Rocky Barker: BLM plan on Owyhee grazing written for a judge’s eye

I have never seen a 500-page environmental assessment. But the Bureau of Land Management is poised to release one on its renewal of several grazing allotments in Owyhee County. You can expect this document to land with a thud on Idaho’s political world. It analyzes the effects of grazing on sage grouse and bighorn sheep, not just on the 252,000 acres of the four BLM grazing allotments, but on the entire landscape. It is a part of a grazing permit renewal package the BLM was ordered to conduct by U.S. District Judge B Lynn Winmill after a lawsuit by Western Watersheds Project, the group whose stated aim is to force ranchers off public land. So it starts out with a polarized political backdrop. Add the Winmill-imposed deadline of 2015 for developing conservation plans — to protect sage grouse so they are not listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act — and you have a tough challenge for the BLM. Usually environmental assessments are about 20 pages. They outline alternatives in cases where agencies expect to get a “finding of no significant impact,” or FONSI in agency gibberish. If the agency thinks there may be impacts, it does a full-blown environmental-impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. So a 500-page environmental assessment is both an act of confidence and an act of covering an agency’s rear. The BLM has until 2013 to finish all 75 permit renewals; anywhere it can cut out a step saves it time...more

A great example of managing for the courts, rather than for the resource. Think of the cost of time and money, and multiply that across the federal estate. Rocky Barker ends his column with:

But while the BLM will listen, its audience for this is really only one man: Judge Winmill. I hope he’s ready for some late-night reading.