Owens Valley ranchers and environmentalists brought together by drought

The drought has worked a miracle in the Owens Valley, as environmental activists and ranchers have buried decades of enmity to forge a plan to save ranch land — at the expense of hard-fought environmental protections. The two sides began talking after the DWP announced plans last month to slash irrigation allotments for half of Inyo County's 50 ranches. The utility said the cuts are necessary because the Sierra snowpack, which typically provides a large share of DWP's water for Los Angeles, is just 4% of normal — not enough to irrigate all ranches and meet DWP's environmental obligations in the valley. If the ranches go dry, the owners will lose their livestock at the same time as the natural habitat on their property succumbs to drought. Environmentalists say the loss of habitat would be disastrous to wildlife and vegetation in the valley, 200 miles north of Los Angeles. So to preserve the ranches, environmentalists have agreed to curtail water diversions for restoration of the Lower Owens River and controlling dust on dry Owens Lake, which were drained after construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. "We were driven into each others' arms by the DWP," said Mike Prather, a longtime environmental activist. The new alliance, however transitory, defies decades of battle between the two sides. Environmentalists have long believed the local mountains would be better off without cattle trampling stream banks, polluting creeks with animal waste and eroding fragile meadows with intensive grazing. A decade ago, ranchers used their formidable political influence to derail a proposed conservation easement that would have forever banned development on about 500 square miles of Owens Valley land owned by DWP. The ranchers feared that environmentalists were angling for management plans that would limit their century-old grazing privileges on that land...more