Tag Archives: livestock

BLM Resource Advisory Council Meeting to be Broadcast on Web

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Cows in Nevada (Photo © Anne Novak)

Cows in Nevada (Photo © Anne Novak)

From a BLM press release:

Reno, Nev.— The joint meeting of the Nevada Bureau of Land Management’s three Resource Advisory Councils (RACs) will be broadcast over the web on February 6 and 7 at http://www.blm.gov/live/.

The meeting is being held at the High Desert Inn, 3015 Idaho Street, Elko, NV. A public comment period is scheduled for Feb. 6 from 4 to 4:30 p.m. Written comments can also be submitted to RAC Coordinator Chris Rose at crose@blm.gov or by mail at: RAC Comments, Attn: Chris Rose, 1340 Financial Blvd., Reno, NV 89502.

The agenda and additional information will be posted at http://on.doi.gov/1bkJm1g. Individuals who plan to attend and need further information about the meeting or need special assistance such as sign language interpretation or other reasonable accommodations may also contact Chris Rose.

The Sierra Front-Northwestern Great Basin RAC, the Northeastern Great Basin RAC, and the Mojave-Southern Great Basin RAC each have 15-members that represent a variety of public land interests. The Nevada RACs advise the Secretary of the Interior, through the BLM Nevada State Director, on a variety of planning and management issues associated with public land management in Nevada.

The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM’s mission is to manage and conserve the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations under our mandate of multiple-use and sustained yield. In Fiscal Year 2013, the BLM generated $4.7 billion in receipts from public lands

—BLM—
RAC 2014 tri rac agenda

Australian pro-kill article spins brumby massacre despite livestock damaging the land and plans for Fracking

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When will Australia come clean with the real reason they want to kill off the brumbies? Read the biased spin piece (below) that doesn’t mention the other side of the debate. Why isn’t ABC including brumby advocates in this article?

 

Cross-posted from ABC

Feral horse cull commences in the central Kimberley

By Belinda Varischetti and Babs McHugh

Updated Thu 31 Oct 2013, 1:47pm AEDT

An aerial cull of thousands of feral horses has started on two Indigenous pastoral leases in the central Kimberley.

The Kimberley Rangeland Biosecurity Group says there are about 6,000 feral horses on Lake Gregory and Billiluna stations. However, the Pastoralists and Graziers Association believes the number is closer to 9,000.

The Aboriginal Lands Trust says the horses must be removed to protect the local environment, to comply with legal obligations and to mitigate animal welfare and public health issues.

The RSPCA is also supporting the aerial cull.

Clinton Wolf is the chair of the Aboriginal Lands Trust.

“What I am firm on is the number in relation to the aerial count and that was 6,000 horses,” he said.

“The logistics is basically that the RSPCA is heavily involved, we’ve got two veterinarians there, I believe that there is two helicopters involved and that’s the standard way of doing culls in Western Australia on pastoral leases and we’ve just tried to make sure that we’ve followed to the letter the exact requirements for best practice aerial culling which we believe and we’ve been told by a variety of experts is the most humane way of dealing with the feral horse population.”

Mr Wolf says the traditional owners want the feral horse numbers under control for business and personal safety considerations.

“Build a fence one day and the next day it’s not there because a huge herd of wild horses has run right through the middle of it. You can see the distress in their eyes and they’ve had a connection with these horses for 120 years.

“When you see them say we’ve had enough and sure we want a few horses out here because we want to maintain that connection, but you can’t have six to seven thousand horses running around and what is concerning them also is when there was no water around, the horses were coming into the community.

“And you’ve got two or three year old kids walking around and we’re not saying wild horses are aggressive or anything like that, but when you’ve got a wild animal that suddenly takes flight over a vehicle going past and takes off and runs over the top of a child, is anyone going to turn around and say ‘well, we should put up with that’, because quite clearly we shouldn’t.

“We’ve got a feeling that if we get on top of the bulk of them, we’ve already had discussions with Kimberley land Council rangers who are saying that as part of their duty statement that they’re prepared to participate moving forward so that we absolutely keep a handle on this.”

The Australian Wildlife Conservancy has backed the cull of the brumbies at Lake Gregory “as long as it’s humanely conducted”.

The AWC owns more than 800,000 acres in the Kimberley, most of it former pastoral stations.

The land is being rehabilitated and cleared of feral animals to help build up numbers of endangered species.

Chief executive Atticus Fleming says the brumbies don’t belong there.

“Feral horses do have a significant impact on the environment, they are driving the decline in our wildlife, along with other feral herbivores.

