Livestock foraging on 160 million acres of public
lands could roam more freely than ever, thanks to a recent policy
change at the Bureau of Land Management. On Aug. 14, the BLM
granted eight new “categorical exclusions,” designed to
speed up the approval process for a slew of activities on public
lands, including grazing, logging, oil and gas drilling and
recreational use.
Among the major changes is a paring
down of the renewal process for the roughly 18,000 grazing permits
the agency administers. Previously, when a permit was up for
renewal, the BLM was obliged to conduct a formal environmental
assessment and call for public comments under the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), giving the average citizen an open
invitation to speak up.
Now, under the new guidelines, if
a grazing allotment appears to be in good shape and the permit is
being renewed for roughly the same use as before, the agency may
approve the renewal without a rigorous environmental assessment
– or formal public comment.
It’s this last
part that has environmentalists worried. Bobby McEnaney,
public-lands advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, is
concerned about losing the eyes and ears of the public in the
renewal process. “There have been a number of cases around
the West where an individual citizen has pointed out a sage grouse
lek or salmon habitat (on grazing lands), and the BLM has made a
change,” he says. “The key fatal flaw is that public
input will not be valued in this process.”
Others
welcome the new procedures. Jeff Eisenberg, director of federal
lands for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, believes
that the changes will allow the under-funded BLM to be more
efficient. Federal land management agencies have an enormous job
and not enough resources, he says: “When they are scrambling
around and can’t do their work adequately, that makes it hard
for us.”
For several years, the cattlemen’s
association has supported changes that would streamline grazing
permit renewal. Resolutions in its annual policy books dating back
to 2003 recommend that the BLM and Forest Service allow the public
to have a say only in larger-scale decisions, not in the
nitty-gritty of individual grazing permits.
And it
appears that the association’s wish has been granted, at
least partially. According to BLM estimates, approximately
one-third of the roughly 2,300 permits that are renewed each year
will be eligible for the new fast-tracked approval. Even so, a
determined individual can still find ways to get involved in
individual allotment decisions, according to Bob Bolton, a senior
rangeland management specialist with the BLM. People can visit
their local BLM offices to request information, express concerns or
appeal a permit renewed under a categorical exclusion, he says. The
agency will notify those who make this extra effort about decisions
affecting the allotments in question.
It’s hard to
tell whether the changes will ultimately harm public lands, says
Sherman Swanson, a rangeland management extension specialist with
the University of Nevada, Reno. As with other procedural changes
issued by federal agencies, much depends on how the new rules are
implemented. “If the opportunity to do a categorical
exclusion allows them to go through another round (of permit
renewals) without making changes where they need to,” he
says, “then it is simply a pressure valve, and we
haven’t accomplished much.”
However the new
procedures play out, one thing is clear: The public has lost an
open opportunity to comment on an estimated 800 individual permit
renewals each year. Citizens must now either rely on the
BLM’s judgment about whether the land is healthy, or make a
special effort to become involved in the process. And it
doesn’t end with grazing. Under the other new categorical
exclusions, hundreds of additional projects, including salvage
logging operations and seismic testing for energy development,
could now be exempted from formal review as well.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
