Drought, policy changes may spark more huge fires

RESERVE, N.M.—A massive wildfire in the New Mexico wilderness that already is the largest in state history spread in all directions Thursday, and experts say it's likely a preview of things to come as states across the West contend with a dangerous recipe of wind, low humidity and tinder-dry fuels.
The erratic Gila National Forest blaze grew overnight to more than 190,000 acres, or nearly 300 square miles, as it raced across the area's steep, ponderosa pine-covered hills and through its rugged canyons.
More than 1,200 firefighters are at the massive blaze near the Arizona border, which has destroyed 13 cabins and about a dozen outbuildings, fire information officer Iris Estes said.
Experts say persistent drought, climate change and shifts in land use and firefighting strategies mean other western states likely will see similar giant fires this season.
"We've been in a long drought cycle for the last 20 years, and conditions now are great for these type of fires," said Steve Pyne, author of "Tending Fire. Coping with America's Wildland Fires" and a life science professor at Arizona State University. "Everything is in line."
Agencies in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and other western states are bracing for the worst. Many counties have established emergency telephone and email notification systems to warn of wildfires, and most states have enlisted crews from nearby states to be ready when the big ones come.
"It's highly likely that these fires are going to get so big that states are going to need outside resources to fight them," said Jeremy Sullens, a wildland fire analyst at the National Interagency Fire Center. According to the National Weather Service, a dry climate is expected to prolong drought conditions across the Great Basin and central Rockies during the fire season. Large portions of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico will remain under severe drought conditions.
"We're transitioning from La Nina to El Nino so we have no guidance to what's going to happen, like if we will get more rain or less rain," said Ed Polasko, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
And it's unclear what type of relief will come from monsoon season, which starts in mid-July, since experts say it's difficult to predict what areas in the West will benefit, Sullens said.
A lack of moisture means fewer fuels to burn in some areas, but unburned vegetation elsewhere could pose a problem since states received no sustained snow or rain this winter and spring.
That's what happened in New Mexico's Gila Wilderness, where a lack of snow failed to push down grass, which worsened the fire danger, Sullens said.
Typically fires in the area don't cross the middle fork of the Gila River, said Danny Montoya, a member of the fire's incident command team.
"This year, it did get across," Montoya said. "We're getting humidity levels during the day about 2 to 3 percent. Normally, during summer you'd see 5 to 12 percent."
The two-week-old Gila forest fire is the largest wildfire burning in the country. Its size this week surpassed New Mexico's last record fire, a blaze last year that charred 156,593 acres and threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nation's premier nuclear facility.
Officials on Thursday closed the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument due to smoke generated from the fire. The National Park Service said the closure would remain in effect until conditions improve.
Montoya said he wouldn't be surprise if smoke from the fire remained until monsoon season since the fire is burning in rough areas and it's difficult for crews to fight it head-on.
Estes said the blaze is 5 percent contained.
"We're continuing with burnout operations and we've been helped with a slight rise in humidity and decreased winds," she said.
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez was scheduled to fly over the fire Thursday to survey the damage.
Other reasons states in the West will see more massive fires this season is because, coupled with drought and dry climate, crews have experienced changes in firefighting strategies and agencies have changed some policies in fighting wildfires in isolated areas, Pyne said.
"In the last 20 years or so, agencies have generally been reluctant to put firefighters at risk in remote areas," Pyne said. "It wasn't like that decades ago."
Instead, he said agencies have focused attention on burnout operations until conditions are safe to begin containment.
Not that those practices and the larges fires are bad things, Pyne said. For example, he said the Gila Wilderness has been a target for controlled burns.
"So maybe," Pyne said, "this is how it's supposed to happen."
———

LIVESTOCK’S HEAVY HOOVES IMPAIR ONE-THIRD OF BLM RANGELANDS

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility News Release (www.peer.org)

For Immediate Release: May 14, 2012
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337

LIVESTOCK’S HEAVY HOOVES IMPAIR ONE-THIRD OF BLM RANGELANDS —
33 million Acres of BLM Grazing Allotments Fail Basic Rangeland Health Standards 

Washington, DC — A new federal assessment of rangelands in the West finds a disturbingly large portion fails to meet range health standards principally due to commercial livestock operations, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).  In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled in the 13-state Western area where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts major livestock leasing.     

The “Rangeland Inventory, Monitoring and Evaluation Report for Fiscal Year 2011” covers BLM allotments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.  The report totals BLM acreage failing to meet rangeland health standards in measures such as water quality, watershed functionality and wildlife habitat:

• Almost 40% of BLM allotments surveyed since 1998 have failed to meet the agency’s own required land health standards with impairment of more than 33 million acres, an area exceeding the State of Alabama in size, attributed to livestock grazing;
• Overall, 30% of BLM’s allotment area surveyed to date suffers from significant livestock-induced damage, suggesting that once the remaining allotments have been surveyed, the total impaired area could well be larger than the entire State of Washington; and
• While factors such as drought, fire, invasion by non-native plants, and sprawl are important, livestock grazing is identified by BLM experts as the primary cause (nearly 80%) of BLM lands not meeting health standards.

“Livestock’s huge toll inflicted on our public lands is a hidden subsidy which industry is never asked to repay,” stated PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade, noting that the percentage of impairment in lands assessed remains fairly consistent over the past decade.  “The more we learn about actual conditions, the longer is the ecological casualty list.”

