WildEarth Guardians

Thursday, July 13, 2006
Conservationists Object to New Grazing Laws

Shared ownership of range improvements and water rights would make it harder to manage grazing allotments to protect endangered species.
Contact: Albuquerque Journal

Washington - A conservationist group is asking a federal court to block new grazing regulations that it contends would give ranchers more water rights and control over public lands.

The Bureau of Land Management announced the final rules Wednesday, and they are to go into effect next month.

First proposed in December 2003, the regulations would increase collaboration between the agency and ranchers whose livestock graze on 160 million acres of the nation's public lands.

The rules would allow livestock owners to share costs and ownership of range improvements, for example, and would give some ranchers additional water rights.

The rules would also lessen some public input on decisions affecting public rangelands to make the permitting process more efficient.

"Under the new regulations, BLM is allowing ranchers to dictate terms of grazing while excluding the public," said Laird Lucas, lead attorney for the Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project, the group filing the lawsuit in Boise's U.S. District Court. "The result will be widespread harm to fish and wildlife due to overgrazing."

The rules will affect 11.5 million acres in New Mexico, said Greta Anderson of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. She called them "an unabashed handout to the grazing industry."

Santa Fe-based WildEarth Guardians agreed.

"The new rules are horrible," said conservation director Nicole Rosmarino, adding that shared ownership of range improvements and water rights would make it harder to manage grazing allotments to protect endangered species.

Erik Ness, spokesman for the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, singled out those two provisions as helpful to ranchers.

"There's some good things in there," he said.

"The livestock industry appreciates the Department of the Interior and the administration recognizing the importance and value that ranchers and livestock producers contribute to open space and wildlife," said Caren Cowan, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association.

"We're a little disappointed they didn't go a little further to help us," she added.

Bureau of Land Management officials said the rules will improve the agency's working relationships with public-land ranchers and encourage more range improvements.

"These new regulations are aimed at promoting more effective and efficient management of public-lands grazing, which is a vital part of the history, economy and social identity of Western rural communities," BLM director Kathleen Clarke said.

Copyright 2006 Albuquerque Journal - Reprinted with permission