BLM to revisit cattle-grazing leases

Federal cattle-grazing leases in the Scotchman Gulch area near Philipsburg are going back to the drawing board to balance the needs of cows and trout. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will come up with better ways to protect streams and riparian areas on land it leases to ranchers there, according to BLM Missoula field office manager Rich Torquemada. "We'll look at other measures to more quickly improve rangeland condition," Torquemada said on Monday. "We're withdrawing that (original) decision so we can address some of the appeal points." Western Watersheds Project sued BLM in 2010 over the Ram Mountain grazing leases, claiming leaseholders were letting cattle trample a stream where cutthroat trout spawn. The organization also argued the area was chronically overused. "We went in there last spring, when the decision was in the draft stage, and it was pretty well trashed," WWP Montana director Tom Woodbury said of the public-access lease. "They were losing the stream channel and it was way over-grazed." An administrative law judge dismissed WWP's appeal of the grazing plan, and BLM officials decided to redraft it. Torquemada said the new environmental assessment should be done this summer. Part of the proposed plan would fence off more of the spawning stream, which flows into the Upper Willow Creek drainage. Woodbury said that might not solve the problem and could also keep moose from using the riparian area...more

That's an amazing place, where moose don't damage riparian areas but cattle do.