Last November, PEER filed a scientific integrity complaint that BLM had directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a factor in changing landscapes as part of a $40 million study, the biggest such effort ever undertaken by BLM.  The complaint was referred to a newly appointed Scientific Integrity Officer for BLM but there are no reports of progress in the agency’s self-investigation in the ensuing months.

At the same time, BLM range evaluations, such as this latest one, use ambiguous categories that mask actual conditions, employing vague terms such as “making significant progress” and “appropriate action has been taken to ensure significant progress” that obscure damage estimates and inflate the perception of restoration progress.  For example, in 2001 nearly 60% of BLM lands (94 million acres, an area larger than Montana) consisted of grazing allotments that were supposed to be managed to “improve the current resource condition” – a number that has stayed unchanged for a decade.

“Commercial livestock operations are clearly a major force driving degradation of wild places, jeopardy to wildlife, major loss of water quality and growing desertification throughout the American West,” Stade added, while noting that BLM has historically been dominated by livestock interests.  “The BLM can no longer remain in denial on the declining health of our vast open range.”


###

Look at the PEER distillation of the new BLM numbers
See BLM 2011 Rangeland Evaluation Report

View all past BLM Rangeland Evaluations
Review PEER complaint that BLM excludes grazing from scientific assessments

Endangered-species truce faces big test from little sand dunes lizard

It wasn’t too hard for the Fish and Wildlife Service to decide the fate of 92 freshwater snails, or 17 dragonflies, or indeed more than 500 species over the past year. But when it comes to the dunes sagebrush lizard, trouble looms.
The small spiny reptile seeks refuge from the hot sun and potential predators in the shinnery oak dunes of southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. Ranchers have been clearing the oak shrubs, and oil and gas companies are drilling in the dunes. If the lizard is designated as an endangered species, some of those activities could be in jeopardy.
The lizard’s future is among the first in a series of wrenching tests threatening what has been a year-long cease-fire in the fight over endangered-species listings.
Since two environmental groups reached landmark settlement agreements last year with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the government has resolved dozens of long-standing cases. State and industry officials who spent years largely resisting conservation efforts are now scrambling to protect imperiled species in the hopes of keeping them off the federal endangered-species list.
But now the Obama administration must decide whether to provide federal protection to a handful of animals that share their habitat with oil and gas rigs, cattle and wind turbines. And groups on both sides of the debate are skeptical of whether federal officials can make fair decisions — several of which will have ramifications for swing states in the West — in a presidential election year.
“Clearly the notion that there’s a truce is very fragile,” said Defenders of Wildlife President Jamie Rappaport Clark, who headed the Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton.
According to last year’s settlements, WildEarth Guardians agreed to curtail its petitions and lawsuits aimed at the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Center for Biological Diversity agreed to space out its litigation, in exchange for a commitment that the agency will issue protection decisions for 841 plants and animals.
“This settlement gave us the breathing room to really focus on conservation, which is really what the [Endangered Species Act] is about,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. “We’re really able to focus our conservation effort.”
In fiscal year 2011, the agency made more positive listing decisions, 539, than in any year in the law’s 39-year history. But those decisions — that a species deserved federal protection or warranted further review — covered those whose conservation did not have huge economic implications, such as mollusks in the Pacific Northwest and springsnails in the West’s Great Basin region.
“It’s the calm before the storm,” said Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The dunes sagebrush lizard
The storm may start with the dunes sagebrush lizard, first listed as a candidate for federal protection in 1982. Since then its habitat has been reduced by 40 percent. Fish and Wildlife proposed listing the animal, also known as the sand dunes lizard, as endangered in December 2010.
The agency was set to issue a final decision a year later but delayed doing so by six months in the face of fierce congressional resistance. Now it must decide by mid-June what to do about the lizard. Some of its habitat overlaps with the oil-rich Permian Basin, which produces 17 percent of the nation’s annual onshore oil supply.
Permian Basin Petroleum Association President Ben Shepperd, whose group represents 900 oil and gas producers in New Mexico and Texas, estimates that the association has spent between $500,000 and $1 million on consultants who have conducted their own census of the lizard and challenged several aspects of agency’s listing proposal.
“The evidence does not point to a threat to this species,” Shepperd said, adding that his members fear this decision — along with ones on the lesser prairie chicken and spot-tailed earless lizard, also mandated under the settlement agreement — could restrict oil and gas drilling. “We think the impact is in the billions of dollars.”
Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who has threatened to block Fish and Wildlife from listing the dunes sagebrush lizard, said the agency needs to prove it can do a better job of taking economic considerations into account in listing decisions.
“We have to factor that into what we can and cannot do,” he said.
The agency cannot take economics into consideration when making a listing decision, though it can factor in economic impact when drafting plans to conserve listing species.
“The listing decision is a scientific diagnosis,” Ashe said. “Once that’s been made, you can take into account other factors.”
Advocates for the lizard call Shepperd’s dire economic predictions exaggerated. Its historic habitat accounts for just 2 percent of the Permian basin, said Center for Biological Diversity Executive Director Kieran Suckling, and federal officials have already indicated they will not prohibit energy exploration on that entire range.
One of the main reasons why the lizard may not mean economic doom for New Mexico and Texas oil and gas firms lies in the “candidate conservation agreements” they have just forged, under which they voluntarily agree to protect its range. New Mexico now has a plan for 93 percent of the lizard’s habitat. Private companies contributed at least $2.5 million to invest in sand dune lizard conservation and pledged to consider voluntary steps that include removing well pads and roads on abandoned wells and designating buffers of more than 600 feet around sand dune complexes where the lizards live. Texas is still assembling a program.
In Texas, the comptroller will enter into an agreement with private landholders; in New Mexico, a nonprofit organization will oversee the pact.

