Ranchers, USDA spar over forest management

As wildfires rage throughout the West, two ranchers’ groups are engaging in finger-pointing with federal officials over what the cattlemen call the “gross” mismanagement of forests and rangelands. In an Aug. 17 letter, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Public Lands Council officials urged President Barack Obama to “streamline regulations that will allow for active management” of federal lands and stop closed-door settlements with environmental groups that seek to block such efforts. Further, NCBA president Philip Ellis and PLC president Brenda Richards voiced support for legislation that would require the Forest Service to treat at least 2 million acres a year through mechanical thinning or prescribed burns. But Robert Bonnie, the USDA’s under secretary for resources and environment, countered the groups should instead support a wildfire funding bill by Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, which has widespread bipartisan backing and is similar to language in Obama’s proposed budget. Simpson’s Wildfire Disaster Funding Act would treat catastrophic wildfires the same as other disasters when it comes to funding and end the practice of “fire borrowing,” in which the U.S. Forest Service has to raid its management coffers when it exceeds its budget for firefighting. The NCBA and PLC are promoting the Resilient Federal Forests Act by Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., which passed the House of Representatives by a 262-167 vote in July. A similar bill by U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., had a hearing last month in the upper chamber’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “Despite the increasing evidence that mismanagement of forests and rangeland is to blame for the higher occurrence of catastrophic wildfires, Washington seems to believe that allocating more money to fire suppression is the answer,” Ellis and Richards told Obama in the letter. “We encourage you to work with the ranching communities across the West to ensure lands are actively managed and thereby reducing future catastrophic fire and reduce the ever-expanding fire costs impacting the agencies,” they wrote...more