A federal judge has sided with managers of northern Wyoming's Bighorn National Forest and ruled against an environmental group that challenged livestock grazing in the forest.

Boise, Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project filed suit in 2007 over a 2005 revision to the forest management plan. The group said the revision process should have considered various alternatives for grazing in the forest, including reduced amounts of grazing.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer in Cheyenne ruled Monday that forest managers did as the law required _ took a "hard look" at the environmental consequences of the forest plan.

"Simply because the WWP may not like the ultimate outcome does not mean that the Forest Service was in violation of the law," Brimmer wrote.

Three Wyoming counties straddled by the forest _ Big Horn, Sheridan and Johnson _ intervened on the side of the U.S. Forest Service. The Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Muddy Creek Grazing Association also intervened on the agency's side.

"The interveners were not confident that the Forest Service would protect their interests, so they intervened to protect themselves," an attorney for the interveners, Dan Frank, explained in a release.

Brimmer's ruling preserves livestock grazing in the forest, Frank said, even as it has faced resistance from environmentalists and the Forest Service itself. The amount of grazing the Forest Service has permitted in Bighorn National Forest has declined in recent decades.

"That's been troubling to us, because we think that the producers up there have done a good job of protecting the resources," said Ken Hamilton, executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau.

Hamilton praised the ruling. An attorney for the Western Watersheds Project, Natalie Havlina, couldn't immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

The lawsuit claimed that laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, required forest managers to take a closer look at grazing and its potential environmental harm in revising the forest plan.

Forest managers did that last time they revised the plan for the 1.1-million-acre forest in 1985. They should have taken the same approach when they started revising the plan again in 1999, Havlina argued before Brimmer in July.

But forest managers rejected that approach as impractical after they adopted the 1985 plan, Brimmer pointed out in his ruling. They instead chose to examine the effects of grazing each time they issued grazing permits for specific portions of the forest.

Brimmer ruled that the specific-area review has been adequate under the law.

"Sufficient information existed in the administrative record regarding the detrimental and advantageous effects of livestock grazing for the Forest Service to make an informed decision," he wrote.

Excerpted from Magic Valley

There is a range war out West. And unless you live in Idaho or Nevada or any other Western state you probably have no idea what is happening or why should you care. But wherever you live in America you should care because sooner or later it will affect you. This range war isn't about water rights or ranchers against homesteaders or big ranchers versus small ranchers like the Johnson County War in Wyoming in 1892. It is between ranchers who have worked the land raising cattle and sheep for over a century and environmental outlaws whose stated goal is driving them off the very land they need to survive and prosper. And this time the weapon of choice is not a Colt .45 or a Winchester rifle, but something much more deadly and destructive -- the lawsuit.

So what's the issue?

There are more than a quarter of a billion acres of public lands in the West. For over century a system has been in place to allow cattle and sheep ranchers access to portions of this land so that their animals can graze during certain times of year. Chances are that steak you throw on the BBQ spent some of its life on the range before being sold and sent to feedlots across the country to be fattened up to make sure that steak has some nice marbling.

Over the years there have been bitter disputes between ranchers and environmentalists over whether this practice should continue. For the ranchers this was not a philosophical discussion about the best use of the land or saving an endangered species. It was about their very survival and the survival of the cattle and sheep industries that contribute so much to the economies of many Western states. And this was not about keeping a few cowboys or sheepherders employed because there is an employment multiplier effect -- 1 ranch job creates 7 jobs to support the industry.

Recently, reasonable mainstream environmental and conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy have worked closely with the ranchers to find common ground that can address both the needs of this beautiful land while preserving a way of life that is an essential part of the West's past, present and future. Working together, the ranchers and the conservationists listened to each other and came up with plans to ensure the survival of both.

But some environmentalist outlaws like the Western Watersheds Project had no interest in compromise and since have used and abused the legal system of this country to deny the ranchers their rights and seeks to have the U.S. Government abrogate the legal contracts that allows them to use public lands for grazing.

This band of outlaws is led by a transplanted Easterner, Jon Marvel who some 30 years ago moved to Hailey, Idaho which is near the millionaire's playground of Sun Valley. He was an architect who designed huge homes for the rich and famous. He has designed over 200 homes near Hailey which has contributed to the sprawl now happening in that town. He says never designed a house over 7,000 square feet. Now that's one hell of a carbon footprint for a devoted environmentalist seeking to "protect" the range from the evil of cowboys and cattle!

He and his group have been known to be verbally and physically abusive to government officials who are only trying to do their job. In short they are not just environmental outlaws who operate outside the mainstream of environmental groups they are also bullies who use the tactics of intimidation not conciliation.