Ashe said the plans are encouraging, adding that it is not clear yet whether it will be enough to avoid listing the lizard.
The lesser prairie chicken
Western oil and gas drillers are not the only ones scrambling to protect vulnerable species as a way of keeping them from being added to the endangered list. Fish and Wildlife must decide by Sept. 30 whether to propose listing the lesser prairie chicken, a grayish-brown grouse that lives in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. In 2015, it must decide whether to list the greater sage grouse, whose historic habitat traverses 11 states.
Tyler Powell, director of Oklahoma’s Office of the Secretary of the Environment, estimated that he spends a fifth of his time working to keep the lesser prairie chicken off the endangered-species list. The state hired two firms to develop a management plan that aims to minimize conflicts between the bird — which rams into ranchers’ fences and is deterred from nesting by tall wind turbines — and the energy and farming sector in northwest Oklahoma.
“We think we’ve started to get some room where we’ve shown we’ve taken this seriously and we’re going to take every effort possible to conserve the species,” Powell said.
Inhofe, who initially held up Ashe’s nomination as director over the issue, pressed Ashe last week over whether he would provide Oklahoma with “flexibility” in terms of the listing. In an interview, Ashe said that could mean a six-month delay in finalizing a proposed listing decision, which otherwise would come at the end of 2013.
Chermac Energy President Jaime McAlpine, who has developed three wind farms in the bird’s historic habitat and is considering three more projects in its range, recently agreed to pay $2.5 million for lesser prairie chicken habitat conservation as part of a transmission line deal with the state wildlife department.
“Needless to say, I reluctantly agreed to pay,” McAlpine said. “Economic development is hard enough as it is.”
Mark Salvo, wildlife program director at WildEarth Guardians, questioned whether these efforts will be enough to help the lesser prairie chicken.
“There is no reason why states shouldn’t have been working to protect and recover the species years ago,” he said, noting it has been on the candidate list for a decade.
Even when the law has produced successes, it is not without controversy. A year ago, Congress voted to take gray wolves in the northern Rockies off the endangered-species list, ratifying a decision by Fish and Wildlife that had been blocked by a federal judge. Idaho recently ended a hunting and trapping season in which nearly 40 percent of the state’s gray wolf population was killed.
Clark, of Defenders of Wildlife, described the gray-wolves situation as “a powder keg ready to go off.”
“You can’t just go from fragile recovery to open season in a blink of an eye, and that’s what’s happening,” she said.

NM Bootheel ranchers in fight with big landowner

 By RUSSELL CONTRERAS Associated Press

    CLOVERDALE, N.M.—Deep in New Mexico's Bootheel along the U.S.-Mexico border sits a historic 500-square mile ranch once owned by William Randolph Hearst. Now called the Diamond A Ranch and operated by Seth Hadley, a descendant of Anheuser-Busch founder Adolphus Busch, the large holding that straddles the New Mexico-Arizona border has been called one of the "Last Great Places" by environmentalists for its focus on saving wildlife.
    But among the canyons of the Peloncillo Mountains and the serenity of the pinon-juniper woods of the Animas Mountains, Hadley and neighboring area ranchers are locked in an ongoing dispute over traditional ranch land usages and access to public lands and country roads. Smaller, area ranchers accuse Diamond A Ranch of routinely putting up fences on public land and trying to close roads by erecting gates with padlocks, a move that on at least one occasion drew an injunction from a state judge.
    They also say Hadley's focus on environmental concerns, which sometimes result in vast chucks of land being set aside for wildlife, makes it harder for them to navigate through the sprawling ranch and keep up with usage rules.
    All those moves, ranchers say, are slowly changing the way of life in the Bootheel as areas long visited by hunters, ranchers and originally by homesteaders are being shut out.
    "I think (Diamond A Ranch) would rather ask for forgiveness rather than ask for permission," said Judy Keeler, a neighboring rancher who runs an 8,000-acre ranch. "We're friendly with them but it's been an ongoing battle."
    A Diamond A Ranch spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.
    Currently, the two sides are locked in a fight over a fence on Diamond A property that prevents hunters from parking to hunt in the Coronado National Forest.
    The disputes between the ranchers and Diamond A also played out in January when the U.S. Border Patrol announced it would build an outpost on a plot owned by Diamond A rather than on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land closer to the border. For months prior to the U.S. Border Patrol's decision, ranchers had held meetings in nearby Lordsburg, N.M., signed petitions and wrote letters demanding that the border patrol build the outpost on federal land closer to the border.
    Border Patrol officials have called the unforgiving terrain, where Geronimo made his last stand, one of the last unguarded regions between the United States and Mexico. They said the proposed outpost on Diamond A land made the most strategic sense in battling Mexican cartel traffickers who routinely travel through nearby mountains with carpet stuck to the bottoms of their shoes to hide their tracks.
    Still, the decision only hardened the belief among some ranchers that Hadley's influence outweighed their concerns. "I wasn't surprised," said Meira Gault, 62, who along with her husband, Stephen, 71, operates a 20,000 acre ranch just north of the border. "He usually gets his way."
    In 1993, the Hadley family bought what was then called the Gray Ranch. The Nature Conservancy included the Gray Ranch on its "Last Great Places" list, and the Hadley family gave portions to the Animas Foundation, an environmentally concerned group headed by the Hadley family.
    Environmentalists immediately praised the ranching foundation for preserving and improving the ecosystem of the large ranch and for providing pastures for nearby drought-stricken ranches in a unique "Grassbank" arrangement that lets ranchers graze their cattle on the ranch in return for an agreement never to subdivide their own land.
    But while Diamond A won praises from environmentalists, area ranchers complained that Hadley bought up smaller ranchs to increase his holdings, and also would put up fences on public land, regardless of complaints, preventing movement of cattle.
    In 1997, a district judge ordered Hadley to remove the padlock he put on a cattle gate on County Road 2 near Cloverdale. Hadley said he owned the road built during the Mexican-American War, but county officials disagreed and said it was preventing others from using the public road built by the U.S. Army.
Despite the constant back and forth, area ranchers lament that the biggest transformation since the Hadleys bought the ranch has been a discontinuation of annual community events.
    For example, families who descended from the area's original homesteaders used to hold reunions on land now owned by Diamond A. During a recent afternoon, an abandoned concrete dance floor could be seen among shrubs and grass.
    "There used to be events here all the time and everyone would come together," said Gault. "That just doesn't happen anymore."

