Grazing foes win key case

A federal judge has kicked 1,425 cows off 140,000 acres of national forest in Arizona and New Mexico in response to a lawsuit filed by environmentalists.

U.S. District Judge David Bury canceled seven grazing permits, four of them in the Coronado National Forest near Tucson. The other permits are in New Mexico's Cibola National Forest and Arizona's Tonto and Coconino national forests.

Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians successfully argued that the Forest Service hadn't done enough to gauge the impact of grazing on endangered species, in particular the Mexican spotted owl, lesser long-nosed bat and two fish - the spikedace and loach minnow.

Harold Lackner, 70, a lifelong rancher whose family has three of the four canceled leases in the Coronado, wasn't aware of the ruling until contacted by a reporter Tuesday.

"I'll lose what I've got invested in them," said Lackner, who estimated he has spent $30,000 in improvements on just one of the grazing allotments, near Fort Grant.

Arizona's livestock industry has already been devastated by the drought, so more hardships may limit ranching "to rich people who buy a ranch just to have a ranch," he said.

"I try to make a living at it, but it's getting to the point where I can't do it," he said.

Forest Guardians has won similar cases before, but this one sets a precedent since the judge ordered cattle off public lands, said Laurele Fulkerson, an attorney for the group.

"Usually we win on the merits, but nothing is done on the ground," she said. "This ruling is critical because it will give these important landscapes time to heal from harm caused by cattle grazing."

The Forest Service, citing a 1995 federal spending act, said it only had to look at the effects of grazing over three years.

But in his Oct. 30 ruling, Bury said the agency must study the impact of livestock over the full 10 years of the permit.

Doc Lane, director of natural resources for the Arizona Cattle Growers Association, called Forest Guardians' repeated lawsuits "an abuse of the system."

"They want to get rid of livestock grazing in the West because they don't happen to like it," he said.

"It costs them nothing, but it costs us everything."

This is the Forest Guardians Press Release.

In a precedent-setting ruling, a federal judge invalidated seven livestock grazing permits across more than 140,000 acres of national forest land in New Mexico and Arizona. The judge found that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to fully consider the effects of grazing on endangered wildlife, including the Mexican spotted owl, lesser long-nosed bat, loach minnow, and spikedace.

In his 10-30-03 order, Judge David Bury canceled grazing permits on seven allotments in the Cibola, Coconino, Coronado, and Tonto national forests due to the Forest Service's failure to analyze the effects of grazing prior to issuing a grazing permit and consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the effects of grazing on endangered wildlife over the entire ten-year term of the grazing permits. Judge Bury also ordered the Forest Service to consult for the full ten-year term of twenty-one other grazing permits on seven New Mexico and Arizona national forests.

The Forest Service has preferred to analyze grazing on only a three-year term—even when issuing permits for a 10-year period. The three-year consultation process sought to expeditiously bring all national forest grazing activities into compliance with the Endangered Species Act. However, an analysis of three years of grazing is much less likely to show the long-term adverse environmental impacts of a ten-year grazing permit on threatened and endangered species. Now, based on the ruling, the Forest Service must submit the allotments to a more rigorous and binding consultation process under the ESA.

"This ruling is a huge victory for wildlife because Judge Bury did not merely slap the Forest Service on the wrist," said Laurele Fulkerson, Forest Guardians' Grazing Program Director. "Instead, he required the removal of cattle until the necessary analyses are completed, reversing a long standing Forest Service policy of permitting grazing damage while lengthy analyses are conducted," added Fulkerson. "This ruling is critical because it will give these important landscapes time to heal from harm caused by cattle grazing."

Judge Bury's ruling is analogous to two recent decisions—one by Judge Christina Armijo last December and another by Chief Judge James Parker last April—which ordered the Forest Service to consult over the entire ten-year term of grazing permits on the Copper Creek allotment in the Gila National Forest and the Sacramento allotment in the Lincoln National Forest.

Like Judges Armijo and Parker, Judge Bury rejected the Forest Service's defense that a 1995 federal budget law called the Rescissions Act exempted the agency from complying with environmental laws, stating that "[t]he Rescissions Act did not suspend Defendant's duty to comply with the ESA, including its duty to analyze the entire scope of its action."

This lawsuit is one of more than a dozen legal challenges brought by Forest Guardians to ensure that the Forest Service protects native forests, rivers, and endangered wildlife from damage by livestock. To date, the group has won important protections for many of the species dependent on healthy ecosystems on national forests, such as reducing the number of cattle that can graze in key sensitive habitats and barring cattle from a number of streams and rivers throughout the southwest...

To read the decision, click here(pdf).