Full release:

Corvallis, OR – On Friday, February 10th, activists from both Seattle and Portland Animal Defense League and Cascadia Earth First! infiltrated the spring board meeting of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association to confront the group on its anti-wolf propaganda and recent [...]]]>

Full release:

Activists Take Over OCA Meeting and Call Attention to Anti-Wolf Legislation

Corvallis, OR – On Friday, February 10th, activists from both Seattle and Portland Animal Defense League and Cascadia Earth First! infiltrated the spring board meeting of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association to confront the group on its anti-wolf propaganda and recent Oregon House Bill 4158.

Starting last week, the Oregon Legislature began reading and hearing arguments on HB4158, colloquially known as the “Wolf Kill Bill.” This bill, a brainchild of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, would circumvent the state’s Endangered Species Act, declare a state of emergency, and streamline the killing of wolves for the supposed benefit of the ranching industry.

For over one hundred years, ranching special interests have been scapegoating wildlife in general and wolves in particular, leading to the total extermination of wolves in the lower 48. Since the return and reintroduction of wolves into the Rockies in the mid-90s, ranching lobbyists have been obstructing ecological balance and healthy wolf recovery through every avenue possible. Now almost two decades later, Oregon has 29 wolves being labeled an emergency and threatened with imminent death. Idaho and Montana have killed collectively almost 300 wolves in a public hunt aimed at eradicating the Northern Rockies population. The Great Lakes wolf population has been stripped of federal protection and is now in the sights of hunters for the first time in 30 years.

This modern reincarnation of anti-wolf sentiment and extermination can be sourced to the prominence of the ranching industry and its presence in state and federal legislatures. Organizations such as the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association are the backbone of the anti-wolf movement.

“The OCA needs to be held responsible for the plight of wildlife due to welfare ranching. They need to be held responsible for the plight of wolves,” says Justin Kay of the Animal Defense League. “The vast majority of Oregonians applaud the return of wolves as a welcome homecoming and their sentiments stand in stark contrast to this hysterical legislation in Oregon’s House right now.”

Portland activists infiltrated the OCA’s Spring Quarterly Meeting to disrupt sessions dealing wolf policy and publicly confront Rod Childers, OCA’s Wolf Task Force chairman. Activists occupied the conference room holding a banner reading, “Welfare Ranching Destroys Wildlife” and were forced out after shedding light on the destructive nature of ranching for both “livestock” and wildlife.

A woman in the crowd can be heard saying, “Nobody’s listening to you guys.”

I beg to differ.  I heard something about, ”Polluting the Land, Polluting the Water, Profiting off the Animal Slaughter!”

Is that what you heard ?  That’s totally what I heard.

Listen …

Wildlife Services has been [...]]]> Brooks Fahy, of Predator Defense in Eugene, Oregon, has put together an account of Robert Norie, the owner of Bella the husky, and the ordeal they went through after Bella was caught in an unmarked USDA Wildlife Services snare set for wolves in Idaho’s Boise National Forest in August 2010.

Wildlife Services has been implicated in a number of accidents involving non-target animals but this is one of those stories which actually made its way to the public.

As most readers know, USDA Wildlife Services, not to be confused with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, is the livestock industry’s wildlife killing arm of the federal Government. They receive funds from various sources such as counties, states, and the federal government. They are the agency which conducts aerial hunts on coyotes and many other species at the behest of livestock interests. They also conduct operations which kill or scare animals which are deemed a nuisance to city dwellers, agriculture, or airport safety. That being said, they have many critics who would like to see their predator killing days end.

I’ve been contacted recently by someone who is writing a long story about these types of incidents which have occurred at the hands of USDA Wildlife Services over the last several years. We will surely post a link to the story when it comes out this spring.

Predator Defense – Unmarked Snare Almost Kills Beautiful Husky in Boise National Forest.
Brooks Fahy – PREDATOR DEFENSE

The fee, which is required of each public [...]]]> Increased Fees to Graze On Public Land Still Doesn’t Cover Costs 

President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget for the Department of the Interior includes a tiny bit of good news for western public lands: a $1 increase in the fee charged for livestock grazing on Bureau of Land Management lands.

The fee, which is required of each public land rancher to “utilize” (i.e. degrade) “forage” (i.e. wildlife habitat) belonging to the American public, is assessed by the “Animal Unit Month,” (‘AUM’ the equivalent “forage” to feed a cow/calf pair or five sheep for a month).

