I read the story about the BLM’s new grazing
rules and Erick Campbell with great interest (HCN, 7/25/05: New
Grazing Rules Ride on Doctored Science). It was essentially the
same story that HCN wrote about me seven years
ago (HCN, 6/22/98: More internal fire at the Forest Service). The
last paragraph says it all: “the BLM will never have the staff to
do the required monitoring” and “… there’s no way we will
ever effect changes in livestock grazing. The cowboys will not
allow it.”
In the mid-’90s, the Southwest region of
the Forest Service adopted “allowable use monitoring” as the
standard for range management programs in Arizona and New Mexico.
In 1997, I was assigned the task of getting Endangered Species Act
compliance for ongoing grazing on over 80 allotments on the Lincoln
National Forest, based on the allowable-use monitoring program. For
six months, I coordinated with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and prepared biological assessments for each of the allotments with
threatened or endangered species. For six months, I tolerated range
conservationists’ seat-of-the-pants prescriptions for these
allotments. When I asked one too many questions about how an
allowable-use prescription was derived for an individual allotment,
I was taken to the big office for the last time. There, I was told
that despite entering formal consultation with the Fish and
Wildlife Service on the forest grazing program, there was no real
expectation (i.e. intent) that the regionally required
allowable-use monitoring would ever take place. Rather than bite my
tongue off, I resigned.
Obviously, the stewards of our
vast public rangelands should not be committing to practices in
front of the cameras and then disregarding them when no one is
watching. They could do range monitoring. It certainly will not be
done if we think — or they think — it can’t be
done. Either way, it’s all the same old story, isn’t
it? The cowboys are still winning.
Renee
Galeano-Popp
Livermore, Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The cowboys are winning.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
