Source: By Brian Maffly | The Salt Lake Tribune
BLM ignored inconvenient data and contrarian views…
(Brandon Loomis | The Salt Lake Tribune) John Carter, former Utah director of the Western Watersheds Project, measures remaining vegetation in September, after a season’s grazing at the Duck Creek allotment in Rich County. Western Watersheds Project is one of two organizations trying to force changes to protect range health and sage grouse habitat.
A scathing decision by an administrative law judge has concluded the Bureau of Land Management underreports impacts of grazing leases on Rich County’s 25,000-acre Duck Creek allotment.
If the ruling’s reasoning is applied broadly, it could change the way BLM manages grazing on its holdings across the arid West, according to Jim Catlin of Wild Utah Project.
“Sound ranching is part of what we need to have local food and sustainable communities,” Catlin said. “Degraded habitat places at risk your agricultural community as well as your wildlife community.”
The 140-page opinion by Judge James Heffernan, released last month, said the BLM ignored inconvenient data and contrarian views in its environmental assessment of the Duck Creek project, intended to be a showcase for public-lands grazing.
Also, the BLM’s grazing-management practices could violate the agency’s own range-health standards and put sage grouse habitat at risk, according to the ruling that remands the project back to the BLM to revise it in accordance with Heffernan’s findings. He released his decision after fielding the longest appeals hearing in the history of the Taylor Grazing Act. The transcript exceeds 15,000 pages and Catlin himself spent 200 hours on the witness stand.
Utah BLM officials say their 2009 decision, which Heffernan reversed, put in place a four-pasture rotation system, exclosures and upland water troughs to keep cattle out of riparian areas, extensive monitoring and other innovations that are not ordinarily required.
“We went above and beyond the regulations to provide a thoughtful grazing management system,” said Kevin Oliver, BLM’s West Desert district manager. “By this decision it could possibly result in less required monitoring.”
BLM is considering appealing the decision to the Interior Board of Land Appeals and has until June 17 to file, according to Oliver.
The Duck Creek allotment, located southeast of Bear Lake, combines federal, private and state land. Catlin and Western Watersheds Project’s John Carter, both doctorate-holding land-use scientists, designed and implemented a study that found grazing left a much deeper footprint than the BLM’s range scientists reported.
“We continue to provide our monitoring to BLM and they continue to refuse to use it, going on as if no degradation is occurring on the land, while streams and springs are being lost and plant production declines,” said Carter, who now manages the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection. “We have … shown the grazing system and water troughs have not reduced use in the stream areas and have accelerated degradation and erosion in the uplands.”
Heffernan reviewed Catlin and Carter’s data gathered between 2005 and 2008 from numerous sites. He found their findings convincing, while BLM’s range-monitoring practices seemed subjective and unreliable. “At the vast majority of their monitoring sites BLM eyeballed their key forage species and then noted their visual estimates on their field data sheets,” the judge wrote.
Catlin and Carter’s “paired-plot” methodology, on the other hand, entailed clipping and weighing the various forage plants in both upland and riparian test plots. The study compared the amount of vegetation left in plots that had been grazed against those that had been caged to keep cows off them.
Catlin said the BLM’s procedure provides no information about the relative amounts of the various grass and forb species that were eaten.
“It will not help you identify the loss of productivity of a site, which is an important thing that affects stocking level,” he testified. Under BLM guidelines, grazers should not consume more than 50 percent of the forage in a single season. Grazing pressure that exceeds this threshold degrades the plants’ root structure and puts the range on a course of steady decline.
Where BLM often found “utilization,” that is the amount of forage consumed over the course of a season, within acceptable ranges, Catlin and Carter found far more than 50 percent of the grasses and forbs were taken. In riparian areas, the herbaceous vegetation was completely razed, proof that BLM’s methods for keep cows out of streams are failing, Catlin said.
Click (HERE) to comment at the LSTribune
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- Government’s Shocking Interference in Rancher’s Life (heritage.org)
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- Livestock numbers a key issue too: Cloud Foundation (horsetalk.co.nz)
Categories: Horse News, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Wow, this is significant. What exactly is and do we know about the Interior Board of Land Appeals. And in what way would this decision “possibly result in less required monitoring”?
