Monday, November 04, 2013

BLM renews Grand Staircase grazing study

A long-stalled environmental review of grazing in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is set to resume more than 12 years after a rangeland management plan was supposed to have been completed for this dry, though biologically and culturally varied, landscape. The grazing issue has a tortured history on the 1.9 million-acre monument in southern Utah, pitting environmentalists against ranchers and their supporters in Garfield and Kane counties. Both sides have criticized the Bureau of Land Management for either failing to protect a fragile land owned by all Americans or pushing livestock off the range and undoing a revered Utah tradition. Now the agency is trying to finish a job that it was given 17 years ago when President Bill Clinton established the monument, reigniting debate with both sides still firmly entrenched. Clinton’s proclamation recognized livestock as a continuing presence on the Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits Plateau and Escalante canyons, but it also ensured grazing would be subject to "applicable laws and regulations." The monument’s 1999 management plan is silent on the controversial subject of grazing, and officials have been kicking that can down the road ever since in the face of lawsuits and failed planning and collaboration efforts. On Friday, the BLM is expected to post a notice of intent in the Federal Register, announcing the launch of an environmental review with the goal of producing a grazing-management plan, otherwise known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). "A grazing plan needs to pay attention to more than just ‘grass utilization’ and how much forage there is," said David deRoulhac of the Grand Canyon Trust. "BLM processes need to include all kinds of stakeholders and not just permittees. Grazers affect all kinds of values, such as wildlife, ecosystem health and recreation." Local officials and grazing interests, however, contend the trust and other conservation voices don’t deserve a seat. "Their objective is to eliminate grazing from the monument," Garfield County Commission Chairman Clare Ramsay said. "All they would be doing would be to legitimize their position. We are the elected officials." The monument currently harbors 82 grazing allotments supporting 102 permit-holders who used a total 11,000 animal unit months, or AUMs, last year. Conservationists believe this landscape is too arid to support grazing at current levels and the monument’s nonagricultural assets, such as biotic soils, native plants and ancient rock art, are being sacrificed for the sake of a 19th-century enterprise. "Ranching is a negligible part of the economy of southern Utah, particularly in Garfield County. It’s barely measurable," said Jon Marvel, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project. "The politics of Utah is such that BLM has been afraid to complete a grazing plan even though they know that grazing is incompatible with that arid landscape."...more

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