The amount of the fee is set by an antiquated formula established by the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978 (PRIA) at a paltry $1.35 for the past five years.   Normally using PRIA the grazing fee can’t be raised more than 25% in a single year.  However,  by using the budget, Obama proposes to bypass the grazing fee formula’s restriction increasing the fee by $1 (75%) per AUM.

Even with the extra dollar, the fee fails to keep up with inflation since passage of PRIA, fails to come close to covering the cost of administering the federal grazing program, and fails to come close to collecting for taxpayers what private land ranchers pay on the open market (closer to $15 for equivalent AUMs on private pasture).

However, it appears as though the Obama Administration is moving in the right direction, getting the people who benefit from the program to pay a little bit more as compared to the American taxpayer.

Despite that, the news of the proposed $1 increase has public lands ranchers convincing themselves that the sky is falling:

Obama’s Budget Proposes To Increase Federal Lands Grazing Fee - beefmagazine.com

Dustin Van Liew, PLC executive director and NCBA director of federal lands, said increasing the grazing fee through an arbitrary tax is unwarranted and is further evidence that the president and his administration are out of touch with production agriculture.

In a political climate where congress is cutting the budget on educating our children, it sounds to me like Dustin Van Liew is out of touch with reality.

The Livestock industry talking-point likening the increase in grazing fee to an increased “tax” is absurd.  The Government Accountability Office’s 2005 report (pdf) describes the entire federal grazing program running at a $123 million annual deficit just in administrative costs. The report estimated that the BLM would need to collect at least $7.64 per animal unit month to cover the costs.  $2.35 total is nowhere near that amount, to say nothing of the market rate ranchers are paying on private ground.

Put another way, for every $1 that public lands ranchers pay to graze their cattle and sheep on public lands, the American taxpayer paid $4.66 to facilitate those same ranchers’ cattle and sheep destruction of our public lands.

The $1 pilot-program fee proposed in Obama’s budget would raise the AUM to $2.35 and is estimated at generating $6.5 million more in 2013 than the PRIA fee alone - meaning the program still operates in the red – it’s not enough.

Of course, all of this is to say nothing of what third-parties have concluded as a more accurate accounting of the the true cost of grazing on public lands (pdf), which sets the costs at closer to $500,000,000 of deficit spending every year.

Bottom Line:  The federal grazing program is a big Loser.

The Obama Administration could not set the fee high enough to cover the true costs in treasure and in  the loss of imperiled species, impaired water quality, destroyed soils and a multitude of other environmental values – all of which ought be our children’s entitlement.

Will the president’s proposed grazing fee increase survive Congress ?  Perhaps those in the Livestock Lobby would prefer we take more money from American school-children in order to keep those federal dollars flowing to accommodate their destructive use of our children’s environmental heritage ?

Judge [...]]]> Federal Court Decision Holds That Protecting Sage-Grouse Must Take Priority Over Livestock Grazing in Owyhee Canyonlands and beyond in Southwest Idaho

Early last week the federal district court of Idaho affirmed Western Watersheds Project’s challenge to five Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing decisions in southwest Idaho’s Owyhee Canyonlands that harmed Greater sage-grouse.

Judge rules SW Idaho grazing allotments illegal - Associated Press 2/13/2012

“Because the grazing permits are unlawful, BLM has no authority to continue grazing on these allotments,” [said Todd Tucci, Advocates for the West attorney]

The repercussions of this court decision are likely to be far-reaching.  The court’s decision on these five allotments serve as a test case setting the standard by which hundreds of on-the-ground level BLM grazing decisions in southwest Idaho will be challenged.

This decision is also important as it serves as a strong indictment of the effectiveness of federal land-managers’ implementation and enforcement of “regulatory mechanisms” established within their own land-use management plans to protect the imperiled sage grouse.

Livestock grazing negatively impacts sage grouse habitat in a variety of ways.  Livestock remove forbs (wildflowers) and grasses essential to survival and recruitment of baby sage grouse.  Livestock developments, including water tanks pipelines and fencing, fragment habitat and provide roosts for predators.  The list goes on and on.