“So action does need to be taken. It needs to be done humanely, but we need to remove them from the Australian environment.”

Mr Fleming says the option of rounding up and breaking in the brumbies wouldn’t be practical in the vast Kimberley.

BLM ducks complaint about suppressing livestock damage

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By U.S. Government [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By U.S. Government [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Washington, DC (November 29, 2012) — The biggest and most ambitious scientific undertaking in the history of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is languishing after it was revealed the agency directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a possible factor in changing landscapes. The agency has also yet to respond to a scientific integrity complaint filed one year ago by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) charging that the exclusion of livestock data constituted political interference.

Launched in 2010 with more than $40 million in stimulus funds, BLM sought to analyze ecological conditions across six “eco-regions” covering the Sagebrush West. There was only one catch: when scientists were assembled BLM managers informed them that there was one “change agent” that would not be studied – the impacts of commercial livestock grazing. BLM managers told stunned scientists the reason for this puzzling exclusion was due to “stakeholders” opposition and fear of litigation, according to documents appended to the PEER complaint. Since that complaint –

  • These so-called “Rapid Ecoregional Assessments” have all stalled with no timetable for completion although they were slated to be finished this year;
  • To investigate the PEER complaint, BLM tagged Louis Brueggeman, its Fire Management Liaison, to act as “Scientific Integrity Officer.” It is not clear that Mr. Brueggeman has interviewed a single witness proffered by PEER. Nonetheless in an October 12, 2012 email, he said he was “in the process of finalizing the report” responding to the November 2011 PEER complaint; and
  • BLM now claims its studies are limited to “four overarching environmental change agents: climate change, wildfires, invasive species, and development (both energy development and urban growth)” but notes “Additional change agents may also be addressed based on ecoregional needs.”

What makes this last bit of revisionist rationale from BLM so questionable is that the agency’s own records show that the primary cause (nearly 80%) for BLM lands not meeting range health standards is damage from livestock, far eclipsing drought, fire, invasion by non-native plants or sprawl – the factors BLM now calls “overarching.” In fact almost 40% of all BLM allotments surveyed since 1998 fail to meet the agency’s own required land health standards due to livestock grazing – more than 33 million acres, an area bigger than the entire State of Alabama. Livestock occupies two-thirds of all BLM lands. Moreover, livestock is directly linked to aggravating drought conditions and spreading invasive species.

“After pledging not to repeat the pattern of political manipulation of science associated with the Bush years, the Obama administration has both embraced that pattern while striving to mask its manipulations though the charade of scientific integrity investigations,” remarked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization has likened these investigations to damage control operations rather than objective scientific reviews. “Because they were financed with stimulus funds, these landscape assessments were described as ‘shovel-ready science’ – a term far more apt than originally envisioned.”
###

Read unanswered PEER scientific misconduct complaint

Look at heavy landscape damage inflicted by commercial livestock

View the six Eco-regions being assessed in continental U.S.

Scan stalled schedule for assessments

See how Interior has politicized its scientific integrity program

33 million Acres of BLM Grazing Allotments Fail Basic Rangeland Health Standards

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LIVESTOCK’S HEAVY HOOVES IMPAIR ONE-THIRD OF BLM RANGELANDS

PM No More Roundups By Cat

Washington, DC (May 14, 2012) — A new federal assessment of rangelands in the West finds a disturbingly large portion fails to meet range health standards principally due to commercial livestock operations, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).  In the last decade as more land has been assessed, estimates of damaged lands have doubled in the 13-state Western area where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts major livestock leasing.

The “Rangeland Inventory, Monitoring and Evaluation Report for Fiscal Year 2011” covers BLM allotments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.  The report totals BLM acreage failing to meet rangeland health standards in measures such as water quality, watershed functionality and wildlife habitat:

  • Almost 40% of BLM allotments surveyed since 1998 have failed to meet the agency’s own required land health standards with impairment of more than 33 million acres, an area exceeding the State of Alabama in size, attributed to livestock grazing;
  • Overall, 30% of BLM’s allotment area surveyed to date suffers from significant livestock-induced damage, suggesting that once the remaining allotments have been surveyed, the total impaired area could well be larger than the entire State of Washington; and
  • While factors such as drought, fire, invasion by non-native plants, and sprawl are important, livestock grazing is identified by BLM experts as the primary cause (nearly 80%) of BLM lands not meeting health standards.

“Livestock’s huge toll inflicted on our public lands is a hidden subsidy which industry is never asked to repay,” stated PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade, noting that the percentage of impairment in lands assessed remains fairly consistent over the past decade.  “The more we learn about actual conditions, the longer is the ecological casualty list.”

