Conservation Group Sues For Information on Trump Administration’s Secret Grazing Program

Western Watersheds Project filed suit today in federal court against the Interior Department, challenging the Department’s withholding of public records concerning a secret livestock grazing program. The suit claims that Interior and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) unlawfully withheld information on BLM’s new “outcome-based” grazing initiative from the public, and requests that a federal judge order the Department to disclose the requested records. The Trump Administration’s Interior Department has frequently made secret arrangements with industry and its allies, while attempting to conceal these arrangements from public view. “This is the latest example of the Administration favoring industrial agriculture over conservation, biodiversity, and wildlife,” said Scott Lake, Idaho Director of Western Watersheds Project.  “Outcome-based grazing appears to be a ploy to put private ranchers in charge of grazing on public lands, and sidestep standards that might otherwise protect our lands and wildlife.” The “outcome-based” grazing initiative was first announced in September 2017 by former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.  The program promised increased “flexibility” for commercial livestock operations that graze on public lands, and de-emphasized “prescriptions” designed to protect habitat for species such as endangered salmon and greater sage-grouse.  More than two years later, BLM appears to be implementing “outcome based” management across the county.  However, the program has yet to undergo any kind of public comment or environmental review process.  Western Watersheds Project requested information on the program in April 2018 but has not received a response from the governmen. Since it was first announced in 2017, “outcome-based” grazing has appeared in BLM planning documents around the country, including the San Pedro Resource Management Plan in Arizona and livestock grazing permit renewals in Idaho.  In the latter case, “outcome-based” management increased grazing by over 200%, while reducing protections for sage-grouse and native fish.   These “outcome-based” authorizations also ignore the impending threat of climate change, and the proven connections between heavy livestock grazing, invasive weeds, and more frequent wildfires.t...press release

BLM announces outcome-based grazing projects for 2018

Initiative provides grazing permit holders flexibility in the management of livestock 

WASHINGTON – The Bureau of Land Management today announced 11 demonstration projects in six states for its outcome-based grazing authorizations initiative, which is designed to provide BLM managers and grazing permit holders greater flexibility in the management of permitted livestock.  This initiative emphasizes the Trump Administration’s goal of promoting shared conservation stewardship of public lands while supporting uses such as livestock grazing.
The flexibility allowed under the outcome-based grazing authorizations, which were first announced in September 2017, will demonstrate management practices that BLM managers and livestock operators can use to respond to changing, on-the-ground conditions such as wildfires, high moisture years, or drought.  This will better ensure healthy rangelands, high-quality wildlife habitat, and economically sustainable ranching operations.
“The demonstration projects will play an important part in establishing outcome-based grazing authorizations as a standard practice,” said Brian Steed, Deputy Director of Programs and Policy.  “We will consider the success of the demonstration projects as we develop guidance for future authorizations.”
Outcome-based grazing emphasizes conservation performance, ecological, economic and social outcomes and cooperative management of public lands.  This initiative will help demonstrate that permitted livestock grazing on public lands can operate under a less rigid framework than is commonly used in order to better reach agreed upon habitat and vegetation goals.
The demonstration projects will provide BLM, working in partnership with ranchers and other partners, with an opportunity to enhance its guidance and best management practices to use when issuing grazing permits.  The projects will also be used as models for developing cooperative monitoring plans and land health evaluations that will be implemented in future authorizations under this program.
The permit holders chosen to serve as demonstration projects are:

• Little Snake Land Company in Craig, Colorado (Little Snake Field Office)
• Deep Creek Ranch LLC in Burley, Idaho (Burley Field Office)
• Joe King and Sons, Inc. and Gran Prairie Limited Partnership in Lewistown, Montana
  (Lewistown Field Office)
• Winecup-Gamble Ranch in Elko, Nevada (Wells Field Office)
• Elko Land and Livestock Company in Elko, Nevada (Tuscarora Field Office)
• Willow Ranch in Battle Mountain, Nevada (Mt. Lewis Field Office)
• Smith Creek Ranch, Carson City, Nevada (Stillwater Field Office)
• John Uhalde and Company in Ely, Nevada (Bristlecone Field Office)
• Roaring Springs Ranch in Burns, Oregon (Andrews/Steens Field Office)
• Fitzgerald Ranches in Lakeview, Oregon (Lakeview Field Office)
• PH Livestock in Rawlins, Wyoming (Rawlins Field Office)

The BLM looks forward to working with ranchers and other partners on the selected projects to develop innovative, flexible, and forward looking best management practices that can be applied more widely on the public lands.
For more information on outcome-based grazing authorizations, please visit http://www.blm.gov/programs/natural-resources/rangelands-and-grazing/liv....

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DuBois column - Allotments & Antiquities: Items Not Addressed by Trump

 Allotments & Antiquities: Items Not Addressed by Trump

I have previously discussed the many accomplishments of the Trump administration. This month we’ll look at two more items left unaddressed.

Livestock Grazing

Would you like an example of how career bureaucrats can outsmart political appointees and hornswoggle them into doing nothing? Then read on, brother, read on.

In September of 2017 the BLM announced a new livestock grazing initiative they claimed provided “an unprecedented level of flexibility” to allotment holders. The BLM said they would identify 6 to 12 ranchers to issue “Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations”. Instead of emphasizing process and prescription the new authorizations would instead place emphasis on ecological outcomes “allowing livestock operators more flexibility to make adjustments in response to changing conditions such as drought or wildland fire.” BLM said the new program would allow, “ranching operations that are both economically and environmentally sustainable.”

In 2018 the BLM announced it had 11 demonstration projects in six states for its outcome-based grazing authorizations. Five in Nevada, 2 in Oregon, and one each in Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. BLM said these authorizations would allow “grazing permit holders greater flexibility in the management of permitted livestock.”

I must confess that I’ve considered this to be a ruse all along. I viewed it as a tactic by the BLM to appear to be doing something on livestock grazing, but without actually changing anything of substance to the program. Wholesale changes were being made to oil and gas regulations, hunting regulations and access to federal lands regulations. Changes that affected all parties involved. When it came to livestock grazing however, BLM was only proposing a demonstration project that affected 11 out of 21,000 allotments. That comes out to be 0.05 percent of BLM allotments. This was just a delay tactic and it worked, as you will see below.

In January of 2020 BLM published a Notice of Intent in the Federal Register to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement concerning proposed revisions to the agency’s grazing regulations. “Administration of sustainable livestock grazing on public lands is a key part of the Bureau of Land Management’s multiple-use mission. We continue to seek ways to improve and streamline the grazing permit process to achieve greater efficiencies and service to permittees,” said Acting Assistant Secretary of Land and Minerals Management Casey B. Hammond. “This rulemaking effort is designed to strengthen and improve our administration of grazing permits across the West, and we welcome public and stakeholder ideas and perspectives.”

