Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt boasts that the BLM
is moving away from its early reputation as the “Bureau of
Livestock and Mining” to a more conservation-minded agency
overseeing national monuments around the West (HCN,
11/22/99).
This summer, when managers ordered
cows off Utah’s drought-stricken Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument, that new reputation was put to the test. On June 2,
monument manager Kate Cannon warned all 17 ranchers who hold
grazing permits on the monument that they would likely have to pull
out early. By mid-July, all but three ranchers had voluntarily
pulled their herds off the range.
On Aug. 18,
Cannon ordered the three holdouts, Gene Griffin, Quinn Griffin and
Mary Bulloch, to remove most of their herds by Sept. 1, or the
Bureau of Land Management would impound the cows at the ranchers’
expense. Her range scientists had reported that 80 to 90 percent of
the forage had been used up. The maximum legal limit is 60
percent.
Instead of following Cannon’s orders,
the ranchers went to the Cedar City office of the BLM and worked
out a deal. BLM manager Arthur Tait agreed to give the Griffins and
Bulloch until Sept. 15 to remove their cows. The agency would also
provide feed and water until the cows could be trucked
away.
Bill Hedden with the Grand Canyon Trust
said that by sidestepping Cannon’s order, the agency kowtowed to
ranchers who have “nuked” the range. “The key question,” he said,
“is with Babbitt designating all these new monuments, will it mean
something on the ground?”
State BLM spokesman
Glenn Foreman said allowing the three ranchers to remove their cows
later was the most efficient way to get the job done. “That’s why
we were given this monument,” he said. “We have a forte of being
compromising.”
On Sept. 18, the BLM reported
that there were still 100 cows on the monument.
* Greg Hanscom
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Ranchers test an agency’s image.
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