Two New Studies Identify Major Flaws in the Equal Access to Justice Act

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Christine D’Amico (202) 225-2311 May 2, 2012 To support the nation’s veterans, seniors and small business, Lummis and Barrasso call for swift passage of Government Litigation Savings Act Government Litigation Savings Act ends misuse of tax-payer reimbursements, and improves EAJA for needful users. WASHINGTON – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Notre Dame Law School published separate studies on the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) this week that show funds intended for the nation’s veterans, seniors and small businesses are flowing to environmental groups contrary to Congressional intent. The Notre Dame law review article provides a comprehensive history of EAJA, and relies on a broad analysis of court records and public tax returns to show that millions of dollars are paid out to environmental groups using a social safety-net program not designed for them. The GAO study confirms that while the amount of tax-payer reimbursements to environmental groups is likely in the millions, the federal government has not kept track. “We have known for some time that the Equal Access to Justice Act needed attention, but these new reports from respected institutions shine a spotlight on the urgency of the matter,” Rep. Lummis (R-WY) said. “These two studies confirm that EAJA is broken and the government is not keeping track; it throws up unnecessary roadblocks to those who deserve the help, and at the same time is a free-flowing spigot for those the law was not intended to assist. But it can and should be fixed as soon as possible. Environmental laws exist for environmentalists; EAJA is for seniors and veterans in need.” “It’s time to return EAJA back to its original intent of helping our nation’s veterans, seniors and small businesses,” said Barrasso. “For far too long, we’ve watched special interest groups fund their anti-multiple use agenda with Americans’ hard earned taxpayer dollars. These new reports confirm the pressing need for more accountability and transparency when it comes to EAJA payments. Americans deserve to know who their money is going to and how exactly it’s being spent.” H.R. 1996, the Government Litigation Savings Act, will modernize the Equal Access to Justice Act by improving the process for legal fee reimbursement for veterans, seniors and small businesses, and providing greater certainty on the amount of reimbursements available for these deserving groups. At the same time, H.R. 1996 removes tax-payer subsidies for litigation filed outside the boundaries set by the nation’s environmental laws. The bill is supported by over 100 groups representing conservationists, sportsmen, outdoor recreationists, small businesses and farmers and ranchers. Highlights from the GAO and Notre Dame studies include: · Intended originally as a cost saving mechanism, the $125 an hour cap on attorney’s fees is routinely “evaded,” and despite court instructions to narrowly interpret EAJA’s language to increase fees for special factors, EAJA reimbursements range from $157 to over $500 an hour. Notre Dame Journal of Legislation, pages 36 – 41. o The Government Litigation Savings Act corrects this problem by creating a clear hourly rate applied equally to all legal representation no matter their area of expertise. · The absence of an equitable cap on the net worth of groups eligible to receive EAJA reimbursement, combined with the absence of any federal oversight provides the opening for well-heeled organizations to sue the federal government repeatedly over procedural issues outside the bounds of environmental law. Notre Dame Journal of Legislation, pages 41-45. o The Government Litigation Savings Act corrects this problem by establishing a uniform net worth cap of $7 million, and institutes a robust tracking and reporting requirement. · Reviews of open court documents from September of 2009 to October of 2010 reveal payments to twenty environmental litigants that totaled at least $5.8 million, while an examination of tax returns from these same twenty groups showed the average yearly attorneys’ fees totaled $9.1 million. Notre Dame Journal of Legislation, pages 48 – 54. o The Government Litigation Savings Act corrects this problem by requiring an EAJA applicant to show a “direct and personal” impact of the government’s action to receive reimbursement. · After interviewing 75 bureaus and agencies within the United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior, the GAO determined that only 10 could provide any data on EAJA reimbursements. One of those ten, which is housed in the Department of Interior, relied on employee memory to create the data. The GAO study is clear that the number of cases and awarded amounts the agency could identify are not “comprehensive, or precise.” Limited Data Available on USDA and Interior Attorney Fee Claims and Payments, Government Accountability Office. · GAO, which relied only on what the 10 agencies were able to provide, still identified $4.4 million in EAJA payments. This number does not match court documents, tax returns, and is derived from a much larger amount of legal fees. For example, the Forest Service identified over $16 million in legal fees, but could only identify the source of $2.3 million. o The Government Litigation Savings Act corrects both of these problems by requiring a robust tracking and reporting requirement administered by a third party, disallowing any agency from making the decision that a payment of tax-payer dollars is “too small” to track, or “not needed.”

