#cattle grazing

[rjzimmerman]

Yellow-billed cuckoo. Photo by Benjamin Murphy.

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

A federal judge approved an agreement today to protect critical habitat for threatened and endangered species from cattle grazing in southeastern Arizona’s Gila Box Riparian National Conservation Area.

Today’s agreement between the Center for Biological Diversity, Maricopa Audubon Society, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service follows similar agreements with the U.S. Forest Service. Those deals will protect more than 150 miles of rivers and streams in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico’s upper Gila River watershed, and more than 100 miles of the Verde River watershed in central Arizona from livestock.

“Cattle grazing has devastated streamside habitats across the Southwest and pushed a lot of vulnerable plants and animals closer to extinction. This agreement will help give some of them a fighting chance,” said Chris Bugbee, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center. “Federal officials should never have let the Gila Box be turned into a feedlot, but that’s what happened. Hopefully it’s not too late to restore these life-giving rivers and streams and permanently protect them from the ravages of grazing.”

Field surveys by the Center have documented widespread livestock damage along the streams that meander through the Gila Box, including designated critical habitat for yellow-billed cuckoos. More than 32 river miles were surveyed, and most of them had significant damage from cows, which are supposed to be excluded from the area because of its federal protection.

Today’s agreement requires the BLM to ensure that the conservation area’s streamside habitats are protected from cattle grazing. The Bureau has agreed to monitor riparian areas, maintain and repair fencing, and remove trespass cattle when they are found by the agency, the Center or the public. The area covers six grazing allotments in the conservation area.

[modfarm]

Pasture Guru Sarah Flack Shares How to Grow a Better, Greener Pasture

When it comes to grazing livestock, says pasture management guru Sarah Flack, quality forage leads to healthy herds.

[maneatingbadger]

When we stopped on a grassy flat for lunch, I took up my binoculars for a hike to spot some new species of anything, but as soon as we landed, the stench of cattle manure made us hurry our snack, and I found no pleasure in spending more time watching where I stepped than in scanning the bushes. The foul flat was barren of birds. We had landed in the Russell Wildlife Refuge, a narrow strip that boxes the river, a comparatively few square miles surrounded by thousands upon thousands of acres of grazing lands in every direction. In what way cattle, those Jaws That Ate the West, qualified as wildlife was beyond me, and I execrated the refuge managers for allowing such abuse. The place has come for me to say it: the antiquated Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 and two later modifications allow 'ranchers' -- many of them wealthy individuals living far from Montana and Idaho and huge corporations like Anheuser-Busch and Hewlett-Packard -- to run cattle almost anywhere on public land in the West, including wildlife refuges and nearly every mile of flowing water. Simply by paying an absurdly low $1.36 per animal per month (less than many fast-food burgers), these operators assault some of our most beautiful and diverse lands as well as American taxpayers who annually give a $500 million subsidy to corporate cattle operations. The very year we took to the rivers, the Republican-controlled Congress was considering changing the law even more to the liking of the industry. Considered against declining species -- birds, plants, animals -- the need for more meat in this nation is ludicrous; considered against the soil erosion and siltation that cattle create, the consumption of more beef is stupid; considered against the fecal pollution of our waters, the sale of more franchise burgers is criminal. For the past several years, big-spending cattle corporations have killed attempts in Congress to revise the grazing act to give a proper return to taxpayers and to control the degradation of our land and water. Yet what ordinary citizen would find it unfair to fence cattle and sheep away from our creeks and rivers just as we keep them off our roads? Windmills and pumps should water stock, not natural waterways. In the arid West, stream sides support three quarters of the wildlife, but Americans still unwittingly accept profligate and outdated laws that primarily benefit the wealthy while permitting them to poison the rest of us downstream.

William Least Heat-Moon, River Horse: The Logbook of a Boat across America

[photozoi]

[rjzimmerman]

Why won't Biden touch the Bundys?

The Biden administration has moved to crack down on violent domestic extremists over the past year. But it's given the Bundy family – whose militant actions presaged the Capitol insurrection, and who continue to illegally graze cattle on public lands – a pass.

Excerpt from this story from Boise State Public Radio:

The sun is just peaking over the mountains near Bunkerville, Nevada. It’s summertime, about 85 degrees, and the warm light spreads over an open expanse of the Mojave desert. This area is protected as a national monument called Gold Butte, which means it’s mostly public lands. Anyone can come here and go hiking or camping.

But for Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, this place effectively belongs to local rancher and extremist Cliven Bundy and his family, who militantly oppose federal control of these lands.

“These are not safe spaces,” he says. “These public lands are not safe public lands.”

It’s easy to understand why Donnelly might be nervous. In 2014, Bundy and hundreds of militia members and protesters held a tense, hour-long armed standoff with federal agents and local law enforcement.

The confrontation was an effort to stop the Bureau of Land Management from rounding up Bundy’s cattle, which have illegally grazed on these public lands for nearly three decades. The feds eventually backed down, fearing bloodshed. Intimidation, and even sporadic reports of violence, have continued ever since.

Cliven Bundy and his family were some of the first prominent anti-government agitators of the 21st century, and Donnelly and other public lands activists believe their actions paved the way for other far-right uprisings in the U.S., including the Jan. 6 takeover of the U.S. Capitol. While the Biden administration has moved to crack down on extremism over the past year, it hasn’t touched the Bundys, who continue to illegally graze their cattle on public lands.

