Greens Say BLM Caved to Nevada Ranchers

Illegally placed fences in northern Nevada will kill endangered sage grouse and promote overgrazing on badly damaged federal land, the Western Watersheds Project claimed Tuesday in Federal Court. The Bureau of Land Management plans to build a series of permanent barbed-wire and jack-rail fences along six sections of stream in the Battle Mountain area to help local ranchers, Western Watersheds says in the lengthy complaint. It claims the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act and Administrative Procedures Act by failing to properly evaluate the environmental impacts of the fences, which are part of the bureau's fencing and grazing-management efforts that are "being improperly evaluated in piecemeal fashion." If the BLM builds the fences, Western Watersheds says, the fences will reduce recreational opportunities and threaten endangered sage grouse, which often are killed when they fly into fences. Fence posts also make good perches for raptors and ravens, which feed on the birds and destroy their nests, and fencing often promotes the growth of non-native weeds. Building the fences also will promote additional grazing on land that already is badly damaged by overgrazing by livestock and drought, Western Watersheds says. Five of the six planned fences are in areas designated as priority habitat for the endangered sage grouse, and several would be near the birds' breeding grounds. Overgrazing in recent years badly damaged the stream banks, which need a break to recover from livestock grazing, but the BLM plan to build permanent fences would have the opposite effect, the group says...more