Rancher refuses to budge in standoff with BLM

By Keith RogersLAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Sheriff Doug Gillespie rode with Cliven Bundy in his weathered, white pickup down a bumpy trail on the outskirts of Bunkerville. They chatted about the Bureau of Land Management's plans to round up the rancher's cattle.
The sheriff agreed to disagree with the 65-year-old rancher's suggestion of what he should do as Clark County's elected law enforcer to keep federal land managers from "stealing" his cattle.
"These are federal lands. They can do what they want to do," Gillespie recalled telling Bundy during the April 6 tour of the Gold Butte range, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. "I use my influence to make sure whatever is done is done by the law and, No. 2, it is done peacefully."
Then and now, Bundy remains steadfast in his intention to resist government efforts to round up his cattle from rangeland where his family has lived since 1877.
The BLM had canceled Bundy's permit for the Bunker­ville allotment in 1994. But he continued to let his cattle graze on the vast, sage-dotted landscape -- without paying the $2-per-head-per-month fee and in violation of a federal court order that he remove his herd to preserve the habitat for the federally protected desert tortoise.
So, the BLM finally hired cowboys and planned a helicopter-assisted roundup last week to remove his herd -- anywhere from 500 to 900 head of cattle depending on who's counting.
The BLM's last-minute decision to divert its roundup plans, at least for now, to pursue another legal avenue raises questions about how one man's resistance to the bureau's rules will affect other ranchers in the West.
This could signal the resurgence of the Sagebrush Rebellion, a homegrown state's rights movement against federal land ownership that swept across rural Nevada and surrounding states in the 1980s.
LONG-SIMMERING FEUD
Bundy didn't mince words when he put the BLM contractor on notice about the cattle gather that was supposed to begin Wednesday.
"There is a volatile situation currently taking place," Bundy wrote to Cattoor Livestock Roundup Inc. "Cliven Bundy will do whatever it takes to protect his property and rights and liberty and freedoms of those of, We the People, of Clark County Nevada."
His threat seemed to have worked, at least for the time being. The BLM blinked when officials in Washington, D.C., decided late Tuesday to suspend the roundup indefinitely because of safety concerns for people involved.
That disappointed BLM Southern Nevada District Manager Mary Jo Rugwell. She and her staff had spent months plotting the roundup and coordinating with BLM rangers, a special bureau agent for the Southwest region and the sheriff's staff and officers who work out of the area's rural substation.
The FBI even sent a representative to listen in, Gillespie said.
After all, they didn't want the long-simmering feud over grazing rights to boil over into a deadly confrontation like what occurred at the Weaver Ranch in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, that left two family members and one federal marshal dead in 1992. Or, like the standoff in Waco, Texas, that ended on April 19, 1993, when federal agents besieged cult leader David Koresh's Branch Davidian ranch, ending in a fiery assault that killed 76 people.
"Nobody wants this to turn into a confrontation where violence would occur," Gillespie said. "Mr. Bundy doesn't want that and neither does the BLM."
While he's not concerned that Bundy or his family would resort to violence, the sheriff said, the situation is complicated and emotions run high.
"I always get nervous when people come to support a cause on one side or the other. Whether on the environmental side or the cattle rancher side, we have to do our best to mitigate those situations from occurring," the sheriff said.
Gillespie's advice to the BLM was to revisit legal avenues for dealing with the disgruntled rancher. He said he felt uncomfortable trying to be the peacemaker after the 1998 court order that federal land managers were trying to enforce had withered with time.
"Those court documents are old," Gillespie said. "I ask them to take that back to court and address the issue. Then, OK, if he continues to trespass, then you seize the cattle.
"In my conversations with the BLM from their legal standpoint, I see it as a case of 'could you, should you.' Could you? Yes. Should you? No. Cattle does not trump human life."
CATTLE'S IMPACT
Rugwell made removing Bundy's cattle one of her priorities when she took the reins of the local BLM office in 2008. In the early 1990s when he was still paying grazing fees, the herd on his 158,666-acre Bunkerville allotment was capped at 150 head. About 10,486 acres of the allotment was on National Park Service lands along the tip of Lake Mead's Overton arm.
After his grazing permit was canceled in 1994, the herd grew and some cattle migrated to far reaches of the Gold Butte area.
Last week, Bundy estimated his adult cattle numbered about 500 in what the BLM describes as the 500,000-acre Gold Butte area.
Rugwell said her staff in December began planning for the roundup but the cattle's impact on the landscape was getting out of hand, causing considerable damage to natural resources even though Bundy had been diligent in maintaining some 30 spring-fed water systems in the area.
"We really didn't know how big the problem was until we started doing counts last year. There were as high as 900 (cattle) out there," Rugwell said Thursday.
Subsequent counts in August tallied 730 cattle, and the latest one this month turned up 750. That doesn't include strays that had wandered over the state line to Pakoon Springs, Ariz.
Rugwell had set a target of early to mid-April for the roundup because conditions would be right for it.
"We were making sure that it's not too hot, because there would be less stress on cattle and people. That's the reason for the timing," she said.
Rugwell notified Bundy in an April 3 letter about his cattle trespassing on public lands. She informed him they would be rounded up and impounded because the herd had been roaming for 18 years "without authorization in areas that are closed to grazing" in violation of the 1998 federal court injunction.
The letter said Bundy would be contacted after all the cattle had been gathered and he would be allowed to claim any that bear his brand.
"In my mind, the most important issue with respect to trespass is the fact trespass is unfair to other users, like recreationists. They pay fees and follow rules. In my mind it's a fairness issue," she said Wednesday after the roundup had been suspended indefinitely.
THE LEGAL ISSUE
Cases like Bundy's have been tried before in the courts, and county sheriffs in Nevada, California and Idaho have had varying degrees of support for ranchers and their causes.
But Bret Birdsong, a professor at the Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and an expert on public land and natural resources litigation, said Bundy's legal arguments that federal rangers and BLM staff have no jurisdiction over the federal lands he uses for ranching "are based on interpretation of the Constitution which has been debunked by the Supreme Court for many years."
"That is clearly not the law," he said.
Bundy contends the limitless authority that the federal government had over the territory evaporated when Nevada became a state in 1864.
However, Birdsong said the BLM still has power to enforce laws on public land and to seize cattle through a court order or even by administrative action.
"I don't see personally why they couldn't go back to court to seek enforcement of the injunction," Birdsong said. "The idea that the sheriff should come to his defense seems just wrong."
Bundy appealed the U.S. District Court ruling, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the injunction against him in a 1999 order.
However, there is concurrent jurisdiction between the BLM and the sheriff with enforcing laws on federal land.
"If someone steals your car while you're camping at Gold Butte that would be enforceable under state law," he said. "But if the state passes a law that allows grazing on federal land, and federal law says you can't, then federal law prevails where there's a conflict."
Birdsong points to a 1997 cattle trespass case in Northern Nevada that stands as a precedent for legal action by the BLM over Bundy's continued effort to run cattle where grazing is prohibited in Gold Butte.
In the 1997 case, Clifford Gardner was charged with trespass by the U.S. Forest Service for letting cattle from his Dawley Creek Ranch roam part of the Humboldt National Forest that had been ravaged by a wildfire. Although Gardner and his wife, Bertha, had a permit to graze there, the Forest Service had reseeded the burn area and closed it to grazing for two years.
Gardner violated the order by sending his cattle in and was fined for trespassing. He was sued by the Forest Service after refusing to pay the fine, arguing that the federal government didn't have title to the land so he couldn't be in trespass.
The 9th Circuit, however, held that the United States, not Nevada, owns public lands in the state and that they have power to regulate grazing under the Constitution's property clause.
PUBLIC LANDS, PRIVATE RIGHTS
The U.S. government's authority over public land is far-reaching; its agencies hold 87 percent of the land in Nevada. The BLM alone manages more than 47 million acres including about half of the land in Clark County, or roughly 2.7 million of the county's 5.1 million acres.
Reno resident Ramona Morrison, daughter of the late Sagebrush Rebellion icon Wayne Hage, said she is closely following the Bundy-BLM feud as a member of the Nevada Agriculture Board.
"We need to be sure due process of law is being followed and state law is being followed and the BLM is not conducting a rogue police operation," she said.
Her father battled the federal government for decades over public lands and private property rights after the Forest Service greatly reduced the number of cattle he could graze. Hage sued the agency for harassment and prevailed in 2002 when a judge ruled he had a right to graze cattle and use springs on federal land north of Tonopah.
But others argue that federal agencies aren't doing enough to protect public lands from overgrazing.
The Center for Biological Diversity is contemplating suing the BLM for dragging its feet on the roundup, noting the county bought up the grazing rights in 1998 and retired them to benefit its Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan, considered a model for allowing development and sensitive ecosystems to coexist.
"On the ground, even though good intentions have been made, nothing is different than before," said Rob Mrowka, a spokesman for the environmental watchdogs.
Greta Anderson, deputy director of the Western Watersheds Project, a nonprofit conservation group, said the BLM needs to follow through on its roundup instead of knuckling under to Bundy's threats of resistance.
"They have all the legal authority in the world but not the political will."
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.