According to BLM the proposed revisions would “update, modernize and streamline the grazing regulations” and “improve existing land-use planning and grazing permitting procedures”. The BLM held scoping meetings in four different Western states and comments were due by March 6.

Individual ranchers, ranching organizations, state agencies and other interested parties spent hundreds of hour preparing for the scoping meetings and submitting written comments. I can assure you these were “outcome-based” comments. Positive results were expected. So what was the outcome of all this effort? Zero, zip, nada. BLM had ten months to issue draft regulations and then final regulations, a tight schedule for sure. But to go three hundred days and not even issue draft regulations? Clearly, revising the range code was not a priority. The feint, dodge, delay, paralysis by analysis or whatever you want to call it of “Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations” had served its purpose. No new range code, the Biden administration will quietly discontinue the demonstration projects, and BLM will get to keep their coveted Babbitt-era range code.

A monumental failure

The initial discoveries of prehistoric ruins and archaeological sites were made by ranchers in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona during the 1880s. These discoveries eventually led to museums and professional and amateur archaeologists excavating these sites, sometimes destroying the ruins during the process. It is often stated there was no legislative authority to protect these areas and no requirement of a permit to excavate. This is only partially correct. The General Land Office was authorized to withdraw lands for their protection. An example would be Frijoles Canyon in northern New Mexico. By July 1900 the General Land Office had withdrawn a large area around Frijoles Canyon from entry, sale, settlement, or other disposal pending a determination of the advisability of setting the region apart as a national park. Another example would be Chaco Canyon. On Aril 4, 1905 the Interior Department withdrew lands in Chaco Canyon that included the section of land containing Pueblo Bonito, Chettro Kettle and Pueblo del Arroyo. Interestingly, in the Pueblo del Arroyo, one Richard Wetherill had filed a homestead claim in 1890. Special Agent Frank Grygla of the General Land Office was sent to investigate the conflict between Wetherill's claim and the withdrawal. According to a Park Service historian, he found that Wetherill had constructed buildings worth five thousand dollars on his land, was raising sixty acres of corn, five of wheat, two of vegetables, and reportedly had five thousand sheep, two hundred horses, and four hundred chickens. Furthermore, Wetherill informed Grygla he would relinquish his rights to the three major ruins on his homestead to the Government. Under these circumstances, the General Land Office concluded that a cancellation of Wetherill's claim for fraudulent entry would be "difficult and probably unjust," and that there was some evidence that instead of excavating the ruins at this time Wetherill was protecting them.

Nevertheless, in 1906 Congress passed the Antiquities Act. This law authorizes the President to declare, by public proclamation, historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest situated on federal lands as national monuments. The act also authorizes the President to reserve parcels of land surrounding the objects of historic or scientific interest, but requires that the amount of land reserved be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected. Well, we all know how that last section has been abused. Most recently President Obama proclaimed twenty-six national monuments totaling 88.3 million acres. In addition, he added 465.2 million acres to existing national monuments.

The kicker here is the word “scientific” Can you imagine an acre of land anywhere that is not of scientific interest to someone? Furthermore, there is no requirement for public input prior to a monument being designated. Whether or not the public has a chance to comment is completely at the discretion of the President. There is also no requirement to weigh the environmental consequences of such designation. NEPA doesn’t kick in until after the monument is designated.

One person, the President, can designate however many acres he wants without limitation, without public input and without considering the environmental impact of his action. Certainly this is a law in need of revision. However, during the first two years of the Trump administration, when Republicans controlled the Executive and both Houses of Congress, nothing was done.

Until next time, be a nuisance to the devil and don’t forget to check that cinch.  

 

Frank DuBois was the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of a blog: The Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com) and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and The DuBois Western Heritage Foundation

BLM offers livestock operators increased flexibility through Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations

WASHINGTON – The Bureau of Land Management announced a new initiative today to provide grazing permit holders an unprecedented level of flexibility in the management of livestock while also protecting the public lands.  This effort emphasizes the Trump Administration’s goal of promoting shared conservation stewardship of public lands while supporting uses such as grazing.
“Farmers and ranchers know the wildlife and the land they work better than anyone; it only makes sense that we would enlist them in conservation efforts,” said Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.  “One of my top goals is for the government to be a better neighbor, land manager, and partner.  I think it’s a great step in that direction.  I applaud the team at BLM for coming up with this innovative program.”
Under the demonstration program, the BLM will work with grazing permittees and other stakeholders in identifying 6 to 12 “Outcome-Based Grazing Authorizations” in its first year.  Grazing authorizations typically emphasize process and prescription.  The new authorizations will instead emphasize ecological outcomes, allowing livestock operators more flexibility to make adjustments in response to changing conditions such as drought or wildland fire.  This innovative concept is intended to develop and determine the effectiveness of these permits to manage livestock grazing on public lands in order to meet both natural resource and operational objectives.
“This initiative is in line with the Administration's priority promoting shared stewardship of public lands and giving local stakeholders a say in how these lands are managed,” said Michael D. Nedd, acting BLM Director.  “This demonstration project will allow permittees and the BLM to work together more efficiently and effectively to support sustainable grazing operations.”
The new authorizations will emphasize conservation performance, ecological outcomes and cooperative management of public lands that will also provide greater opportunity for an operator to manage ranching operations that are both economically and environmentally sustainable.
Through this new demonstration program, the BLM plans to work with permit holders and other stakeholders to show that livestock grazing on the public lands can operate under a more flexible framework than is commonly used in order to better reach agreed upon habitat or vegetation goals.  The BLM and its partners in the grazing community will share experiences and best practices that will determine if additional authorizations can be successful in the future.
The BLM administers nearly 18,000 permits and leases held by ranchers who graze their livestock (mostly cattle and sheep) on more than 21,000 allotments.  Livestock grazing occurs on 155 million acres of public lands.
The BLM will solicit project proposals through its state offices with a deadline of  Oct. 27, 2017

Press Release    

This is definitely the way to go, but is hardly as "innovative" as the Secretary seems to think.  After all, the Experimental Stewardship Program was started in 1978 as a result of the Public Rangelands Improvement Act. Various forms of "outcome based" programs have ensued since then, but none have stuck. 

Let's hope the BLM successfully pursues this approach, but also realize this should not divert us from large-scale regulatory reform as called for in Trump's executive orders. 

