Grazing dustup brewing in Lode

A long-simmering dispute over grazing in high-country meadows will likely flare anew this year when the Stanislaus National Forest issues a draft plan for renewing four grazing allotments covering roughly 70,000 acres. The allotments had already been approved for renewal for 10 years, but that renewal was overturned in 2007 by the Forest Service's regional office in Vallejo. Regional foresters who considered the appeal by a coalition of environmental groups agreed with the environmentalists on two points: that the Stanislaus forest failed to adequately analyze the cumulative effects of the grazing plan on wildlife and that the forest failed to evaluate alternatives proposed by the public, including reductions in the numbers of cattle and the duration of grazing, or fencing off sensitive habitat such as wetlands to keep them from being trampled. John Buckley is executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, one of the groups that filed the appeal. While he is hopeful the new plan will have new measures to reduce the impacts of grazing, he is also frustrated that the old grazing methods have continued the past two seasons. "This year we took photos and measurements showing resource damage in scattered areas around the forest. The Forest Service mostly shrugged off those problems, saying it was in the acceptable range," Buckley said....