The Big Picture

WWP and Advocates’ ultimate vision is to foster a new conservation ethic in public land and wildlife management agencies that is protective of the west’s imperiled Sagebrush Sea.  The effort has largely relied on judicial challenges aimed at enforcing existing laws that the groups argue, if properly administered, would themselves secure meaningful restoration of sagebrush habitats across western public lands.  The groups have generally relied on a three-pronged approach:

Greater Sage-grouse distribution

An effort to actively push for Endangered Species Act protections for Greater Sage-grouse across its range – an effort that has already sent local, state and federal public land and wildlife managers scrambling, ultimately prompting efforts and policy changes to establish lesser-level protections that would otherwise not exist were it not in an effort to prevent federal listing.

WWP and Advocates have succesfully brought wide-sweeping challenge of agency land-use administration at the  programatic planning level.

And finally, as is the case here – the groups have executed direct challenges to on-the-ground decisions at the land-use level, illustrating how broader agency policies and existing statutes are – or are not – being properly administered and what that means for imperiled species, wildlife habitats, water and other environmental values on-the-ground.

Though Western Watersheds Project’s ultimate aim of securing Endangered Species Act protections for Greater sage-grouse is not yet realized, each of the three legs of this effort are executed in such a way that they bolster each-other.   On-the-ground level court challenges such as these are critical steps laying the groundwork in the judicial record documenting systemic failures of federal land-managers to execute agencies’ self-imposed protections for habitats their own scientists deem important.

On the Ground

Livestock grazing severely degrades wildlife habitat on the East Castle creek Allotment, photo: Katie Fite, WWP.

Because sage-grouse are imperiled and BLM policy sets their protection as a priority (designated “sensitive species” worthy of protections at least equivalent to Endangered Species List “candidate species”), other land uses that conflict with sage grouse, such as public lands ranching, must be adequately addressed.  Logically, given BLM’s own admission that livestock grazing has impacted sage grouse habitat, that ought mean that when decision-makers renew permits they address those impacts by reducing the impact – i.e. number of livestock that graze or the duration that livestock persist on the public lands impacted.  Instead, as is the case on the five allotments at issue in this test case, land-managers have refused to make adequate adjustments permitting the same number of livestock for the same duration on the allotments at issue.  These failures demonstrate that there exists a strong agency/industry bias to maintain the status quo - and that so long as this bias is allowed to direct management, sage grouse will continue to decline.  WWP and Advocates argue that these shortcomings are pervasive across the West – and the groups will have the opportunity to demonstrate as much with the hundreds of grazing decisions yet to be decided in this ongoing litigation.

Such agency failures to effectively administer necessary protections will be a strong variable informing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) final decision on the adequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms to protect sage grouse, thus whether it is necessary to extend the full protections of the Endangered Species Act to Greater sage-grouse as USFWS approaches a 2015 deadline on a final listing decision.

Supporting WWP’s contention that protections are not being adequately enforced Judge Winmill’s 55-page order validated each of Western Watersheds Project’s claims that BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Land Policy Management Act, the Fundamentals of Rangeland Health and the Bureau of Land Management’s Owyhee and Bruneau Field Offices’ own Range Management Plans (RMPs).

Judge Winmill found that BLM decisions to renew unchanged grazing have failed to prioritize protections for the charismatic native bird, a condition BLM’s own RMPs established, and that:

“To the extent livestock and sage grouse conflict, it is grazing that must yield.”

This court order gives decision-makers a unique insight into how their lofty high-level memorandums, superfluous rule-making processes, and internal policies crafted in offices in D.C. are pretty much ignored by the boots on-the-ground, ultimately failing to provide ‘adequacy’ as existing regulatory mechanisms that theoretically ought protect sage grouse.

The decision: BLM misses.  Big Time.

The bar has been set for many public land livestock grazing allotments in southwestern Idaho, it will be interesting to see whether the BLM has enough will and judicial cover to buck the industry/political pressure that has been driving agency mis-administration of its own policy in a direction favorable to grazing, and consequently driving sage grouse populations into the ground, for decades; OR whether the BLM is irretrievably captured by Livestock and incapable of providing necessary protections for sage-grouse regardless of internal policy.

More importantly, the positive changes prompted through the relief of livestock impacts on sagebrush habitat and wildlife in the Owyhee Canyonlands following this important decision will be exciting to observe in coming years.