Posted on 12/01/2001 7:12:57 AM PST by brityank
Sagebrush: A Look at the Battlefield
Jeffrey Mullins - Elko Daily Free Press 12.01.01
With Foreword By J.J. Johnson
This article, although printed a few weeks ago, is still timely and should be widely read by those who have joined in on the discussion of "Sagebrush: The Battleground of the Next War". Jeffery Mullins of the Elko Daily does a masterful job of painting the picture many need to see - better yet, understand - before contemplating what needs to be done. We thank you for all the responses to our original article, and we welcome more input. But for those who may be a bit new to this "New War", here's a chance to get caught up - with a good view of this new battlefield. - J.J. Johnson
Livestock industry faces uncertainty
Jeff Mullin - Elko Daily Free Press
ELKO - Do you know where your hamburger comes from?
Nevada's cattlemen will hold their annual convention in Elko to discuss a nationwide marketing strategy to label beef grown in the U.S.A.
Ranching, like any other industry, finds itself at the mercy of economic forces.
Disease and other economic pressures decimated the state's sheep industry and by 1999, cattle production was threatened enough that the state legislature commissioned an $80,000 study to analyze grazing trends.
It concluded the state lost around $25 million over the past 19 years because of reductions in grazing ordered by federal agencies. Nearly half a million "animal unit months" (AUMs), the standard measure of livestock grazing, were eliminated. That's a reduction of about 16 percent.
Livestock operators in Elko County alone lost around $1 million, the report said. Losses were greater in other parts of the state, especially central and southern Nevada.
The consultants from Resource Concepts Inc. of Carson City said, "It is important to realize that grazing of rangelands is a manageable activity. It is the controlled harvest of a renewable, sustainable resource."
That may have been what the state wanted to hear, but louder voices have been coming from other fronts.
A growing number of scientists claim long-term cattle grazing is to blame for problems with the sagebrush "ecosystem." They point to the decimation of sage grouse populations as evidence the range is "sick" and needs to be healed. Environmental activists held a conference in Arizona over the weekend calling for a permanent end to public lands ranching.
Scientific opinions on the issue are almost as varied as the number of species of sagebrush. Some studies have even indicated that all-out trampling of the landscape by cattle is the best way to stimulate new growth on barren land.
Fighting authorityIf a rancher feels he is a victim of bad science, his only recourse is to appeal the decision in court. That can add up to expensive legal fees and consultant fees, but some ranchers go to the expense and take the risk in order to preserve their livelihoods.
And sometimes fighting back pays off.
In 1994, the BLM ordered a 50 percent reduction in grazing on the Filippini family ranch in Lander County, along with other restrictions. Hank Filippini and his son-in-law, Bert Paris, protested the cutbacks and a judge ruled the BLM's cuts were "unreasonable and without rational basis."
The decision depended upon the testimony of range consultants who poked holes in the BLM's data-handling methods. An appeals board cited the consultants' "meticulous dissection" of the BLM's evidence in denying the appeal.
"Junk science has no place in public land management," declared Filippini after the final decision.
"The victory finally puts to rest an erroneous claim by the BLM, especially throughout Nevada, that it can manipulate utilization information to drive reductions in public land grazing," he added.
Rather than fight, most ranchers try to get along with their federal partners. They don't talk openly about problems out of fear they will be targeted for tighter restrictions.
Nye County rancher Wayne Hage claimed he was targeted after writing a book titled "Storm Over Rangelands," which asserted ranchers have some private property rights attached to their allotments under a "split estate."
Former Elko County Commissioner Tony Lesperance said ranchers who depend on public land for grazing have no choice but to get along with the federal agencies.
"If they start to become vocal or do anything else, then all sorts of things happen to them. So I think they've got to comply."
He believes the vast majority of ranchers in Nevada are doing a very good job.
"The problem is they can't graze the areas they'd like to graze anymore," he said.