Well they must want something? Not really except to drive the ranchers out of business and let the land return to its pristine state when there were no cattle. I have news for Mr. Marvel, before the cattle even came to the West, huge herds of elk and buffalo roamed the plains and valleys for centuries and I'll bet they ate a little grass and tramped through streams.

Their tactic is to sue the federal government by challenging the rancher's permits on technicalities and also burying officials in a flood of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests. It is estimated that just to fill the current requests it would take one person 6 years working full time. This means that trained range managers and scientists who should be working with the ranchers and other users of public lands are instead filling out paperwork. If you are a taxpayer you should be outraged.

I said earlier that even if you didn't live in the West this would affect you in some way. Eventually the price of beef would rise as there would be fewer cattle merging into the food supply. But it might also put a severe crimp in the Obama administration's desire to upgrade the electricity grid, build new pipelines to carry the West's abundant natural gas to the rest of the nation and also take advantage of the wind corridors that dot the region by building wind farms and the arid deserts for solar farms.

It's already happening. Interior Secretary Salazar recently came to California to talk up building solar farms on public land near the Mojave Desert. But California Senator Dianne Feinstein is dead set against it as are radical environmentalists. They've been complaining about lack of renewable energy for years and now that it might happen they suddenly develop a bad case of NIMBYism.

Why?

Because these hypocrites don't want any of that on public land either and you cannot achieve the president's energy goals unless you use the vast public lands of the West. It is just not possible. Finally you should care because this type of bullying and intimidation is just plain wrong. And it's hard to deal with folks who's only stated goal is to drive you out of business and destroy a way of life that has survived for over a hundred years against all the hardships that either man or Mother Nature can inflict.

So the next time you fire up the BBQ to grill your steak or hamburger just remember where it came from and the hard work that went into putting it on your plate. But also remember that if some folks get their way, next year it might cost a lot more.

Excerpted from Fox News

Read more

Add comment (0)

Hits: 2006

Passing any Climate Change Bill is the easy part.

If this 1,200 page bill ever becomes law in any form, members of Congress will look back fondly and see that passing it was the easy part--as easy as a kitten hopping over a caterpillar. Implementing it will be as hard as trying to tie down a bobcat with a piece of string and it will become a nightmare of regulations, bureaucracy, and lawsuits.

An article in today’s Idaho Statesman makes that very point.

The Obama Administration has postponed a decision until 2010 that would place the sage grouse on either the threatened or endangered list. The sage grouse ranges throughout the West including the millions of acres of public land under the control of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Department of the Interior.

The sage grouse shares these lands with many industries like cattle and sheep ranching, oil and gas exploration and the one thing that the Obama folks are counting on to fulfill their dreams of greener America that creates green jobs—wind and solar power.

The public lands of the West are critical to America’s energy future because of their abundance of resources like natural gas as well as excellent places for wind and solar farms. But if the threatened or endangered designation on a critter like the sage grouse is approved, it will put vast tracts of these lands off-limits to the very renewable energy the environmentalists say we need to meet any emissions limits put forth in the Climate Change Bill.

The East Coast based media never covers Western issues like this but they could have an enormous impact on the nation’s economy. And they never challenge environmentalists on this dichotomy. It’s a pretty simple question and here is how I would ask it.

How do you folks get your hats on with your head screwed on so wrong? You say you want to save the sage grouse and their habitat on public lands and in the same breath you want to exclude the very same public lands that can best produce renewable energy to fight climate change.

The answer is that they want it all, although they’ll never admit it. Their idea of reasonable negotiation that can protect species and land as well as the industries that depend on that same land is the old Soviet-style negotiation. “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours we’ll negotiate.”

And this is just one of the thousands of issues that will have to be dealt with if this wagonload of horse manure is ever signed into law. It is the environmental activists and lawyers full employment act.

Instead of creating theatrics on the House floor, Republicans should be hollering from the rooftops about things like this. Maybe if they did they could begin to win back the trust of Western voters that in recent years have been trending Democratic.

I would suggest they begin by reading papers like the Idaho Statesman and start worrying what the folks out West think instead of getting themselves in a lather about what the New York Times thinks.

Excerpted from Politico.com

BOISE, Idaho — Ranchers in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana who lose sheep or cattle to wolves may soon have a federal fund to turn for reimbursement.

Idaho Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch have helped establish a $1 million account to repay ranchers for any losses tied to wolf kills. Language creating the account was recently approved by a Senate committee, but must still be approved by the full Senate and House.

Ranchers had previously been compensated by the Defenders of Wildlife for wolf losses. But that funding ended when wolves in Idaho and Montana were removed from the Endangered Species List earlier this year. Gray wolves remain on the endangered species list in Wyoming.

Crapo says with state officials now in charge of wolf management, it's important to ensure that ranchers have a place to turn for losses.

Excerpted from IdahoStatesman.com 6/30/09