 

Park Service: One week for operators, animals of Claude Moore Colonial Farm to leave

WTOP has learned the National Park Service told the non-profit group that has operated Claude Moore Colonial Farm since 1981 that they have one week to leave the premises — and to take their farm animals with them. Friends of Claude Moore Farm operates the popular tourist attraction, which realistically depicts life on a 1771 farm, as part of a cooperative agreement with the Park Service. The agreement expired in 2006, but it was extended each year, with a final extension through Dec. 21, 2018. The Friends group declined to sign a new agreement, and said the Park Service is requiring onerous, administrative-based changes that would make it impossible to operate the farm — maintaining animals, buildings, crops and employees — on its yearly budget of $400,000. Friday, in a letter to the executive director of the Friends group, the Park Service said time is up. “You are required to remove all temporary, movable improvements and personal property, including livestock, porta-potties, and property in the pavilion area,” wrote Blanca Alvarez Stransky, acting superintendent of the National Park Service. “Any property not removed by December 22, 2018, will be considered abandoned property.” Elliott Curzon, director of the colonial park told WTOP he is not optimistic. “Hope springs eternal, but the harvest of goodwill toward the Farm is meager,” Curzon said. “That little drummer boy you hear this time of year is pounding out a funeral cadence for the Farm.”...MORE

Let's not forget Senator Heinrich's role in transferring the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service so there would be more "public access."

See  Park Service rounds up and pens NM cattle and this post which contains info on what the Park Service did to a Carlsbad nonprofit.

And here are two of my comments from three years ago. In February of 2015 I wrote:
 

It also contains the Heinrich-Udall language to transfer the Valles Caldera Preserve from a multiple-use trust to the sole jurisdiction of the National Park Service.  In a joint statement Senators Heinrich and Udall say the transfer is “to increase public access.”  In a floor statement Senator Heinrich says current management has resulted in “drastically limited public access with relatively high entrance and permit fees” and the new management will result in “expanded public access.”  A more realistic assessment comes from the Washington Post:

The Park Service is taking on Valles Caldera and numerous other properties at a time when the agency is struggling with more than $11 billion in deferred maintenance at existing parks and monuments and is looking to boost entrance fees at parks across the nation to generate more revenue in advance of the agency’s centennial. Can the agency afford what amounts to its largest expansion in nearly four decades?

The transfer does include grazing language, but it has long been National Park Service policy to discontinue grazing on its lands, so we shall see.

There is, however, some welcome grazing language in the natural resources title of the bill.  For years the Forest Service and the BLM have been behind on thousands of NEPA analysis documents on the renewal or transfer of grazing permits.  I know, it is ridiculous to do a NEPA analysis on a permit that allows something to continue as is, but that’s what the DC Deep Thinkers have brought us.  The problem has received a band-aid fix each year, but this new language gives us a permanent fix.  It reads, in part, “The terms and conditions in a grazing permit or lease that has expired, or was terminated due to a grazing preference transfer, shall be continued under a new permit or lease until the date on which the Secretary concerned completes any environmental analysis and documentation for the permit or lease required under the National Environmental Policy Act.”  Also included is language which says the issuance of a new grazing permit may be categorically excluded from NEPA if certain conditions are met.   The final version of the grazing provision did not contain the language Senator Heinrich had pushed in the Senate which would have allowed for the permanent retiring of grazing permits in New Mexico.

Both New Mexico Senators were supportive of the natural resource package.  “Protecting these special and important places will increase tourism and create jobs in the surrounding communities while ensuring New Mexicans can enjoy them for generations to come", said Senator Udall.  Senator Heinrich remarked, “This is a historic moment and absolutely critical for jobs across the western United States and particularly in New Mexico. The public lands package will help grow our economy in the energy, tourism, sporting and recreation sectors.”

It’s sad to report that neither Senator mentioned livestock grazing.  In fact, Senator Heinrich gave a floor speech containing 1,379 words and never mentioned livestock grazing once.  Therein he stated, “New Mexico's critical public land based economic engine will continue to grow in the energy, tourism, sporting and recreation sectors.”  He even specifically mentioned his efforts in the bill “to streamline the oil and gas drilling permit process”, but nothing about the livestock grazing permit process.  I guess it’s hard to include livestock grazing in his “public land based economic engine” while at the same time trying to arrange for its permanent retirement.

 In July of 2015 I wrote:

Recall that Senator Heinrich got these 89,000 acres transferred from the Santa Fe National Forest to the Park Service as part of a political deal in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act. 

The Park Service is now holding public hearings on management of the area, and we are beginning to see what the native folks and traditional users are up against –  limited access in general and a slow phasing out of most hunting and grazing.  Yes, I know the legislation says there "shall" be grazing, but it also says,"at levels and locations determined by the Secretary to be appropriate."  Read Park Service policy on its website and you'll find this:  "The Service will phase out the commercial grazing of livestock whenever possible and manage recreational and administrative uses of livestock to prevent those uses from unacceptably impacting park resources."  Apply the general policy to the legislative language, and if you are seeking "commercial" livestock grazing, forget it.  The whole thing is being set up to allow grazing for the "interpretation of the ranching history of the Preserve", and that will probably mean Park Service cows managed by Park Service employees. Similar limitations are placed upon hunting and trapping.

Does anyone consider the NPS to be pro-hunting?  Pro-grazing?  Not exactly.

Members of the group Caldera Action have spent years advocating for National Park Service management because, their spokesmen says, the Park Service will police “wayward cattle”, they didn’t want it “treated like a piece of multiple-use land where you have…cows and litter”, but that “hiking and cross-country skiing” are less destructive.

A huge preserve has been set aside for the elite to camp, hike and convene with nature.  The traditional uses made by the folks native to the area will be eliminated over time.  That, I'm afraid, will be the final outcome of this Udall/Heinrich legislation.

I know some of this is repetitive, but I will continue to point out what Little Tommy YouDull and Marty Hiney have done to the people of northern New Mexico and to taxpayers everywhere. 

There was really no way to summarize this...an important aricle which needs to be read. Thanks to Keeler Ranch for the link.

http://www.rangelandrestoration.org/rangelandacademy/Range2.htm

SPECIAL REPORT

Exposing Anti-Livestock Bias in Federal Culture

Brave Souls Refuting the "Dark Dehumanizing Dream"

The truth is, long term livestock removal in the West is usually an environmental disaster. What else could you call something that wipes out most plants and most wildlife?

By Steve Rich

Do cows really eat adult fish? Do they eat fish eggs? Do they eat juvenile fish? I have personally replied (on behalf of clients) to multiple Draft Biological Opinions regarding two National Forests where U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists made these claims. They also claimed that cows destroyed the nests (redds) of fish species that don't build nests, stepped on fish, muddied the water of fish that spawn only in muddy water (and spawn every time it gets muddy for a few days), and designated dry washes as critical habitat for endangered species of fish.

When consultant Mary Darling asked several other fisheries biologists about the truth of these claims, no one agreed with them. They were astonished at their silliness. One university professor summed them up as "deliriously incompetent" and wondered how anyone could achieve a state of delusion deep enough to make such statements in a professional context.

I see anti-livestock claims which are just as imaginative and unsubstantiated as those above in government documents all the time. This one was an obvious attempt to claim "direct take" of an endangered species and trigger draconian anti-livestock actions.

Dr. John Rinne of Rocky Mountain Research (operated by the U.S. Forest Service) became so concerned about false beliefs and statements and their terrible effects on policy and endangered species recovery that he wrote a paper entitled "Fish and Grazing Relationships: The Facts and Some Pleas." He asked for better, more scientifically valid study designs and methodologies.