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GO, WWP GO!
Anyone know if wild equines were or are grazing in this area? Just more proof of USFS/BLM incompetence (or would that be plain old malfeasance?).
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As if we needed any more proof. I know this sounds twisted because it is, in a way, but I almost wonder if the BLM is intentionally allowing grazing to so destroy the land that the land will be declared a wasteland and unusable because of its value for energy resource. None of our federal land management agencies are following scientifically sound management policies.
Here is the indisputable proof: The horse and burro are the two most native species in the entire country using public lands, and it is the horse and burro that are classified as alien invaders. So if the theory that native species have priority over alien, non-native, invasive species, we know that this entire way of reasoning is wrong, but the BLM would rather let the entire state of Colorado burn up rather than put the wild horses and burros on the land to eat the dry, fibrous (alien cheat grass) they allowed to be planted there. Horses eat drier, denser, older forage while cattle go for the high protein tender grasses closer to the soil.
The BLM and their feckless Interior and government paid scientists are allowing this to happen, not to save the soil, but to destroy it. If they wanted to save the grazing land and preserve the grasses, they’d be loading up our wild horses and burros and returning to the land tomorrow. But no, they’d rather throw a giant western bar-b-cue and destroy as many lives as possible rather than act like the professional scientific land managers we are paying them to be.
Hell on Earth brought to you by Al Gore and his fellow air salesmen. Tonight Colorado burns while they dine in some five-star resort sipping their $$$wine and savoring tender French-cut lamb.
If the BLM were interested in taking care of ranchers, they would never have left them vulnerable by not following NEPA. That’s not how you take care of your people.
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hopefully this doesn’t drag on and on.
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I have a question…why is it we have to file a law suit to have a judge make a decision we’ve all known the answer to for years? Anyone with any common sense, just an inkling of a clue, should have been aware this was a problem.
The BLM makes decisions of convenience for the Welfare Ranchers and to make another argument for rounding up horses and burros.
This is why I have started the petition to have D.C. clean up the BLM. Clean House of the vagabonds that are taking our money and not listening to We The People.
Please sign this petition…100,000 signatures are required to get it to the President’s desk. Don’t be an advocate of convenience. Put your name on the line for the horses and burros.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/clean-house-blms-wild-horse-and-burro-program/PhGRNJlM
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Signed it a bit ago and I am disappointed that there are only a few who have signed this?
BLM can not hide from the truth of what they have been doing any longer the time has FINALLY come where the truth WILL prevail and IS>>>>
Disgraceful and can NOT understand how they have continued for so long with out SOMEONE in our GOV. doing something to stop them, BUT there you go say’s a lot doesn’t it?? SAD
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In 1995 President Bill Clinton created an Executive Order to reduce the federal paperwork load. This is why there is no record of how much federal agencies are paying to plaintiffs in law suits where they prevail. Some fund somewhere pays lawyers for plaintiffs who prevail in lawsuits against the federal government without the money coming directly from the agency budgets.
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Seriously. What is going to take to make the BLM and the welfare ranchers realize that not only do they not have the right to take and dominate what is not theirs but, when it’s gone, it’s gone! Keep it up and there won’t be anything left to fight over or to fight for. They’ll literally put themselves out of business! Over-use and abuse of the land is just the ruination and degradation of our environment and our beautiful country. Greed and corruption really show their ugly truths when the face of the landscape has been so marred and destroyed because of it. Sign Steve’s petition and keep insisting and speaking out against those who choose to violate the ethic and moral codes. We can make this turn around if we really have the passion and fortitude to do so!!
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This is true per all the EA/FONSI that I have read: “… BLM ignored inconvenient data and contrarian views in its environmental assessment”. Understatement!
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If I was a rancher who did not have a welfare ranching grazing allotments then I wouldn’t like it that some did and I didn’t – would you? Is it that they get ca$h subsidies so don’t want to rock the boat? Can someone explain to me why non-welfare ranchers don’t speak up against this apparent favoritism?