BLM cattle roundup called off

The decision that this week halted the government-threatened roundup of hundreds of cattle owned by Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy from Gold Butte southwest of Mesquite came from the highest level of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Washington, D.C.
The cattle that for years have been the focus of an intense dispute between Bundy and the BLM were scheduled to be corralled and taken off the land Wednesday by “contract cowboys,” Cattoor Livestock Roundup Inc., Bundy told the Desert Valley Times.
Bundy said he learned weeks ago that his long-standing disagreement with the BLM over the cattle was once again coming to a head after simmering with little or no action for years.
“I had been working with the sheriff (Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie) for about six weeks and I was aware things were changing,” Bundy said.
During a recent personal visit from Gillespie at his ranch, the 65-year-old Bundy said he learned the government intended to enforce this week an impound notice that had been issued July 26, 2011.
Bundy and family members immediately began notifying and contacting various friends, groups and others sensitive to his position about the land and proposed roundup. He also notified the Cattoors, the County Commission and the sheriff that he intended to hold them liable for all of his cattle and equipment.
In the notice, the rancher said there was a “volatile situation currently taking place.
“Cliven Bundy will do whatever it takes to protect his property and rights and liberty and freedoms and those of We the People of Clark County Nevada,” Bundy wrote.
Within 24 hours Bundy said he received a call from Gillespie who informed him the roundup had been cancelled, “it was not going to happen.”
“He told me he’d received a call from Washington, D.C. that said, ‘We’re not going to take Bundy’s livestock tomorrow,’” Bundy said. “He told me to go ahead and get to ranchin’.”
BLM Southern Nevada District Manager Mary Jo Rugwell told the DVT late Thursday that she didn’t know who had contacted Gillespie, but an email she had personally received rescinding the roundup was from BLM Deputy Director Mike Pool.