He asked fisheries biologists to realize that most publications (80 percent) on fish and grazing relationships are not peer reviewed and that most of their data is suspect. He asked them to remember that dams and other human alterations have changed the habitat. He reminded them that cyprinids (like spike dace, loach minnows, chubs, etc…) are not trout or salmon and have different requirements. He said that many trout studies are skewed by governments stocking fish in study areas. He pointed out that in addition to all this, governments have introduced so many nonnative aquatic organisms (sport fish like bass, green sunfish, and catfish, plus several crayfish species, shiners, mosquito fish, bullfrogs, etc…) that eat endangered cyprinids and their eggs and out-compete them for habitat that grazing has little to do with their problems which began when governments actively poisoned these native fishes and purposefully replaced them with the above non-natives.

Dr. Rinne wrote this from a background of his own research and wide exposure to the facts. He personally was aware that the forced removal of livestock had led to the extinction of endangered cyprinids on vast reaches of Arizona rivers and that their highest populations tended to be in flood blasted, warm, shallow, braided channel refugia and at places where vehicles splashed through streams, inside corrals (through which streams flowed), and in river channels within mine sites which are regularly bulldozed. He asked biologists to be more accurate and rigorous and stop projecting their (alien and Eurocentric) anti-livestock prejudices.

The last paragraph of this peer reviewed paper reads as follows: "I finish with two thoughts pertinent to the subject of monitoring and research on fishes and grazing relationships in the Southwest or Region 3 of the Forest Service. The first is that little new data are being collected and there is a continuing reiteration of what is in the [extremely deficient] literature about fish and grazing relationships. Selective rather than objective comprehension by individuals has dictated management alternatives for the last several decades [emphasis added]. We as environmental groups, managers, and researchers need to stop expressing opinions, disputing and constantly litigating or threatening to and start collecting data from well-designed, defensible research and monitoring activities. Second, as the saying goes, 'without [valid] data, one is just another person with an opinion.'"

Other responsible scientists support Rinne's position. The 143 page UC Berkley Rangeland Science Team's report (March 1999) stated: "Unfortunately, testing of hypothesis is not done before people leap directly from observation to the conclusion that grazing is the primary source of resource degradation."

Rinne's calm, reasoned and moderate request for science and at least "…to pursue" the truth drew furious response from the clique practicing "selective comprehension" (an elegant term for messing with the truth) including the "cows eat fish" claimants. These Dr. Rinne calmly, reasonably and moderated squashed under a comprehensive and well selected load of facts. They were furious because, among other offenses which "affronted" them, he asked that they "remove [them]selves from promoting and sustaining the litany" of anti-grazing factoids and act like scientists.

When I read the above to Dr. Rinne he agreed that it is an accurate summary of the facts. He then favored me with a quote (from memory) which he got from a federal manager: "When the search for truth is confused by political (or any kind of) advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to a quest for power."

The anti-livestock groups are jealous of the power they have created by reiterating their litany of generally spurious information. One BLM biologist, also responding to Rinne's article, who, though representing a more reasonable sounding view, nevertheless revealed his bias (and by his tone, his awareness that his bias is widely held in government) stating: "Unfortunately, pro-grazing interests will undoubtedly use [Rinne's] article to contest the science behind the claims of resource managers." Never mind, apparently, that these claims may be built on false assumptions without support in fact.

Such statements are justified in the minds of radicalized persons by their highly imaginative and often very sincere apocalyptic visions of pillaging bovines raping every riparian system in the West. These visions along with squeamishness about animal dung drive the rhetoric and actions of anti-livestock activists in and out of government. I have personally heard versions of this "cows (or sheep, or goats, or something... [supply favorite evil agricultural animal here]) will destroy the world" rant from dozens of federal officials.

Biologist and Attorney Dennis Parker loves wildlife and is a passionate advocate of good management. He is therefore passionate about the distortions that bias creates in dealing with wildlife issues.

"There is an entrenched culture in Federal land and resource management agencies based on socio-political philosophy rather than scientific inquiry" Dennis said. "For example, Region 3 of the Forest Service has created 'grazing guidance criteria' for endangered species consultations which are notorious among responsible scientists for institutionalizing speculation and assumption as if such were scientific fact while ignoring excellent research by its own (Rocky Mountain Research Station) scientists of which the agency was fully aware" Parker exclaimed.

"For its part the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are also notorious for uncritically accepting speculation and assumption posited as biological fact by N.G.O.'s (environmental groups) petitions to list various species under the Endangered Species Act. The result is that both the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service vie with one another to institutionalize bias at the expense of livestock grazing permittees and at the great injury of species these agencies are alleging to protect by doing so."

"It goes on and on, flycatchers, the owls, cyprinid fishes, it's endless. The Mearn's Quail are another example. Study after study by respected people proves that conservative to moderate grazing is good for Mearn's Quail. But if Mearn's Quail are found, cattle numbers are cut below those thresholds. I've got chapter and verse on all of this, the studies and many of the "Cut the Cows" decisions. It makes no sense!" Parker concluded.

Dr. Jerry Holechek (who is a widely respected and much quoted by government, researcher and professor of range science at New Mexico State University) shakes his head sadly when asked about anti-livestock group-think in governmental agencies. "In a sane environment we'd be paying ranchers for the ecosystem services they provide. Dr. Rick Knight says ranchers get paid for ¼ of what they do for society. In my book that's just about right (Bob Budd, Dick Richardson and the others concur). Look, this obsession with overgrazing is a disastrous waste of time and energy. It's well known that I'm firmly against overgrazing. Well, so are the vast majority of ranchers. Tremendous improvements have occurred just in the last ten years. I've got good science on that. Overgrazing, now, is a non-issue. It's not even a one on a ten scale."

"The West really is in terrible danger, but people won't face it because they're part of it. The real threat is the loss of rangeland to urban and ranchette development. Persecuting good ranchers is like shooting firemen because you see them whenever there's a fire. Driving ranchers off the land is feeding the monster that's eating the West."

We went over the shameful persecution of Jim and Sue Chilton, a situation with which we are both familiar (they own the Montana Allotment). As has been done elsewhere in the West, an ephemeral stream, California Gulch, which is dry most of most years, was designated a critical habitat for an allegedly endangered fish, the Sonora chub, another hardy cyprinid fish (though not hardy enough to get along well on dry land). In their Mexican home rivers, the banks and watersheds of which are widely overgrazed and degraded, there are millions of these flood and muddy water-loving fish. All southwest fisheries biologists know this. To call them endangered is an egregious, preposterous whopper of a lie.

Now, the ones that swim the few miles up California Gulch in floods are in trouble because bass, catfish and green sunfish get washed out of the town reservoir upstream from the Chiltons and they love to eat chubs. Then, of course, the stream dries up in time and bears, fish-eating birds, coyotes, coati mundi, raccoons and foxes clean them out of the shrinking pools.

