Interactive grazing allotment map

By Ralph Maughan

Grazing activists are going to cheer an  interactive map created by PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility).

As they sent their comments on the Greater sage grouse to the US. Fish and Wildlife Service, PEER wrote:

The comments are based on analysis of data available for viewing on PEER’s new grazing website, which features an interactive map combining range health data received from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with high resolution satellite imagery to enable comparison of BLM’s data with ground conditions that are visible even to the untrained eye. The website represents the most complete and up-to-date look at the results of BLM’s land health status (LHS) evaluations of roughly 20,000 BLM grazing allotments across the West, results that PEER obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. [boldface ours].

This map will be useful not only to the government in evaluating the grazing allotments as they prepare (possibly) to arrest the decline of the sage grouse, it will be of great use to activists, outdoors enthusiasts, scientists, photographers, and others not readily apparent. Even the curious citizen can use the map see where the BLM grazing allotments are located. Given the sorry state of public knowledge of this, the map has potential for informed citizenship.

The reason for the creation of the map is explained by PEER. They believed the BLM was deliberately overlooking grazing impacts, and not bringing forth data they already possessed.

In 2010, BLM launched an ambitious regional ecological assessment program (Rapid Ecoregional  Assessments or REAs) the objective of which was to document current status and forecast future  vulnerability of resource conditions with respect to significant disturbance factors. Livestock grazing was  identified by participating scientists in a number of ecoregions as a significant “change agent” or cause of a wide range of ecological and environmental impacts. BLM elected, however, to exclude livestock grazing  from the assessments, citing litigation concerns and data availability.

Because the raw data is not intuitive, the map also supplements with satellite images so visual conditions on the ground can be seen — cattle trails, denuded areas, and the like.

The Wildlife News