Rebels and rustlersSome ranchers get fed up with the agencies and stop paying fees. This summer the BLM cracked down on two of those ranchers, Ben Colvin and Jack Vogt in Esmeralda County. The agency seized their cattle and warned other violators that more seizures were coming.
Bob Abbey, state director for the BLM, was quoted in an Associated Press article calling the men "trespassers" and saying they were "jeopardizing the future of grazing on public lands." That remark drew criticism from U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who responded that "threats made about future grazing in Nevada are not helpful and will not be tolerated."
In an interview last week, Abbey said trespassing notices issued by the agency this summer will be enforced, even though no cattle seizures have taken place since the two in July.
"We're going to end up rounding up all of the cattle that are trespassing on public lands," Abbey said. "We're seeking voluntary compliance, but those operators who are not going to comply, they will have impoundments."
The two alleged violators in northeastern Nevada were both American Indian tribes. One, the Te-Moak Livestock Association, pulled its cows off the BLM allotment. But the Dann sisters in Crescent Valley still have theirs out and face a possible roundup. The sisters, Mary and Carrie, reportedly have 1,500 cows and horses on the range.
The confiscations have resulted in legal battles and accusations that the BLM was "rustling" cattle. A new cattlemen's association was formed under the leadership of Mineral County rancher David Holmgren.
Another rancher who isn't afraid to defy the BLM is Julian Smith, an attorney who lives in Carson City and owns a ranch there as well as the Rafter Diamond in Elko County.
Smith, who had an agreement to purchase Vogt's impounded cows, said he thought the BLM seizure was part of a plan to get cattle off the range permanently. Cattle had been using the Vogt allotment year-round for a hundred years, he said. At one time the ranch was owned by Art Linkletter, and Smith said the celebrity was never hassled by the BLM about cutting back his grazing schedule.
"You talk to any range scientist and he'll tell you that the best way to maintain the vitality of a range is to have grazing - not overgrazing and not undergrazing, but good, controlled grazing," said Smith.
"I just want to be treated fairly," Smith said. "I want science to prevail in managing the range. If they will rely on the available science, it will tell them that the best way to manage that range is to use grazing."
A place for cattleTo some extent, the BLM agrees.
"What we've found is that prescriptive grazing, which means you move them in during certain times of the year, then move them out, can be as much of a plus as it can be a hindrance," said Abbey.
Elko Field Office Manager Helen Hankins said the technique has been used on a limited basis in the past, such as at the Deloyd Satterthwaite ranch at Tuscarora and on the TS ranch.
"After the first of the year we are going to bring in four or five ranchers and NDOW (Nevada Division of Wildlife) and our staff, and we're going to look at this question of using livestock as a tool to reduce fuels in the springtime," Hankins said.
"You get 'em in there and knock back that cheatgrass, but you need to remove the livestock before the perennial grasses start coming in like the crested wheat, or the blue bunchgrasses or the Great Basin rye," Hankins said.
Using cattle to consume the cheatgrass also would help prevent large range fires.
Joe Guild, president of the Nevada Cattlemen's Association, said livestock grazing is a valuable range management tool that is being underused in many places.
"If we had more livestock grazing out there we'd have less fuel load," Guild said.
Lesperance said he has looked over much of northern Nevada's fire-scarred landscape and not as much scorched land has been successfully reclaimed as the BLM says.
"It's years and years of mismanagement that built this situation up," he said.
But a number of environmental groups want the government to ban cattle grazing. They have devised a plan to buy out grazing permits when they come up for renewal. RangeNet held its annual meeting last weekend and discussed the plan with groups such as the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign and Western Watersheds Project Inc.
Range war"There is a contingent of environmentalists that think cattle grazing is evil," Smith said, and they are behind the BLM's push to get cows off the range.
Lesperance agreed.
"The decline in range conditions in northern Nevada and surrounding areas of the Great Basin has definitely not been due to livestock grazing," he said.