This is no big thing biologically because as stated before, there are millions of them; but this ridiculous charade has cost the Chiltons a great deal of money and time and injured their health. They put together a document with over 100 pages of expert testimony to beat off this threat, an effort far beyond the resources of most ranchers. Anti-livestock activists count on breaking ranchers' bank accounts, their will and finally their hearts (I'm aware of deaths caused by this). They get paid to tell lies and it costs big money and many years to disprove them in the present climate, where livestock operators are guilty until proven innocent. Many federal scientists (not named to spare them reprisals) frequently complain that politically radical officials freely throw irresponsible claims into Biological Opinions, allotment reviews and Environmental Assessments all the time. Once they are on the legal record it takes years and millions of dollars to return policy and endangered species recovery efforts to the path of sanity and success.

Dr. Holechek and I, in the company of Dr. Galt and Sue Chilton spent a day on the Montana Allotment while I interviewed the Chiltons and the two good Doctors on video for an upcoming piece to be narrated by U.S. Senator Bob Bennett of Utah. The allotment is wonderfully beautiful and healthy. Waist high grass and over-grazing sensitive plants and wildlife abound, as do hunters, birdwatchers and other outdoor enthusiasts. Both Dr. Holechek and Dr. Galt agreed that this place is one of the most important and best documented successes of rangeland and riparian recovery due to managed grazing in the Southwest. But the persecution continues. An "environmental" group has them targeted on the internet as one of the "10 most overgrazed allotments in the West." Nothing could be more obviously false, but what does that matter? The illogic of these endangered fish and bird recovery plans can reach inspired levels. Miles wide riparian livestock exclusion zones are created for "protection." Forest Plans reveal, however, that watersheds deemed too fragile for livestock use are scheduled for burning in massive areas. This, of course, will expose any endangered fish to potentially lethal ash flows, documented by Federal scientists to be a grave danger to all aquatic organisms. It will also expose the riparian system to scouring floods which will destroy all vegetation for bird use along with any nestlings.

A few further examples include:

The Infamous Desert Tortoise Scam: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists claimed widespread destruction of tortoises by cows which they claimed stepped on tortoises and crushed their burrows (no cows have been documented to step on a tortoise and only one accidentally trampled burrow has been found), deprived them of food (this one is really ironic. Any desert rancher, desert dweller or competent desert reptile biologist will know that tortoises cluster around corrals to get fresh cow dung to eat. They need it for moisture, B vitamins, and easy nutrition. It greatly increases their health, active period and egg production. Also the desert annuals and other herbaceous plants tortoises depend on greatly decrease when livestock removal stops nutrient cycling and soil disturbance). All this and more was raised in the E.I.S. but the bias won out (locals report fewer tortoises, scientists report increases in tortoise diseases).
The Infamous Southwestern Willow Flycatcher Scam: Beginning with biologist Dennis Parker, private, university and federal biologists have documented the largest (by far, half of the subspecies) and most successful concentration of Southwest willow flycatchers on earth in New Mexico's Gila Cliff Valley. They are nesting in predominantly manmade second-growth box elder-dominated woodland (not willows, they avoid the willows) on irrigation ditches and returns, eating bees, wasps, and yellowjackets by preference (not flies or mosquitoes). This population refuses to occupy gallery forests on streams lined by willows-the kind of habitat federal endangered species documents insist they want-adjacent, upstream and downstream from the Gila Cliff Valley. They experience the lowest rate of cowbird parasitism of any population in the U.S. living among the highest and most diverse population of riparian non-colonial birds in North America. Some of the highest cowbird parasitism rates are in Grand Canyon National Park, where there are no cows. The Gila Cliff Valley has the highest concentration of livestock in Southwestern New Mexico. Despite this and much more, thousands of cattle have been removed allegedly to protect flycatchers. Right now in Arizona (Rock House) the feds are building mosquito ponds lined with willows for flycatchers. This is a West Nile Virus hot spot. These birds have no immunity.
The Infamous Mexican Spotted Owl Scam: According to Bent's "Life History of North American Birds" there were none of these in the U.S. before 1929 or until large scale logging began. These owls prefer steep, deep, dry, cool canyons. They dine by preference on wood rats (packrats) and other rodents. Most actual Mexican spotted owl habitat is inaccessible by livestock, but livestock are removed because they threaten the owls through exposing wood rats to avian predation. (You mean like by Mexican Spotted Owls? Avian still includes owls last I checked.)
The Infamous Lesser Long Nosed Bat Scam: This organism has millions of acres of protected habitat on federal land. It has been used to reduce livestock numbers and de-stock ranges. In fact, its numbers are limited only by lack of roosting and nursery habitat in caves. The Forest Service has closed over 200 abandoned mine entrances which could have served this need. More are being closed.
The Infamous "Arizona Agave" Scam: This flowering Yucca-like plant was recently found to be a hybrid, not a separatesubspecies. Ranchers have been impacted by the "need" to protect what is really a rarely produced cross of two common agave varieties.
The Infamous Pima Pineapple Cactus Scam: Most common on disturbed areas like golf course roughs, this plant is probably a hybrid or site-adapted version of other common pineapple cacti. It has cost ranchers, homeowners and others a great deal. It is being studied for delisting.
The Infamous Cactus Ferruginous Pygmy Owl Scam: Ranchers have been de-stocked by 90 percent over this bird, a Meso-American commonplace abundant in Mexico. Its listing as an endangered species was recently ruled by the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco as "arbitrary and capricious." Politics have prevented the lower court from ordering its delisting.
The Infamous Masked Bobwhite Quail Scam: Millions were spent buying land to "protect" these birds (whose core habitat is really in, yep you guessed it, Mexico). The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge was created. The cattle were removed, the tame, pen raised quail usually get eaten by coyotes, etc within a week, so the escapees left and went to nearby ranches. This is a very common outcome.

These are just a few of a very big list of examples. The anti-grazers passionately believe in the validity of all of them. We should not forget the activists' propensity for planting evidence (remember the bogus lynx hairs). The Tucson Star on May 16, 2004 published a similar story about a former refuge manager planting Chiricahua leopard frogs, apparently to create continued reasons for the Buenos Aires Refuge.

In Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument, cows under federal grazing prescriptions have also been alleged to create "dung fire" risk to underground artifacts, to rub petroglyphs off cliff walls, to endanger a historic structure (a corral), endanger native grasses and forbs (read on, we deal with this later), endanger native wildlife (ditto), to cause floods, erosion, water quality degradation, widespread public outrage, lost tourism revenues, juniper invasions (all not true), and destroy some recreationists' experience of the outdoors by their mere presence (what does this say about the biases of the recreationists?). All this was found, along with the flycatchers and the spotted owls in one federal document.

