Grazing On Public Lands Necessary For Health of Rural Utah

...Recently, lawsuits have been filed against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) by the Western Watershed Alliance (WWA) to stop the renewal of allotments for Utah's livestock producers that allow them to graze on public land. WWA believes there should be absolutely no livestock grazing on public land, period.
Public land grazing has been a hotly debated topic for years. For a long time the claim was made that the land was overgrazed to the detriment of native wildlife species. In the past that may have been true in various areas, but over the years, mainly due to the educational efforts of extension range specialists at western land grant universities and technical assistance providers in federal and state resource agencies, the public rangeland is in much better condition today.
The lawsuits, unfortunately, will be decided not on rangeland health, but rather on procedure, the inability of the BLM to do its mandated monitoring of rangelands. The monitoring has not been done because the agency simply has lacked sufficient budget to do so. The losers, if these lawsuits are successful, will not only be the health of Utah agriculture, but the very quality of life of every resident who enjoys Utah's beauty and open spaces. How so? ...

The author, Jack M. Payne, is vice president for University Extension, director of Utah Cooperative Extension Service and dean of Continuing Education at Utah State University.