Last November, PEER filed a scientific integrity complaint that BLM had directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a factor in changing landscapes as part of a $40 million study, the biggest such effort ever undertaken by BLM.  The complaint was referred to a newly appointed Scientific Integrity Officer for BLM but there are no reports of progress in the agency’s self-investigation in the ensuing months.

At the same time, BLM range evaluations, such as this latest one, use ambiguous categories that mask actual conditions, employing vague terms such as “making significant progress” and “appropriate action has been taken to ensure significant progress” that obscure damage estimates and inflate the perception of restoration progress.  For example, in 2001 nearly 60% of BLM lands (94 million acres, an area larger than Montana) consisted of grazing allotments that were supposed to be managed to “improve the current resource condition” – a number that has stayed unchanged for a decade.

“Commercial livestock operations are clearly a major force driving degradation of wild places, jeopardy to wildlife, major loss of water quality and growing desertification throughout the American West,” Stade added, while noting that BLM has historically been dominated by livestock interests.  “The BLM can no longer remain in denial on the declining health of our vast open range.”

BLM ducks complaint about suppressing livestock damage

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BLM Land and Desert Sky (Photo © Anne Novak, all rights reserved.)

Landscape Assessments in Limbo after Scientists Told to Ignore Livestock Impacts

Washington, DC — The biggest and most ambitious scientific undertaking in the history of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is languishing after it was revealed the agency directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a possible factor in changing landscapes. The agency has also yet to respond to a scientific integrity complaint filed one year ago by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) charging that the exclusion of livestock data constituted political interference.

Launched in 2010 with more than $40 million in stimulus funds, BLM sought to analyze ecological conditions across six “eco-regions” covering the Sagebrush West. There was only one catch: when scientists were assembled BLM managers informed them that there was one “change agent” that would not be studied – the impacts of commercial livestock grazing. BLM managers told stunned scientists the reason for this puzzling exclusion was due to “stakeholders” opposition and fear of litigation, according to documents appended to the PEER complaint. Since that complaint –

  • These so-called “Rapid Ecoregional Assessments” have all stalled with no timetable for completion although they were slated to be finished this year;
  • To investigate the PEER complaint, BLM tagged Louis Brueggeman, its Fire Management Liaison, to act as “Scientific Integrity Officer.” It is not clear that Mr. Brueggeman has interviewed a single witness proffered by PEER. Nonetheless in an October 12, 2012 email, he said he was “in the process of finalizing the report” responding to the November 2011 PEER complaint; and
  • BLM now claims its studies are limited to “four overarching environmental change agents: climate change, wildfires, invasive species, and development (both energy development and urban growth)” but notes “Additional change agents may also be addressed based on ecoregional needs.”

What makes this last bit of revisionist rationale from BLM so questionable is that the agency’s own records show that the primary cause (nearly 80%) for BLM lands not meeting range health standards is damage from livestock, far eclipsing drought, fire, invasion by non-native plants or sprawl – the factors BLM now calls “overarching.” In fact almost 40% of all BLM allotments surveyed since 1998 fail to meet the agency’s own required land health standards due to livestock grazing – more than 33 million acres, an area bigger than the entire State of Alabama. Livestock occupies two-thirds of all BLM lands. Moreover, livestock is directly linked to aggravating drought conditions and spreading invasive species.

“After pledging not to repeat the pattern of political manipulation of science associated with the Bush years, the Obama administration has both embraced that pattern while striving to mask its manipulations though the charade of scientific integrity investigations,” remarked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization has likened these investigations to damage control operations rather than objective scientific reviews. “Because they were financed with stimulus funds, these landscape assessments were described as ‘shovel-ready science’ – a term far more apt than originally envisioned.”
###

Read unanswered PEER scientific misconduct complaint

Look at heavy landscape damage inflicted by commercial livestock

View the six Eco-regions being assessed in continental U.S.

Scan stalled schedule for assessments

See how Interior has politicized its scientific integrity program

Climate report erroneously calls for removing native wild horses

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Cattle grazing (Photo © Anne Novak, all rights reserved

Statement from Anne Novak, executive director of Protect Mustangs:

“This report has glaring errors. It avoids classifying America’s wild horses as natives to justify removing them from large areas of public land. Commercial livestock is the problem not wild horses. We object to the proposal to remove native wild horses and request they rectify the error calling them ‘feral horses’. Native wild horses heal the wild land–they can replenish the biodiversity in the West.”