Why do anti-grazers in government act as they do? Hundreds of conversations with anti-grazing activists inside the federal government have outlined their reasons and motives clearly. They see themselves as principled, heroic figures performing civil disobedience to save nature from industry. Some view themselves as "monkey wrenchers" (from Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang") who do violence to the legal and scientific records rather than fences, wells, pipelines, barns or livestock. One activist in a BLM office sported a "Heyduke Lives" bumper sticker on his private car. They hold fellow workers who defend scientific grazing in disdain as having "sold out to the Man." They know that ranchers experience their deliberate trouble making as a form of domestic terrorism, but they feel that the end justifies the means.

That explains the activists who act in full knowledge that they use falsehoods as weapons. Even more pervasive, but just as damaging are those who simply and uncritically believe the body of false information passed on to them from authoritative sources. This tragic multiplier of dangerous (to nature) beliefs operates in the media as well, who then spread bias to the public. It all speaks to the huge disconnect between urban people and the truth about nature.

Thom Harrison is a well known and respected private psychotherapist, author, former faculty member at the University of Utah School of Medicine and instructor of Mediation and Conflict Resolution at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University.

"Bias operates at several levels," he said. "At the group level it functions through both fear-based and reward-based enforcement systems. A culture which develops a group bias can be ruthless with nonconformists. It will sanction and encourage actions such as marginalizing those who don't agree, slandering and libeling them, threatening their careers, withholding employment and advancement opportunities. It rewards conformity with opportunities deprived from those who won't support the bias. If the bias is directed against another group it plays the same game of intimidation and the rewards to complicit individuals in the persecuted group are provisional and shame laden. It's very complex. The dynamics of racists and African-Americans in the Old South are a perfect example. So are the things that went on in Nazi Germany and the occupied countries."

He agreed that anti-livestock/anti-rancher bias in the face of recent science and numerous landscape scale successes in achieving miracles of healing far in excess of "no grazing" through solid, prescribed and monitored livestock and range management operates at the same intellectual level and through the same mental pathways as racism, sexism, and other biases.

"It's a delusional process," he said. "Their belief is 'only what I think can exist and no one is allowed to see it differently.' Their own social, financial, and professional survival is at stake at very intense, emotional levels." Thom laughed when I shared Dr. Rinne's term "selective rather than objective comprehension."

"Perfect," he chuckled, "there's also a selective distribution of information. Facts which refute the bias are not perceived or remembered in efficiencies anything like those for pro-bias data. Anti-bias information is also suppressed in various ways. When several societal power groups, and especially when the media are involved, become allies in projecting prejudice, the cognitive distortions reach hallucinatory thresholds."

"It takes a brave soul to face all that. When informed that a group of researchers and activists were seeking funds to sue the federal government under N.E.P.A. to force examination of the environmentally destructive effects of removing managed livestock from public lands in any NEPA action, Dr. Jimmie Richardson, internationally connected soil scientist from North Dakota State University replied, "I'll be their first expert witness."

I know a lot of others who have similar guts and integrity. Dr. Jerry Holechek recently published a monumental survey of worldwide grazing literature which states in the summary, "There is strong scientific evidence that managed livestock perform important ecological services." The evidence, in journals, papers, and elsewhere shows that wildlife prefer properly grazed areas. Prescribed grazing supports riparian healing and watershed stability, soil health, and much higher biodiversity than no-grazing, higher soil (and overall) biomass, and higher reproductive and survival rates for native plants and animals.

The summary to "Controlled Grazing Versus Grazing Exclusion Impacts on Rangeland Ecosystems: What We Have Learned" continues, "The idea that managed livestock grazing is not ecologically sustainable in arid and semi-arid areas is refuted." That is what the research clearly demonstrates. Dr. Richardson's (along with Paul and Ann Nyren, Dr. Bob Patton and others at NDSU and NDSU's Central Grasslands Research Center) studies of grassland soils showed root zones averaging five inches for un-grazed grassland versus an average of 40 inches for prescription grazed areas. Native biodiversity was vastly greater as well, averaging one or two native plant species under non-native domination for un-grazed soils versus over 100 natives predominating on prescription grazed rangeland. Water infiltration and absorption capacity was over 10 times greater on the prescription grazed lands as well. These "prescribed, managed grazing is ten times better than no grazing" findings are not uncommon in the literature historically and in long observed often documented, landscape scale comparisons. So where do anti-grazing groups get the studies to convince judges to rule against ranchers?

"That's what drives me nuts," Dr. Holechek said. "It's an unethical and unscientific process. They use studies which document the effects of unmanaged livestock. That's not an honest comparison at all. You see the same set of studies quoted over and over, whenever they attempt to close allotments. Which is very ironic, since most of those findings were eliminated from our review because of bad study designs and unscientific methodologies. When you add that to the fact that they're not relevant at all unless the federally created grazing systems mandate unregulated livestock, it's a pretty sordid business."

Dr. Holechek agreed with the other scholars and experts I interviewed [Dr. Jimmy Richardson (NDSU), Dr. Roy Roath (CSU), Dr. Dick Richardson (UTAustin), Dr. Pat Richardson (UTAustin), Dr. Rick Knight (CSU), Dr. Bob Patton (NDSU Central Grasslands Research), Dr. Jim Bowns (Southern Utah University), Paul Nyren (Director, NDSU Central Grasslands Research), Ann Nyren (NDSU Central Grasslands Research), Mary Darling (Darling Consulting), Eric Schwennesen (Resource Management International), Tommie Martin (Ecorestore), Bob Budd (The Nature Conservancy, Red Canyon Ranch, Immediate Past President of the Society for Range Management), Dr. Jim Sprinkle (UofA), and Dennis Parker] that anti-livestock bias has its origin in the widespread abusive (European culture based) grazing practices of the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. "Rural people are now often blamed for things they didn't do," Ann Nyren told me in her sympathetic Irish accent.

"Abusive grazing is much less common now," Dr. Dick Richardson said. "But it continues in places. The trouble is that causation is complex. Symptoms like plant death or morbidity or the lack of herbaceous understory can have multiple causes. Any negative outcome will generally be blamed on overgrazing and that explanation will be believed. It's very convenient. Nobody has to be careful, follow a good scientific process, or think."

The experts I interviewed also agreed that most people, even the majority of those with range science degrees, have little or no ability to distinguish between the effects of drought, overgrazing followed by long term livestock removal, those of long term livestock removal, and those of continuing long term livestock overgrazing after a few months rest. Destructive fire effects are also often confused with those of overgrazing. All negatives are assumed to be livestock caused.

"Undergraduate education, especially, is failing resource management students all over the country," Dr. Rick Knight told me. "Of all the groups of people who live on and manage the land, ranchers, agency personnel, and ranchette dwellers, the ranchers are generally the best informed and have the fullest complement of tools to see that the land is more native than invasive, more covered ground than bare ground, more healthy than unhealthy." He added "Natural science students such as those in wildlife disciplines spend their time stuck to computer screens. They rarely see daylight."