Lesperance believes it is because of "pseudo-environmental input" by groups whose real agenda is to get livestock off the range - period.
The BLM tries to manage the land, he said, but the agency claims its hands are tied by the court system when environmentalists, wildlife groups and wild horse enthusiasts file lawsuits.
They complain that ranchers pay a paltry amount for grazing permits, comparing the $1.35 per AUM to market values without considering other factors.
The economics of ranching in the high desert are very uncertain, according to livestock specialist Ron Torell of the University of Nevada, Reno, extension office.
"With our cost of production, it's very tough to compete with those producers in the Midwest where they have 20- and 30-inch precip zones," Torell said.
Besides the drought, Torell said the biggest threats faced by ranchers include potential Endangered Species Act listings such as the sage grouse, and other efforts to get ranchers off the range.
"Without a doubt, the federal lands deal is No. 1. That's a big question mark," he said.
A rancher's private land isn't worth much without the federal grazing permit to go along with it, he said. And the grazing land isn't worth much without the ranches.
Sagebrush RebellionSome think the problems faced by Nevada ranchers today would be solved if the state took control of the land within its borders. That was the goal of the Sagebrush Rebellion movement 20 years ago.
One of the key players was Tuscarora rancher and Nevada Assemblyman Dean Rhoads, who is now a state senator.
But these days Rhoads says the sovereignty statute he worked so hard to pass had "constitutional difficulties." A new effort was launched this year by the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood, but Rhoads said the group is doomed to failure for the same reason.
Its members, however, believe the Constitution is on their side.
"The only way the federal government has any rights to any land within the boundaries of any state is according to Article 1, Paragraph 8, Clause 17, which states that the United States government may acquire lands needed for forts, docks, arsenals and other needful buildings, and the cession of these lands needs to be approved by the state legislature," explained O.Q. "Chris" Johnson of Elko, the statehood group's chairman.
"The Nevada State Legislature has never approved of the BLM or the Forest Service managing lands in the State of Nevada."
He said when Boulder Dam was built, the federal government came to Nevada and asked for the land needed to create Lake Mead. And in the 1940s they wanted land for the Nevada Test Site and again came to the state legislature to ask for the lands to be ceded, and it did so.
"Somebody in the federal government knows that these lands belong to the State of Nevada, otherwise they wouldn't come here and ask for permission to use them," Johnson said.
City supportIronically, the current statehood movement is getting its strongest support not from ranchers but from city folk in southern Nevada. Some residents of Las Vegas see the movement as a way to block the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Members of the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood were backed by southern Nevada lawmakers this year when they tried to get their bill through the legislature.
They plan to try again next time.
Meanwhile, ranchers will do their best to cope with the drought and a nagging uncertainty about their future.
"It's never been a real profitable business,"Torell said. The rate of return is much lower than most business ventures, despite the common criticism that ranching is profitable.
"The reason so many people stay in it is because it's a terrific way of life - or it has been until this point in time," Torell said.
"But there are some people bailing out because the quality of life has deteriorated. You spend all your time fighting in the courts, fighting bureaucrats. There comes a point when things are not fun anymore, and we're approaching that point."
Environmental groups with deep pockets are lining up to relieve ranchers of their burden. And once ranchers are out of the way, the groups plan to continue pushing.
Western Watersheds Project, based in Hailey, Idaho, and run by activist Jon Marvel, says it has "embarked on a 10-year effort to end public lands ranching as the first of several incompatible uses of public lands."
That would mean an end not only to the traditional Western lifestyle - perhaps America's greatest trademark across the globe - but also other resource industries necessary for a healthy economy.
The environmentalists' proposed grazing permit buy-outs are a battle line drawn in the sand. Now it is up to the rest of America to choose which side they want to support, because the result of that battle could change the face of the West as we know it.