Rob Mrowka, Nevada conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, a non-profit environmental group actively involved in Gold Butte, said he believes the cancellation came at least from BLM Director Robert Abbey, “probably higher.”
It matters little today who ordered the cancellation since the disagreement over the land, who is the proper steward and other contentious matters are still ongoing.
“Our goal has always been to get the cattle off the land peacefully, safely,” Rugwell said. “Really, the last thing we wanted to do was an impoundment. An impoundment is a serious matter.
“We have been asking for years that Cliven Bundy remove the cattle himself,” she continued. “I have always hoped Mr. Bundy would do it himself willingly. As it is we will continue to work through the solicitor general’s office put a legal case together to take to federal district court.”
Basically, the Bundy/BLM feud started in the early 1990s, Bundy said, over land he calls the “Bundy Ranch,” property in the Gold Butte area, a vast area of critical environmental concern.
Bundy maintains because Nevada is a sovereign state that has empowered individual counties with authority over land in those counties, Clark County, not the BLM is the real landlord of the property in question.
“The federal government has no jurisdiction over that land,” he said.
Because of this belief in country jurisdiction, Bundy said he refused to sign or pay for a grazing permit to run his cattle on the land in question. His allotment permit, which was located on the massive Bunkerville Allotment, was then cancelled.
After years of litigation and an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court, it was ruled that Bundy and his cattle were trespassing and in violation of federal rulings and he was ordered to remove his cattle from the land.
Additionally, in 1998 Clark County purchased grazing rights to entire Bunkerville Allotment for almost $400,000 from the remaining permitees for the benefit and protection of the desert tortoise. 
The belief is, according to Mrowka, that the cattle eat the forage the desert tortoise, “and other threatened or endangered species,” need to survive.
Nevertheless, Bundy cites “pre-emptive” rights to the forage, water and access, which he says he owns because they were established through use by his forefathers who began running cattle in the area in 1870s.
For now, the argument over the cattle has been put back into the pot to continue simmering.
Bundy, too, is continuing to simmer.
“Cliven Bundy has fought for the rights of the citizens of Mesquite and Virgin Valley for all his life,” Bundy said to the DVT. “I have never put up a no hunting or no trespassing sign on my ranch. I have never complained or harassed anybody for any off road use. I have never hindered any hunter or recreational pleasure use.
“I have always stood up and defended your right to access this land,” he said. “I have fought in many public meetings for your right to commerce. I fought for the City of Mesquite to keep from having to pay mitigation for the desert tortoise and multi species act.
“Now the city has climbed in bed with people like the Friends of Gold Butte and other environmental organizations and they’re the people that have pressed the federal government and brought this problem down on Cliven Bundy today.
“I will do whatever it takes to protect We the People rights on this Clark County land,” he said.

DVTONLINE

Support waning for Mexican gray wolf program - NMDA pulls out

For the third time in recent weeks, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had one of its partners abandon an agreement that was meant to bring more collaboration to the troubled effort to reintroduce Mexican gray wolves to the Southwest.

While it's no secret the effort has been a point of contention among ranchers and environmentalists, one federal official says there will undoubtedly be a loss of perspective with fewer partners at the table.

"We like to have that collaboration and that kind of thought process that leads to better decisions," said Wally Murphy, supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service's ecological services field office in New Mexico.

Murphy called the recent developments "disheartening," given that the wolf program is facing critical decisions this year that will affect its future direction. The Fish and Wildlife Service is working on revamping the wolf recovery plan, which, among other things, will spell out what it will take to eventually get the animal off the federal endangered species list.

"We really need all of our partners in that decision-making process," he said. Several counties, state agencies and tribal governments in Arizona and New Mexico had signed on to a memorandum of understanding in 2010. The purpose was to provide a framework of collaboration in hopes of balancing the program's goals of returning wolves to the wild with pressures on ranchers, their livestock and other wildlife. Now, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the White Mountain Apache Tribe and three Arizona counties — Greenlee, Navajo and Graham — are the only remaining partners aside from federal land and wildlife management agencies. The exodus started last summer with the New Mexico Game and Fish Department. In late March, Grant and Sierra counties abandoned the agreement, and the New Mexico Department of Agriculture joined them earlier this week. Caren Cowen, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Grower's Association, said the withdrawal is "indicative of how far awry the process is with people on the ground." "There just doesn't seem to be any headway being made and input hasn't made a difference," she said. Sierra County Manager Janet Porter Carrejo said residents were concerned that millions of dollars have been spent on the program since 2003 without much return. She also said residents feel the federal government hasn't been forthcoming with information about how many wolves are in the wild. The Fish and Wildlife Service's most recent survey, completed in January, puts the wolf population in New Mexico and Arizona at about 58. Captive-bred wolves were first released in Arizona in 1998 as part of the reintroduction effort. Biologists hoped to have at least 100 in the Blue Range Recovery Area after eight years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has acknowledged that the effort to increase the population has been hampered by everything from illegal shootings, removals due to livestock kills and court battles over program management. For New Mexico Agriculture Secretary Jeff Witte, the decision to withdraw came down to staffing levels, budget limitations and the program's lack of progress. "If we get to the point where we get staffed up again and things start moving and input is requested and desired, then we'll reconsider," he said. Some wolf supporters argue that the local partners that bowed out have done little to advance recovery of the Mexican wolves. "This is not a great loss to wolf recovery," said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has pushed for the release for more wolves into the wild. "They used their positions to organize against wolves and to try to be insiders in a process that should be more open to the public." Murphy described all the partners as critical and said he hoped they would sign on again once the agency comes up with a new recovery plan. "One hundred wolves in the Blue Range was the best information we had in 1998. It's 14 years later, so we've got better information now and going through this recovery planning process gets us to even a better place," he said.