She smiled tolerantly: "When they start out, anything positive on any ranch is seen by them as an endangered natural treasure that the cows just haven't managed to kill yet! They're usually wonderful, sensitive, well-meaning people. They're very learned in Latin taxonomy and methodologies. The thing is they've been conditioned to go along and not put their butts on the line. As for experience and the things eyes-open experience as naturalists do for people, you'd think some of them were raised in a closet."

She tells them all this to their faces. In her classes she explains to such folks in a humorous tone that she classifies them as "educated idiots." The other side of the problem is the bunch she calls "tunnel vision ranchers" who focus mostly on their animals. Tommie and I were both present when the president of one of the cattlemen's groups admitted proudly that he couldn't tell an annual from a perennial. He explained that he "hired consultants for that." He is not typical of ranchers, but that attitude does exist.

Tommie then tells them that if they put their assets of rancher experience and educated expertise together, they'll be very effective. All the interviewed experts gratefully agreed that science already has benefited greatly from ranchers keen, questioning, year-in-year-out observations. If scholars then use the fundamentalist science (where rancher/scientist teams conclusions are drawn from long term, real world scale data, not inferred by brief observations) that Dr. Rinne and other responsible scientists call for, breakthroughs occur and the resource benefits. They all warned against jumping to conclusions.

Eric Schwennesen frequently instructs government officials in Africa and other Third World locations. Their governments and people have sacrificed greatly for their elegant educations from the best universities in the world. They feel the responsibility keenly. When he sends them out on the land to make observations, they always come back with notebooks full of conclusions. It often takes repeated efforts before they grasp the difference. The experience leaves them shaken and angry.

"I was sent by my people, who exist always at risk of starvation, to be educated, not to be indoctrinated," one Malian extension service official told Eric. "Now I see that the evidence of the land contradicts much of what I was taught. I am bitterly disappointed in my university training, but I am now much relieved that I will not formulate disastrous policies out of certainty that is misguided. For my countrymen, who depend on their animals to survive, this could have caused added poverty, suffering and death."

"I really agree with Eric, Dr. Knight, Tommie Martin, Dr. Holechek and others who are deeply concerned about this issue," Dr. Dick Richardson said. "Bias is an inherent property of the standard method of instructing, evaluating, and awarding grades to students. It begins with the assumption that teachers know the answers in very young disciplines like ecology and range science. Students are given a standardized set of answers and a standardized set of indicators, or cognitive cues; that can only lead straight to those conclusions. That constitutes a classic circular logic trap."

"In my conservation biology courses, liberal arts students initially make better observations than the natural sciences students because they observe more generally and ask questions. They haven't been subjected to the punishment/reward/mental conditioning and the sensory deprivation that comes from being limited to a single one day or half day field trip per course per semester. Many of the indicating features are ephemeral and misleading. A single visit to a study site reveals almost nothing compared to repeated observations over an extended time period." "Instructors have the best of intentions, but many are third generation sufferers of the same abuse themselves. They really don't know better. Limited resources and rigid, formulaic methodologies are not up to the task of assisting students' minds to deal with vast interconnected complexities which are constantly changing over time."

Western National Parks (un-grazed for decades), act as time machines to reveal landscape scale consequences of livestock removal. If the anti-ranching crowd had been correct, these places should, after decades of rest, be beautiful examples of native biodiversity and optimum ecological functioning. Instead, in Arches, Canyonlands, Capital Reef, Zion, Lake Powell Recreation Area, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and other rangeland elevation parks, most of the native perennial grass and flowers are gone.

"That's a natural process of biological succession," said Dr. Jim Bowns of Southern Utah University, a respected expert, researcher and educator. "Without disturbance [from management activities that are part of ranching and prescribed grazing], the canopy cover of sagebrush and the other woody plants increases until the herbaceous [grass and flower] understory is purged and you have just shrubs, trees and bare ground. That's bad watershed, it's bad habitat for wild animals like birds, deer, etc., that need those herbaceous plants, which most do, and if it burns, you get erosion and nonnative cheat grass."

And Dr. Holechek's opinion on this topic: "The visions of healthy land people have regarding livestock removal are more fantasy than reality. The outcome is rarely very good ecologically. In various range sites the response is different. You may end up with tall coarse, low nutrient grass which acts in some ways like bushes. The ground between these big grey bunchgrasses is usually bare. Cactus may take over, salt desert shrub, mesquite and chaparral species also most often purge the understory without disturbance. So do juniper stands and piñon/juniper woodland. I have good studies on all of this."

When I shared the above with Dr. Bowns he replied: "Oh yes, of course, we've known all that for years. These depauperate [un-biodiverse] unproductive states can go on and on into any reasonable, foreseeable future. Like I said, the most likely natural pathway out of them is fire, but more often than not the energy and seed source of the site has degraded and you get cheatgrass or the equivalent, not the native perennials. What we need is proactive management that prevents these outcomes before the damage gets so severe. This damage happens in National Parks, in areas that are inaccessible to big animals and similar areas. There are now millions of acres of this type of thing."

Drs. Rasmussen and Keyes of Utah State University proved that concentrating livestock briefly in sagebrush steppe reverses the herbaceous losses. Native herbaceous perennials increased 500 percent from 200 kg/hectare to 1000 kg/hectare. Brave federal range managers teamed with environmentalists and ranchers have produced this restorative effect from Texas to Nevada, Arizona, Utah, etc…

All the experts agreed that the health of grasses is severely impacted if they are not properly grazed or otherwise defoliated periodically. Choking, old, dead material shades out living tissues until death is the result. The average grass plant loses 80 to 95 percent of living biomass in a few years. Many die entirely. This phenomenon is also pandemic in National Parks, so grasslands are not safe from the effects of over-rest.

Neither are riparian areas. I sat in a conference where Drs. Dan Neary and Al Medina and others explained that "wildlife critical native grass-sedge meadows are maintained by grazing. These are quickly shaded out, usually by non-native tamarisk and Russian olive trees in southern Utah, southern Nevada, and parts of California, southern Colorado and the lowland Southwest in general. Native willows are also very vulnerable to being shaded and killed or greatly reduced." They also said that these sedge meadows are far more stable and protective of streamside soils than woody plants. "Floods that tear out trees and soils pass harmlessly over massively rooted sedges and the ancient soils they stabilize." In the areas stated above, the destabilizing takeover of many riparian areas by non-native trees in Park Service administered lands and others where livestock are removed is as predictable as sunrise.