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That would mean an end not only to the traditional Western lifestyle - perhaps America's greatest trademark across the globe - but also other resource industries necessary for a healthy economy.
The environmentalists' proposed grazing permit buy-outs are a battle line drawn in the sand. Now it is up to the rest of America to choose which side they want to support, because the result of that battle could change the face of the West as we know it.
Opposition Research:
www.westernwatersheds.org/ - Western Watersheds Project, Inc. (formerly Idaho Watersheds Project), a non-profit 501(c)(3) membership corporation with 1200 family and individual memberships
At the May 1996 annual meeting of the IWP, the board decided to expand the mission of the organization to include working to change public policy and management on all federal lands on Idaho watersheds used for livestock grazing. As a consequence of the decision, IWP is now an "interested public" on almost 20 million acres of federal land administered by the BLM in Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Oregon on Idaho watersheds. In the fall and winter of 1996-97, IWP has protested and may appeal proposed BLM decisions to permit livestock use of 3,000,000 acres of public land in southern Idaho. These protests ask the BLM to bring the proposed permits into compliance with various federal laws the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act among others).
Additionally WWP, with the adoption of our new mission statement in February 2001, has embarked on a ten year effort to end public lands ranching as the first of several incompatible uses of public lands.
More proof that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
It's high time to flush the whole ruse.
Very few of these commie orgs do. My daughter gave some cash to a group called "Clean Water Action of Pennsylvania" early last year, and I tried to find out who and what they are. No listing of officers or where the money comes from or where it goes, except that they do have offices scattered around and one in DC. They called me, and I asked them to send me information. All I got was more scare pamphlets and mumbo-jumbo, plus a donation form. I still have the form.
See what Rep. James Hansen(UT-1) had to say about the watermelon orgs.:
Mr. Speaker, I have witnessed over the years how increasingly strident and nasty many of them become in our civil discourse, and how increasingly radical many of their proposals have become.Finally, what I have noticed as well is that these groups by and large are now all about big business, and that is their bottom line. When looking at the Sierra Club , the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, or several other environmental groups, what begins as a small, bare-bones organization with issues motivating people, soon blossoms into larger and larger organizations which must rent offices, hire workers and meet their payroll.
These are not grassroot organizations operating out of some guy's basement we are talking about. They are slick, well-organized companies, employing rafts of accountants, marketers, and attorneys. There is none better. In order to feed that beast or make the payroll, they have to raise money. How do they do this? They do it very well. They are masters at it. If they were public corporations listed with the stock exchange, they would be listed by analysts in the ``buy'' category. They pour massive amounts of tax-exempt and tax-deductible contributions into emotion-based media and marketing. They are spending millions on direct marketing campaigns in order to generate more and more contributors and donor lists. They hire impressionable young college students, normally at a minimum wage, to go door to door to sign up new members, and hire still others to attend public hearings to applaud or to boo as directed, in a cynical, purchased attempt to influence public opinion.
What is truly shocking is the amount of money these groups are raising and spending, and they are beginning to hit the big-time contributions, millions of dollars at a time, disappointingly, from such previously venerable entities as the Pew Charitable Trust. This is how they can pay for millions of dollars in slick brochures, calendars, videos, radio and television advertisements, all designed to shock and stimulate individuals to reach into their pocketbooks.
My deepest respect to all who spell "assholes", a-s-s-h-o-l-e-s, as opposed to the more "sensitive" a-s-#-&-*-l-e-s. Good work!
A peripheral issue, but IMO, the sage grouse population is being dramatically impacted by an increase in predators / decrease in other prey animals ... it has very little to nothing to do with cattle. Places that I hunted thirty years ago when the sage grouse flocks were in the hundreds [and have declined dramatically], do not appear to have not changed in any significant way in terms of vegitation. There are more coyotes, significantly more raptors and fewer rabbits. The raptors came back after they were protected and perhaps because of the ban on DDT in the US. The coyotes are cyclic, but the near banning of night hunting and the decrease in the price of pelts has certainly played a role. Add this to the decrease in other prey, and a sage grouse would start to look very tasty to a predator.