Western Watersheds Project Wins Grazing Suit in California

On Friday, March 30, 2012 a federal district judge in San Fransisco ruled that the Forest Service violated the law when it issued grazing permits on five allotments on Mendocino and Klamath National Forests without performing the requisite environmental review.

The Forest Service had claimed that its issuance of these grazing permits was "categorically excluded" from review under the nation's premier environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), because of a legislative rider that was tagged onto the 2006 appropriations bill.  The rider had allowed the Forest Service to categorically exclude grazing permits from NEPA if the permit continued current grazing management, if monitoring indicated that current grazing management was meeting management plan objectives, and if there were no "extraordinary circumstances."

United States District Judge Phyllis Hamilton found that the Mendocino Categorical Exclusion did not comply with the rider because the monitoring was inadequate, and that the Klamath Categorical Exclusion did not comply with the rider's "extraordinary circumstances" prong because the Forest had failed to consider impacts to designated wilderness.

Our thanks go to Warren Braunig and Lauren Rule of Advocates for the West who represented Western Watersheds Project and a coalition of other organizations in this case !

Read the Order

Dr. Michael Connor
California Director
link

Livestock Groups Support Grazing Legislation

Congressmen Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and 10 lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle took a firm stand on the side of America's federal lands ranchers by introducing the Grazing Improvement Act (H.R. 4234), which would increase efficiencies in the federal lands grazing permit process and create a more stable business environment for the ranchers who manage the land and its resources. The Public Lands Council, National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the Idaho Cattle Association urged Congress to immediately consider H.R. 4234.
 John Falen, PLC president and NCBA member from Nevada, said for more than a decade federal lands ranchers have relied on language being included into annual appropriations bills to allow the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to renew grazing permits on federal lands under current terms and conditions until the renewal process is complete. Falen said the Grazing Improvement Act codifies that language, extends the life of grazing permits from 10 to 20 years and implements a more balanced appeal process.
"As a rancher who relies on federal grazing permits for my operation, I speak with authority when I say the uncertainty surrounding the current grazing permit renewal process has forced me to spend more time trying to comply with rules and regulations rather than improving my herd and managing the range. This commonsense legislation will provide certainty to livestock producers, ensuring them that bureaucrats are not going to pull the rug from under the grazing permits they rely on to raise healthy animals," Falen said. "We look forward to working with Congressman Labrador to build support for the Grazing Improvement Act."
Richard Savage, ICA president and cattleman from Hamer, Idaho, said H.R. 4234 would result in a more efficient federal lands grazing permit process.
"At a time when our nation is in need of greater government efficiencies and relief from duplicative, burdensome regulations, this legislation comes at an opportune time. H.R. 4234 takes important steps to improving the administration of federal lands by taking management decisions out of the courtroom and putting them back out on the ground where they belong," Savage said. "Sound management of our rangelands has been hijacked by environmental extremists who care little for the actual conservation of the land but rather pursue an agenda of putting a halt to any sustainable use of our natural resources.  I applaud the efforts of Congressman Labrador to restore some common sense to government."
H.R. 4234 is a companion to Senator John Barrasso's, R-Wyo., Grazing Improvement Act.

Farm Futures

"Grazing Must Yield": Court Decision Protects Sage-Grouse Habitat in Idaho's Owyhee Canyonlands

Boise, ID — A federal court in Idaho issued a strong rebuke of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and required increased protections for Greater sage-grouse across a vast swath of southern Idaho. The ruling on Western Watersheds Project's legal challenge to livestock grazing in Idaho's Owyee Canyonlands found that BLM unlawfully failed to protect the region’s charismatic sage-grouse when it continued livestock grazing without making changes to protect the imperiled bird.

“Instead of acting to conserve sage-grouse, BLM did just the opposite,” said Katie Fite, biodiversity director of Western Watersheds Project, “it conserved cattle at the expense of sage-grouse.”

The action challenged BLM’s renewal of grazing permits on allotments in the BLM’s Owyhee and Bruneau Field Offices.  
Despite admissions that key habitats for sage-grouse were being degraded by livestock on the allotments, BLM persisted in renewing grazing permits at the same levels of use and loosening restrictions on permit holders. This violated BLM's land use plans that require the agency to prioritize sensitive species, and the court held, "To the extend livestock and sage grouse are in conflict, it is grazing that must yield."  The ruling has sweeping implications for the management of hundreds of similar grazing decisions under review.

In its 55-page order, the court found that BLM violated principle environmental laws and policies - including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the Fundamentals of Rangeland Health, as well as the agency’s own governing land use plans - in approving unchanged livestock grazing on these public lands. Where the BLM had proposed changes, those changes were largely the addition of fencing which has known adverse impacts to sage grouse.

Western Watersheds Project was represented in this litigation by Todd Tucci of Advocates for the West in Boise.

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You can read the opinion by going here.

Federal lawsuit targeting Forest Service alleges bias against Hispanic ranchers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Park Service has new land-grabbing tool

By: Ron Arnold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The migrations report is here.

The hearty ingredients of Canis soup

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

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

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

New Parks For Northern NM & Southern Colo.?

Interior: Region's Hispanic heritage worth honoring, preserving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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