 

November 26, 2012 News Release from The Center for Biological Diversity

Climate Report Calls for Grazing Reductions on Public Lands

TUCSON, Ariz.— A newly published report in the journal Environmental Management describes how climate change threatens to worsen impacts on public lands, watersheds and wildlife by grazing of domestic and feral livestock and unnaturally large native ungulate populations. The report calls on federal agencies to protect large tracts of public lands from livestock grazing to restore ecosystems, help lands and wildlife adapt to climate change, and provide ecological services and future benchmarks for grazed lands. It details how grazing reductions are within the legal authority of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, which together administer livestock grazing across 258 million acres of public wildlands.

“We want to be able to rely on healthy, resilient wild places in this era of climate change, so that our country’s heritage wildlife can survive. That’ll mean cutting back on harmful land uses like cattle grazing; it’ll mean bringing back the carnivores that keep native populations of elk and deer in check,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has worked for more than 20 years to reduce overgrazing on western public lands. “By looking at the combined impacts of grazing and climate change, this report is the first of its kind, and it underscores the need for immediate action from federal agencies.”

Domestic livestock are grazed across 258 million acres of western land administered by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management — 81 percent of the land administered by the two agencies in the 11 western states. Those lands provide critical refuge for native biological diversity and offer vital ecological services like clean air, water and recreation to society. There are approximately 23,600 public-lands ranchers, representing about 6 percent of all livestock producers west of the Mississippi River.

The report concludes that:

  • In the western United States, climate change is expected to intensify even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced; threats facing ecosystems as a result of climate change are invasive species, more frequent wildfires and declining snowpack.
  • Climate impacts are compounded from heavy use by livestock and other grazing ungulates, which causes soil erosion, compaction, and dust generation; stream degradation; higher water temperatures and pollution; loss of habitat for fish, birds and amphibians; and desertification.
  • Encroachment of woody shrubs at the expense of native grasses and other plants can occur in grazed areas, affecting pollinators, birds, small mammals and other native wildlife.
  • Livestock grazing and trampling degrades soil fertility, stability and hydrology, and makes it vulnerable to wind erosion. This in turn adds sediments, nutrients and pathogens to western streams.
  • Reestablishing apex predators in large, contiguous areas of public land may help mitigate any adverse ecological effects of wild ungulates.

Livestock grazing is one of the most ubiquitous and destructive uses of public land. It is also a contributing factor to the imperilment of numerous threatened and endangered species, including the desert tortoise, Mexican spotted owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, least Bell’s vireo, Mexican gray wolf, Oregon spotted frog, Chiricahua leopard frog and dozens of other species that occur on western public land.

Public-lands livestock grazing is also a primary contributor to unnaturally severe western wildfires, watershed degradation, soil loss and the spread of invasive plants — as well as annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that of 705,342 passenger vehicles.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 450,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2012/grazing-11-26-2012.html

 

Understanding grazing rights

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Cross-posted from Wikipedia

Grazing rights

Grazing rights is a legal term referring to the right of a user to allow their livestock to feed (graze) in a given area.

Though grazing rights have never been codified in United States law, the concept of such rights descends from the English concept of the commons, a piece of land over which people — often neighboring landowners — could exercise one of a number of traditional rights, including livestock grazing.[1] Prior to the 19th century, the traditional practice of grazing open rangeland in the United States was rarely disputed due to the sheer amount of unsettled open land. However, as the population of the western United States increased in the mid-to-late 19th century, range wars often erupted over ranchers’ perceived rights to graze their cattle as western rangelands deteriorated with overuse.[2]

In 1934, the Taylor Grazing Act formally set out the federal government’s powers and policy on grazing federal lands by establishing the Division of Grazing and procedures for issuing permits to graze federal lands for a fixed period of time. The Division of Grazing was renamed the U.S. Grazing Service in 1939, and then merged in 1946 with the General Land Office to become the Bureau of Land Management, which along with the United States Forest Service oversees public lands grazing in 16 western states today.[3] However, grazing was never established as a legal right in the U.S.,[4] and the Taylor Grazing Act authorized only the permitted use of lands designated as available for livestock grazing while specifying that grazing permits “convey no right, title, or interest” to such lands.[5] Although the regulations stipulated by the Taylor Grazing Act apply only to grazing on Bureau of Land Management lands, the Chief of the Forest Service is authorized to permit or suspend grazing on Forest Service administered property, and many Forest Service grazing regulations resemble those of the Taylor Grazing Act.[6]

References:

