Environmentalists threaten livestock industry in state

If there was any doubt the livestock industry is in a fight for its life, the events of recent weeks surely erased such thoughts. In Eastern Oregon, Grant County ranchers had heard for months that environmental groups were planning to seek new injunctions on Malheur National Forest grazing allotments. Rumor became reality in early April when the Oregon Natural Desert Association, Western Watershed Project and the Center for Biological Diversity asked a federal judge to halt grazing on six allotments, contending federal land managers have failed to prevent cattle grazing from harming endangered fish. The new injunction would affect 17 ranchers and an estimated 250,000 acres of land. The environmentalists filed their request just as ranchers were preparing for a new grazing season, one now in limbo. It also came just as the ranchers' legal defense group, the Five Rivers Grazing Permittees, had worked with forest officials to craft a plan for drastically reduced grazing on two allotments environmentalists successfully targeted last year. Attorneys for the ranchers in mid-April asked the federal court to accept the plan and allow some grazing to resume on the Murderers Creek and Lower Middle Fork grazing allotments. Judge Ancer Haggerty, who granted the injunction on the two allotments in May 2008, is expected to consider both the grazing proposal and the request to bar grazing on the additional six allotments at a hearing in June. Rural communities are watching with concern as events unfold...East Oregonian