WildEarth Guardians

Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Livestock Producers, Herbalist Concerned Over Herbicide Use

A Taos-based livestock group and a professional herbalist are worried the proposed use of herbicides at Carson and Santa Fe National Forests will negatively impact their businesses
Contact: Staci Matlock Santa Fe New Mexican

A Taos-based livestock group and a professional herbalist are worried the proposed use of herbicides at Carson and Santa Fe National Forests will negatively impact their businesses.

Meanwhile, the regional forester will decide by Thursday if the two national forests can use herbicides in their efforts to control noxious weeds. Last fall, Carson and Santa Fe released a joint plan that was six years in the making for controlling invasive weeds on about 7,000 acres of forest. Methods would include hand-pulling the weeds and having goats eat them, but more than a dozen chemically sensitive residents and environmentalists appealed the plan because it also calls for using herbicides.

A group of more than a dozen sheep and cattle producers in Taos and members of Taos Mountain Beef are worried the use of herbicides will prevent them from achieving organic certification. Several of the producers graze their livestock on national-forest allotments, according to Steve Kenin, director of Taos Mountain Beef. Grass-fed livestock are raised completely on grass pasture and are not sent to commercial feedlots before slaughter.

Taos Mountain Beef formed a year ago to study the possibility of providing grass-fed organic meat grown, processed and marketed entirely in Northern New Mexico. Kenin said close to 100 producers could benefit. “If they spray, we might not be able to market it as organic,” Kenin said.

Organic grass-fed beef commands higher market prices than conventional feedlot beef and offers health benefits for consumers, said David Trew, a ranch consultant to the group. Organic now brings $600 to $800 per head of cattle compared to $250 per head for feedlot cattle, Trew said.

Rob Hawley, co-owner of long-time business Taos Herbs, said the use of herbicides could keep his staff from gathering plants in the Carson National Forest. Even if it is carefully applied in one spot, “the wind carries this stuff, and it will end up in streams,” Hawley said from his store in Taos.

Lucy Aragon, a naturalresources coordinator for the Carson National Forest, said piñon pickers and herbalists like Hawley have expressed concern over herbicide use. She said none of the livestock producers had contacted the office in the six years the plan has been under development.

Aragon, a grass-fed-beef fan, said the Carson National Forest doesn’t want to harm the Taos Mountain Beef efforts. She said producers need to meet with them to see if any areas marked for herbicides fall near or in their allotments. They can also help the forest design a system to notify livestock producers, herbalists and others when spraying is going to occur.

She said so far, noxious weeds have been mapped on only 2,000 acres out of 1.4 million acres of the Carson National Forest, making them still easy to control. Aragon said manual methods such as handpulling weeds and using goats to graze down them down works well for some plants. “But it requires more monitoring and time,” she said. “If these people are concerned about herbicides and want to partner with us, we welcome it.”

National forest staff and land managers say non-native , invasive weeds chase out native ones and change ecosystems.

Hawley takes a somewhat radical view of weeds. “Even without humans, seeds are blown all over by wind, animals and birds carry them. Weeds create what people perceive as imbalance in the environment,” Hawley said. “But the earth has been changing its environment for millions of years.”

Hawley and his staff collect more than 40 species of both native plants and ones the Carson National Forest has on the invasive, bad-plant list. Both have medicinal purposes, he said.

Kenin said proven alternatives to herbicides exist. “Since they have more traditional methods than spraying, why not use them?” Kenin said. Aragon said people in local communities need to be educated about how weeds spread. “Taos has a massive weed problem,” she said. “If we could stop people from pulling their (all-terrain vehicles) out of their backyard weeds and tracking them up there to the forests, it would help.”

Copyright 2006 Santa Fe New Mexican - Reprinted with permission