On the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, the left-leaning watchdog organization Accountable.US published a report highlighting the overlap between the anti-public lands movement and the insurrectionists. The Bundy family praised the mob and wished it would have escalated.

“It should have been something more,” Ryan Bundy says. “I think Trump failed when he told the people to back down. I think Trump should have said, ‘Let’s take this capitol, let’s keep it.’ They should have never left. They should have held that capitol and corrected the problem.”

But the administration hasn’t touched the Bundys yet. Donnelly thinks he knows why.

The nation is a tinderbox right now. There are a growing number of militias, political extremism is on the rise, and Donnelly believes the Biden administration isn’t willing to spill blood over some trespassing cows on obscure Nevada rangeland few could find on a map.

“I don’t think the political momentum exists at the moment to force the issue,” he says. “It’s hard to imagine it being done of the administration’s own volition.”

[rjzimmerman]

Lawsuit Challenges Destructive Grazing in Agua Fria National Monument

TUCSON, Ariz.— The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management today to challenge widespread, destructive cattle grazing in streams and riparian areas of the Agua Fria National Monument in central Arizona.

Excerpt from this story from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management today to challenge widespread, destructive cattle grazing in streams and riparian areas of the Agua Fria National Monument in central Arizona.

The grazing is destroying habitat for a number of threatened and endangered species, including designated critical habitat for the Gila chub and western yellow-billed cuckoo.

“It’s appalling to see the widespread damage that cattle have inflicted on this beautiful national monument,” said Chris Bugbee, southwest advocate at the Center. “The Agua Fria River and Silver Creek are supposed to be protected from grazing, but we’ve repeatedly documented riparian areas that are filled with manure and trampled by cows. Federal officials have ignored this destruction and let cattle run rampant, so we’re hopeful a judge will force them to do their jobs and protect these fragile ecosystems.”

The Center has documented streams filled with cow manure, trampled streambanks and vegetation grazed to the roots, harming critical habitat for threatened yellow-billed cuckoo and endangered Gila chub. The monument was designated to protect riparian forests, grasslands and a diverse assortment of native wildlife, including more than 28 bird species with special conservation status.

The Agua Fria National Monument, created by presidential proclamation in 2000, is managed by the BLM. In 2009 the Arizona Game and Fish Department purchased Horseshoe Ranch and the grazing rights for the Horseshoe allotment, which are within the monument, to manage this habitat for endangered species.

“Even within a national monument, on a grazing allotment controlled by the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the BLM, the agencies can’t keep cows out of streams,” said Maricopa Audubon President Charles Babbitt. “Endangered species across the Southwest are in crisis because these agencies are unable or unwilling to protect the riparian habitats they depend on from cows.”

In the desert Southwest, livestock grazing harms threatened and endangered wildlife and is the primary driver of riparian ecosystem degradation. Removal of livestock from riparian areas is a critical component of adaptation to climate change. Perennial water on the Agua Fria River, which runs through the monument, has decreased dramatically over the past decade.

[rjzimmerman]

Feds settle grazing suit

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Excerpt from this story from Silver City Daily Press:

The Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached an agreement this month to protect rivers and streams in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico from cattle grazing. The Center for Biological Diversity, which has conducted forestwide surveys of grazing allotments over the past four years, sued the agencies in January 2020, claiming and offering evidence that cattle were not being kept off riparian habitats, which was endangering rare plants and animals and constituted a violation of both the federal Endangered Species Act and a decades-old settlement.

In the 1998 legal settlement, the Forest Service agreed to prohibit domestic livestock grazing from these and other streamside habitats while it conducted a consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the impacts grazing has on threatened and endangered species.

By the time the Center for Biological Diversity sued again over the issue, ranchers and environmentalists agreed that fences just weren’t being kept up. But some ranchers perceive the Forest Service’s relatively new requirement that they keep their cattle off rivers as government overreach and an unfair taking. After all, cattle growers didn’t have to keep their stock off rivers — a critical source of water — in the days of yore.

“There’s already been a right to use the river that has been there with the allotment, and they take someone’s right away. It should be illegal to shut you off the river, that’s the truth of the matter,” Joe Nelson, a Catron County rancher with a grazing allotment in the Glenwood Ranger District, told the Daily Press in March of last year. “You’re supposed to be paid for what they take away, and the allotments have [just] been reduced.”

But the waterways are home to numerous federally listed endangered and threatened species, including southwestern willow flycatchers, yellow-billed cuckoos, Gila chub, loach minnow and spikedace fish, Chiricahua leopard frogs and narrow-headed and northern Mexican garter snakes.

[naturalresourcestoday]

Lawsuit targets cattle damage to 11 protected species along Arizona’s Gila River

Conservation groups challenge federal grazing decisions across rare desert stream habitatA desert cactus, two riparian birds, five native fishes, a frog and two snakes anchor a lawsuit over cattle grazing along Arizona’s Gila River. The Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Bird Alliance filed the case Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Tucson against the Bureau of Land Management and…

Lawsuit targets cattle damage to 11 protected species along Arizona’s Gila River