders of Wildlife, a national conservation organization that works with ranchers dealing with predator issues, has also agreed to help fund the local proactive measures.