All these facts, manifested on millions of long-rested acres, are ignored by biased managers and scientists who call them "natural" changes or blame them on prior livestock damage. These denial mechanisms are refuted by the rapid healing intelligently prescribed and monitored grazing and management creates. Dr. Dick Richardson spoke forcefully about the problem, "Responsible scientists are primarily concerned for the survival of the natural world and humanity. Rushing to judgment puts these in peril. We must make use of all the available evidence. I challenge the federal agencies to take official scientific notice of what has happened in national parks and other livestock exclusion areas and to record and publish the data widely. These facts should affect policy. I challenge these agencies to perform their duty to inform the courts at all levels about the whole body of research, not just anti-grazing papers." (Dr. Holechek's bibliography from his recent paper has made some of that very easy.) "This is not about politics or perks or power or eminence or jobs after a federal career." "

I further challenge environmental groups to emerge from what Tommie Martin calls 'terminal certainty' about grazing issues. I challenge any uninformed ranchers and landowners to become the excellent naturalists many have been since childhood. I challenge everyone to stop fighting. The world has enough polemics and more than enough rhetoric. Lastly, I challenge the federal land management agencies to remove the climate of repression in the workplace and policy implementation that so distorts the process of science and good governance."

My experience is that when we get people out on the land together, they soon change their minds about many things. Extremists soften their views as the evidence piles up in the presence of other people. Learned professors learn even more. Tommie Martin and I have witnessed hard cases from both sides hugging each other when they saw they had exactly the same feelings and goals for the land.

"Bias is all about fear, repression, distortions, lies, lost integrity and tyranny," Thom Harrison told me. "It's like a dark dehumanizing dream. When people wake up to a wider more realistic view of existence, they feel clean, free and grateful. One can only hope the process of awakening is not too painful or too long."

DuBois column

More government misconduct, wilderness testimony, a letter on grazing and a new rural tax

Government misconduct

My two most recent columns have covered the mistrial in the Bundy case and then the dismissal “with prejudice” of all charges against the Bundys. Recently, several court documents were unsealed for the first time. I reviewed the documents, which included several motions to dismiss and the transcript of Judge Gloria Navarro’s final decision. Given the media’s bias in favor of the prosecution I was concerned their reports had overstated the government misconduct due to their disappointment in the outcome. What I found was just the opposite.

For instance, the government’s justification for such a “highly militarized” approach to the cattle confiscation was the danger posed by Cliven Bundy and his family. I had previously written that an FBI threat assessment came to the opposite conclusion. Indeed, the recently disclosed documents show there were actually four such threat assessments completed. Those threat assessments were prepared by the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Task Force, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Gold Butte Cattle Impound Risk Assessment, and they all concluded the Bundys posed no danger and referred to Cliven Bundy’s history of seeking non-violent and legal means of addressing the issues, These documents, which had not been turned over to the defense, demonstrate the BLM’s entire plan of operation was based upon a lie.

One of the key defense theories was that some of the defendants were there to protest the government’s treatment of the Bundys. The government, however, charged that defendant Ryan Payne had made ‘false statements”, including his claim that government snipers were placed around the Bundy home. It was previously disclosed that the snipers did, in fact, exist. The new documents show that after finally admitting the existence of the snipers, the government argued that technically they weren’t really “snipers”, and besides they were not actually “deployed” and were only “training” in the area. Judge Navarro found this argument “disingenuous” and “a deliberate attempt to mislead and to obscure the truth”, especially since there were three separate FBI documents referring to them as snipers. Judge Navarro also said the Court had “serious questions” about why the FBI “inexplicably placed (or perhaps hid)” information about the placement of FBI snipers, “on a thumb drive, inside a vehicle, for over three years.” Sure sounds suspicious to me. How about you?                

Read through the judge’s decision and you will find phrases like “reckless disregard”, “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct”, “intentional abnegation of responsibility”, “willfully failed to disclose”, “conduct especially egregious”, and “grossly shocking” when describing government conduct and concluding that, “a universal sense of justice has been violated.”  Keep in mind this is by a judge who was sponsored by Senator Harry Reid, nominated by President Obama and who, prior to this, had sided with the government on almost every issue brought to the court.  

Wilderness testimony       

A subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources recently held a hearing on S. 441, the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Conservation Act. Sponsored by New Mexico Senators Udall & Heinrich, this legislation would designate eight new Wilderness areas on or near our border with Mexico.     

The New Mexico Cattle Growers Association submitted testimony in opposition to the bill. President Tom Sidwell said the grazing guidelines in the bill were, “written when most wilderness areas existed in the high country where the allotments had natural waters and were seasonal in nature.  The lands affected by this legislation occur in a desert ecosystem where the resource and ranching needs are far different.” Sidwell requested that, “Congress or an independent entity conduct a thorough review of the guidelines applicability to desert allotments and make recommendations for any warranted changes” and that no new desert areas be designated until the review was completed and revisions considered. Sidwell also expressed concern over the bill’s impact on the health and safety of rural residents in the area, stating, “The prohibition on motorized vehicles and mechanical equipment will place severe limitations on the Border Patrol and therefore threaten the safety of residents in the area. It defies common sense to create a ‘no law enforcement zone’ in this border country.”

President Sidwell also questioned the need for the legislation to protect these lands, stating, “By Presidential proclamation they are withdrawn from all forms of disposal, just like Wilderness. By that same proclamation they are withdrawn from all forms of mineral entry, just like Wilderness. There can be no new roads built, just like Wilderness. So we ask why impose this additional regulatory burden on the users of these lands?”

Also submitting testimony in opposition to the bill were the New Mexico Woolgrowers, the Western Heritage Alliance, the Dona Ana County Farm & Livestock Bureau, the Southwest Grazing Association, the Council of Border Conservation Districts, the Mesilla Valley Sportsmens Alliance, Joe Delk and ranchers Carol Cooper, Gary Thurm, Tom Mobley, Steve Wilmeth and Wesley Eaton.   

Monument language

In his report to President Trump concerning the review of national monuments, Secretary Zinke said he was contemplating changes to the grazing language in the two New Mexico national monuments under review. The New Mexico Cattle Growers has written to Secretary Zinke encouraging him to make such a change. Calling the grazing language in the Rio Grande del Norte and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks national monuments “the most anti-grazing of any proclamations where grazing is still allowed”, President Sidwell recommended the language in the Basin and Range National Monument. That grazing language, said Sidwell, is “clear and precise that the designation does not affect the administration of livestock grazing, and results in livestock grazing being on an equal footing with other uses.”

A rural tax

The White House recently praised an Oregon program that charges participants 1.7 cents for each mile driven on state roads. Many say this is another sign that President Trump is open to a mileage tax to fund his infrastructure initiative. Rural residents, however, already spend a larger percentage of their income on transportation than the general population, and a tax of this type would increase that disparity. And guess who will benefit the most from this new revenue? That’s right, the relatively wealthier urban residents. This is the opposite of a Robin Hood Tax, it’s a Sheriff of Nottingham tax.   

Until next time, be a nuisance to the devil and don’t forget to check that cinch.

 Frank DuBois was the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of a blog: The Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com) and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and The DuBois Western Heritage Foundation

This column originally appeared in the March issue of the New Mexico Stockman and the March issue of the Livestock Market Digest.