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Grandma Gregg that’s what I’ve been saying all along. How is this privilege for some and not all, OK? When people are in business they have to figure out how to run their business all the way. If you have animals you must think about how you are going to feed them right? So why is it that welfare ranchers get such a break at the expense of the taxpayers and other businesses? They should have to pay to feed their own animals if they chose to be in that business and not make the taxpayers do it for them.
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They must have some sort of Cattlemen’s Association mafia which snuffs out anyone who says “Hey that’s not right!”
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I can speak to the reason ranchers don’t speak out against welfare ranching. Since the welfare ranchers do receive financial assistance as well as the rangeland to graze cattle, they also receive some special consideration from the IRS considering their “circumstance to have to accept welfare grazing”. They attack anyone and everyone who asks a solitary question in order to back people off from wanting to do it or stop it-the Santos/Dunne method in action. The cattle ranchers who are not close to the locations do NOT raise a fuss because its not something they can utilize. The ranchers who are upset about it get drowned out by the defensive, protective cattle agencies that state this is a God given right to use the land. In fact, the Farm Bureau, the cattlemen’s funded organizations for cattlemen, and many other large organizations and don’t forget the big dogs in Horses themselves AQHA are all snuggled in bed together for the sake of getting “rid” of the horses. Remember AQHA quivers and shudders at the thought of cheaply priced or free horses and for certain cattle ranchers having the land and the horses being pushed off has always been a positive to the greedy AQHA. In the land of high priced horses-they have pushed the agenda of pure bred animals and fancy pedigrees to the hilt. If you have NOT spent any time around the old AQHA agenda proprietors they wanted to see many breeds put out of service, spreading anything about other breeds to put them out, but paired with the wealthy cattlemen they have always spread things like Mustangs carry disease, no pedigree, no quality, that the appearance of the mustang is not what they “going for”, being in the AQHA and showing in Congress, World/Nationals, Reg show circuit, you see quickly for yourself the opinions that they have cleverly interjected into the horse world to make people “see things” their way. Why do you think that people who are opposed to horse slaughter in the well-known AQHA don’t speak out too much? They have placed a make belief chain around their necks and said they will sink the anchor off shore if they stand against the AQHA, their careers are over. The behind the scenes rumors to the cattle ranchers that have stood the test of time that if they rid the world of non-indigenous animals they would be able to take over the world. Somehow hearing these men talk this garbage over the years made me see them as sort of horse industry “gang”. However, if the members of the AQHA stood their ground and said we don’t slaughter, welfare ranching is unnecessary, and we wont back down, they wouldn’t be able to afford to lose the sheer numbers of registrations from those members, but the members are still hunkering down scared. The mustang has been tossed into the damaged goods box and they want to destroy it, that way the only, let me say that again the only way to buy a horse is pay really high prices for them. Now while that is all well and good in their mind they have contaminated the minds of the welfare ranchers and the ranchers that constantly complain about a single mustang getting close to their property are continually bellyaching because they have to keep things tidy to become the next welfare ranchers, so they hold a special reserve of hatred towards this wayward horse. I think the Federal Government needs to withdraw the welfare ranching option entirely-they should put together a panel of BLM of pro-mustang and history lovers who will lovingly tend to these herds. I also think that the government should take a closer look at the AQHA, they have not drifted but swam away from the reasons people have horses. Mustang lovers have understood I am sure that the idea of any horse being free is really something that makes most people crazy. In this day and age when you pay for water because its in a bottle, and you have to carry a bowl to screen water for horses safety, they cannot seemingly understand why the horses are free, unowned, and anyone cares for them. I had a veterinarian who was a cattleman and for 24 years refused to treat horses, then something changed, I was a little girl and my grandpa introduced the veterinarian to a horse-a mustang, young stallion just trained and that horse was so overly willing to do anything for grandpa-Doc as he was often referred to said I have to have that horse and the learning and love affair for horses welled up in him. His name was Harold J Heffernan. He passed away a couple of years ago, dearly missed, but that Mustang changed something inside of him. If people would just give them that chance. The horse shoer saw the brand first day, told grandpa no way, grandpa said I used to blacksmith-I will start again, that little Mustang with no halter or rope allowed grandpa to do all his hooves, I am 43 and never forgot the horse that could do anything, he got a Mustang girlfriend and we called her Flame and her was known everywhere and Black. Grandpa’s dog Shep layed on the grave of Black when he died from old age until he finally got hungry enough to come home and swipe a piece of steak off my shocked gpa’s plate. Heffernan died and people only remember him as a horse and cattle vet-funny how the cattle is always mentioned last.