  1. ^ Merrill, K.R. 2002. Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property Between Them. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 183.
  2. ^ Fleischner, T. L. 2009. Livestock grazing and wildlife conservation in the American West: historical, policy and conservation biology perspectives. Wild Rangelands: Conserving Wildlife While Maintaining Livestock in Semi-Arid Ecosystems (eds J. T. du Toit, R. Kock and J. C. Deutsch). Chidester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, p. 235-265. pdoi: 10.1002/9781444317091.
  3. ^http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/grazing.html
  4. ^ Donahue D. 2005. Western grazing: the capture of grass, ground, and government. Environmental Law 35:721-806.
  5. ^ United States Code of Federal Regulations 4130.2 (c) Retrieved from http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr;sid=65dfe1cec94944c989e83b4eb39cd3ba;rgn=div5;view=text;node=43%3A2.1.1.4.92;idno=43;cc=ecfr#PartTop
  6. ^ United States Code of Federal Regulations 36 § 222.1-54.

 

Link to original Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grazing_rights

It’s only getting worse

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Here is a video message about the American wild horse crisis in February 2010. The numbers are bigger now with 53K wild horses in holding and perhaps 15K left on the range.

Thank you Arlene Gawne and team for bringing this YouTube message to the public.

In 2009, 2010 and 2011 we all tried to help The President understand the need to save the mustangs. Sadly he appears to want The New Energy Frontier above and beyond anything else.

If you don’t like what’s going on then contact your representatives and senators because they are your voice in government. Congress funds the rotten Wild Horse and Burro Program under the Bureau of Land Management.

Request a Congressional investigation, forensic accounting and a moratorium on roundups as well as fertility control until the truth comes out that there are hardly any wild horses left out on America’s public land.

This year the EPA passed a fertility control pesticide for use on America’s wild horses and burros. Our indigenous horse has been formally labelled a “pest” by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. We want the erroneous classification reversed. Pests and invasive species are weeded out and disposed of . . .  Why did the EPA sell out?

(Photo © Cat Kindsfather, all rights reserved)

Stop the roundups and the extermination!

Taxpayer fairness bill introduced to defund welfare ranching

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Fence where cattle graze (Photo © Anne Novak, all rights reserved)

 Cross-posted from The Independent

Nelson offers up fair grazing legislation

Posted: Saturday, July 14, 2012 11:45 pm | Updated: 10:26 pm, Sat Jul 14, 2012.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has introduced a taxpayer fairness bill to end the substantial federal subsidies that an elite number of livestock producers receive.

If enacted, the bill would save American taxpayers about $1.2 billion. Nelson’s bill requires that the Secretary of the Interior work in conjunction with the Secretary of Agriculture to set livestock grazing fees on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and National Forest System public rangelands at rates comparable to those found on nearby private grazing lands.

“The facts are clear. Two percent of ranchers are getting a benefit that 98 percent of other grazing ranchers have not been able to get. They pay far less than the market value for the right to graze on public lands,” Nelson said . “This isn’t fair to the taxpayer, and this isn’t fair to the other 98 percent of cattle grazers who have to compete in the market-place.

“The State of Nebraska charges over $20 dollars a head of calf to graze on state land. Why should the federal government charge $1.35?”

The senator has also offered his grazing fee bill as an amendment to the Small Business Tax Credit Bill currently before the Senate. If adopted, the amendment would help defray the legislation’s costs.

The Government Accountability Office has estimated that just 2 percent of American ranchers hold animal grazing rights to National Forest System public rangelands. The grazing fees charged by the federal government on the rangelands are far below market value, at times up to 95 percent lower than the market fees charged for grazing on state- and privately-owned lands, fees that 98 percent of grazing ranchers have no choice but to pay.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Statistics Service, Nebraska charged a state land grazing fee of $27.30/animal in 2011. The $1.35 figure cited by Nelson was published in a United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on Livestock Grazing-Related Federal Expenditures. Among the GAO report’s findings are:

— From 1980 to 2004, BLM and Forest Service grazing fees fell by 40 percent.

— From 1980 to 2004, the market price on grazing fees rose by almost 80 percent.

— The government collects nearly $21 million/year in grazing fees on public rangelands.

— The government puts about $144 million/year into the maintenance of public rangelands.

“In other words, there is a shortfall of $120 million dollars coming from two percent of ranchers,” Nelson said.

Link to article: http://www.theindependent.com/news/ag_news/nelson-offers-up-fair-grazing-legislation/article_9bf429c2-ce2c-11e1-8158-0019bb2963f4.html