Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Malheur grazing rules target stream bank impacts

Federal agencies have concluded that grazing in Oregon's Malheur National Forest won't likely jeopardize threatened steelhead as long as stream bank impacts are mitigated. Rules intended to protect the fish have undergone some significant changes under the new "biological opinion," which is intended to govern grazing from 2012 to 2016. Similar to a biological opinion issued in 2007, the percentage of stream bank altered by hooves remains a key measure of cattle effects on steelhead habitat. Under the new plan, the allowable bank alteration is 15 percent for particularly sensitive portions of streams, up from 10 percent under the previous plan. For other areas, the allowable level remains 20 percent. If those limits were exceeded under the previous plan, the entire biological opinion would be invalidated, said Spencer Hovekamp, branch chief of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Eastern Oregon. Ranchers could be held liable for unlawful take of steelhead under the Endangered Species Act if their cattle continue to graze the area, he said. "What we learned in our experience is that is impractical," Hovekamp said. The goal of conservation measures isn't to prevent all "take" -- harm to protected species -- but to allow the fish to recover in spite of it, he said. The agency didn't want trivial violations voiding the entire biological opinion, so for the first time established accommodations of accidental overages under the new plan, he said. Minor overages can result in a review from U.S. Forest Service staff for advice on how to avoid future violations, Hovekamp said. More serious overages will be penalized with written notifications that may affect future permitting decisions, reductions in the amount of forage available to cattle and even the loss of grazing privileges in the subsequent year, he said...more

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