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts Cynthia, I enjoyed reading what you had to say. Without getting too philosophical, I think that some people cannot or will not allow themselves to understand the concept of wild animals – animals that are born in the wild and live with Mother Nature’s rules and then die in the wild … and these animals are getting more and more rare and thus more and more valuable.
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Cynthia, you gave a lot of input and it is well appreciated and SO VERY TRUE AQHA, right NOW is giving incentives to BREED MORE, yeah that ORG. is SICK and out of control to say the least, funny when you mentioned other Quarter horse people that don’t speak out I have written to many here where I live, NOT a WORD from any of them…………….
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Cynthia, the most important word that you used in your post is NON-INDIGENOUS. This concept did not come from the ranchers. This came from the environmentalists who want to remove wild horses and burros from public lands.
The person who claims to a scientist was put into prominent positions during the Clinton-Gore administration. The non-indigennous classification is part of the non-native, invasive, exotic, feral, pest, ALIEN species language that has been used by the IUCN and The Nature Conservancy and their Gore tools to rid the West of their wild horses.
Our trouble is that we see that the ranchers are being used as tools, but we won’t accept where and how this is happening. It is in the public record and it is plain as day is day and night as night. It isn’t all that easy to find, but it is there.
Sue Wallis was NOT the originator of the idea that one way to save the horse industry was to sell horses for food. This is found in the writing of the Gore-tool in academic literature.
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I understand what you are saying but the origination of the non-indigenous animal phrase actually did come from the cattle ranchers. A specific rancher and his newly arrived British partner who looked to make profits off the horses not so long ago-they paid several people to push the non-indigenous routine through and the cattle ranchers while there are many good people in every industry have many very corrupt people who have always had very strong political ties. Paying for the men who were in office, subsidizing projects the scientists and experts had in order to get them to sway their decision on what to say or do. Even under really harsh criticism Mary Fallin went ahead and signed the bill into law and then they immediately released information stating she now has enoughdonations to re run for Governor and be ahead of everyone
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For some reason the other email for today keeps coming up Error 404 – page not found!
Hopefully, it will straighten itself out in a while.
About time a judge actually disagreed with the BLM’s “practices”.
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It past time to call the BLM cattle barons on their mismanagement of the rangelands. They’ve been blaming everything but their own lessors, the cattlemen because they ate all connected to them.
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I have never understood how a corporation could get an allotment. Why is this allowed? This Judge did a grand thing here and all who helped. It is rare and it is appreciated. Overgrazing has been recognized as a significant problem throughout the past century. Arid land is fragile. Our wild ones are predominantly good for it. Good article!
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Grazing leases are attached to WATER rights…..”In Nevada, major holders of grazing permits include mining giants such as Newmont Mining Corp. and Barrick Gold Corp” – Barrick Gold uses massive amounts of water to process gold dust using cyanide and rendering the water poisonous – Barrick Gold and other extractionists plundering our Public Lands don’t care about cows or what they do to the land/riparian zones, they need water.
Read more: Federal grazing fee stays same, rekindles debate – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_22704766/federal-grazing-fee-stays-same-rekindles-debate#ixzz2WEED9eT9
Here’s another interesting article: http://www.adventure-journal.com/2009/05/grazing-is-razing-the-big-bad-impact-of-livestock-on-public-lands/
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Reblogged this on WILD HORSE HUB CENTRAL .
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