From what I can tell there are sections of stream that could / should be fenced off and thereby satisfy most of the legitimate concerns of the tree huggers. There costs to doing this, but it seems obvious that cattle grazing can be compatible with the environment. I suspect reasonable steps would scare the tree huggers as it appears that their goal is to make the American West one big national park.
The Right Of The People To Keep And Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed !!
An Armed Citizen, Is A Safe Citizen !!
No Guns, No Rights !!
Molon Labe !!
And they're well on their way to accomplishing that.
Here's what I had to say on another thread:
#35 ^: HAS ANYONE OUT THERE SEEN THIS, IS THIS A HOAX OR WHAT? ^
To: pattycake
The Guidebook is essentially a collection of model enabling statutes (with commentary) that state legislatures would adopt to authorize planning, land development controls, regulations, procedural processes; everything states and local governments might need for – in the authors' words – "planning and the management of change." The statutes would be new requirements placed on state agencies and local governments to make often-significant changes in their ordinances and policies.
In other words, boilerplate.
The advent of the computer age allowed many great things -- and many nefarious things too. Boilerplate is one of those things that can have either effect. In this case, the watermelons have learned that grass-roots opposition will attend any program they try to invoke via the legislative process, so they focus their sights on the bureaucracies that support the legislators, and give them the innocuous seeming boilerplate to flesh out their proposals.
Since federal acts have more visibility, (relatively), than the various state acts, placing the same or similar boilerplate in the states acts eventually accomplishes the same deed with little or no opposition. The bigger the bureaucracy within the governments, the easier it is to get the insertion. Everyone is overworked and on deadline.
It all boils down to lack of oversight and appropriate monitoring by those we charge with upholding and maintaining our way of life -- the US Congress. Congress has repeatedly shirked it's duties; sold out to the fat-cat contributors of all stripes, and usurped the rights of Citizens all in the pursuit of self-aggrandizement, pork-laden self promotion; and totally ignored the fact that their only purpose is to safeguard all of the Citizens of all of the States, and not just the watermelon lobbyists and self-promoters that abound inside the Beltway.
35 posted on 11/22/01 9:42 AM Eastern by brityank
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This statement is incorrect. Art 1, Section 8, Clause 17 refers to "exclusive legislative jurosdiction." This type of jurisdiction, (if not reserved prior to statehood,) must be ceded by the State legislature with the land. It ousts the State jurisdiction in favor of federal jurisdiction - hence "exclusive."
The area is governed as a federal enclave. Laws are commonly established as those State laws that existed at the time the land became an enclave.
The feds may also own land as an ordinary proprietor. There was a case on a default of property to the feds due to failure to pay income taxes that confirmed that the feds could own property as an orodnary proprietor. State legislative jurisdiction continues over civil and criminal matters.
The feds have passed a bunch of laws governing the use of resources. The large portion of these laws govern actions of federal managers and not citizens.
Kleppe v New Mexico, (a very bad and ignorant SCOTUS decision,) ruled that these federal management laws pre-empt local and State law. (The issue was wild horses as governed under a local public health and safety law.) SCOTUS used the rationale that the Constitution gives Congress plenary powers to the feds over "property" and "territory" of the U.S.
Even though it is an unpopular decision, Dred Scott explains that the area West of the Mississippi did not exist as the US when the Constitution was written. "Property" referred to ships and land East of the Mississippi ceded by deed of cession by the original 13 states to the federal government to sell to settle the states mutual war debt.
The so-called Western "public lands" are neither "property" or "territory." They were public domain held in trust for the people of the new states and seized by the trustee for itself and held without cession by the State legislature. To the extent that it is property, it is held the same as any ordinary proprietor and federal law governing its management should not preempt State or local law.
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