An excerpt from the letter-to-editor:
It’s hard to
beat Ron Gibson's op-ed for being more irrelevant to the issue of
whether Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments
deserve to continue as part of our nation’s treasure of monuments (“Farm
Bureau applauds monument review,” May 18-24, 2017 Moab Sun News). As
president of the Utah Farm Bureau, Mr. Gibson understandably focuses on
livestock grazing, but monument status doesn’t affect that. Both
monument proclamations indicate that the BLM (Bears Ears and Grand
Staircase) and Forest Service (Bears Ears) will continue to manage
livestock grazing as one of a number of multiple uses. You could hardly
graze the desert Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument more: 96.3
percent is active cattle allotments. That percentage is close to the
same in Bears Ears, with 100 percent of the Manti-La Sal National Forest
portion in active cattle allotments, and likely near that on the BLM
portion.
The writer focuses on "active cattle allotments". I don't know if this is done out of ignorance, or with an intent to deceive. In either case it totally misses the point. Let's use Leland Pollock, a county commissioner and a rancher as an example. When Zinke visited the Grand Staircase-Escalante, Pollock told him that prior to the monument being designated he ran 260 head on his allotment, but since the designation he had been cut back to 64 head. The difference had been placed in "suspension" and still appeared in BLM records, but he can't use them. His allotment is still "active" but is no longer an economically viable unit. An that, says Pollock, is "how the federal government is getting rid of the rancher on the monument."
Whether an allotment is "active" or not is irrelevant. It's the number of livestock that is allowed to run on that allotment that is the determining factor.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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