WildEarth Guardians

Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Forest Service Rubber Stamps Grazing on Over Half a Million Acres of New Mexico's Wolf Country

Forest Service fails to consider wolves when reauthorizing grazing on the Gila national forest
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

Santa Fe, NM - Under a series of closed-door decisions made in 2006 and 2007, the U.S. Forest Service has rubber stamped cattle grazing on more than half a million acres of the Mexican gray wolf recovery zone, thereby guaranteeing unmitigated wolf-livestock conflicts in New Mexico until at least 2016. Although conservation groups like the Santa Fe-based WildEarth Guardians have long been urging the Forest Service to consider how poor grazing management hinders wolf recovery, the agency has chosen to forgo public participation and environmental analysis in favor of quick grazing approvals to a small group of largely anti-wolf ranchers.

Normally required by federal law to examine and subject to public scrutiny how grazing is likely to impact protected species, the Forest Service has been relying on a federal loophole to issue grazing permits while avoiding an examination of impacts to species. This loophole, created in 2005 by a congressional appropriations rider, allows the agency to "categorically exclude" from environmental analysis a small number of grazing management decisions in areas where "extraordinary circumstances" like threatened and endangered species or critical habitat are not a factor.

Over the past thirteen months, the Forest Service has used categorical exclusions ("CEs") to authorize grazing on 26 allotments on the Gila- defacto classifying a vital portion of the Mexican wolf recovery area as "un-extraordinary." Conservationists take serious issue with the Forest Service's dismissal of wolves on the Gila. This is because perhaps chief among the threats the Mexican gray wolf faces in New Mexico are excessive removals stemming from conflicts with cattle.

"Forest Service could - and should - be taking a hard look at how its permittees can better avoid wolf-livestock conflicts on the Gila," says Melissa Hailey, Grazing Reform Program Director with WildEarth Guardians. "The Forest Service's influence on the wolf recovery program has been greatly underestimated. Because this agency decides how practically all of land within the wolf recovery zone will be managed, the way in which it runs its grazing program is of great import to this critically endangered species."

Since the inception of the Mexican wolf recovery program in 1998, no more than 59 lobos have existed in the wild at any one given time. Still, federal managers have removed more than 55 lobos from the wild for conflicting with cattle on Forest Service grazing allotments. The 26 allotments categorically excluded by the Forest Service are no exception to the problem. According to the Forest Service's own data, wolves use or have used half of the categorically excluded allotments, at least seven of which have plans in place to shoot or otherwise remove wolves that conflict with cattle. Wolf-livestock conflicts have already occurred on five of these allotments, some of which resulted in wolves lost from the wild.

WildEarth Guardians has been in litigation with the Forest Service since last year over its failure to consider wolves when reauthorizing grazing on the Gila. The group continues to amend its pleadings as word of more categorical exclusions come in. "When we filed our suit in October, we didn't know about the 'September Surprise,'" Hailey says, referring to the 13 categorical exclusions issued by the Forest Service in September 2007, which together encompassed more than 250,000 acres of habitat for endangered wolves, owls, frogs, and fish, not to mention thousands of acres of wilderness and inventoried roadless areas. WildEarth Guardians' suit seeks to stop all grazing on the 26 categorically excluded allotments unless and until the Forest Service complies with federal law and conducts appropriate environmental analyses including a hard look at impacts to wolves.