Showing posts with label Ecosystem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ecosystem. Show all posts

8/23/11

The Quiet War Against Wyoming's Wild Horses

Andrew Cohen - continued...

Andrew Cohen - Andrew Cohen has served as chief legal analyst and legal editor for CBS News and won a Murrow Award as one of the nation's leading legal analysts and commentators. More Andrew Cohen is a Murrow Award-winning legal analyst and commentator. He covers legal events and issues for CBS Radio News and its hundreds of affiliates around the country and is a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the nation's leading newspapers and online sites. From 2000-2009, Andrew served as chief legal analyst and legal editor for CBS News and contributed to the network's coverage of the Supreme Court, the war on terrorism, and every high-profile civil or criminal trial of the decade. He is also a single dad of a great kid, a racehorse owner and breeder, and the winner of several awards for writing about horse racing, including the 2010 John Hervey Award for distinguished commentary and the 2010 O'Brien Award for Media Excellence. Follow Andrew on Twitter at @CBSAndrew.
Amplify’d from www.theatlantic.com

The Quiet War Against Wyoming's Wild Horses


By Andrew Cohen



Aug 11 2011, 12:00 PM ET


How can a state promote its wild horses as a tourist attraction while it seeks to decimate herds?



wild horse reuters- Jim Urquhart - Reuters-body.jpg
Reuters

Listen for the sound of hooves pounding. Look for manes flying in the wind. Feel the rush of awe at the sight of these creatures. The Pilot Butte Wild Horse Scenic Loop Tour is something you and your family will never forget because Sweetwater County's cherished wild horses are living examples of a wide-open landscape and untamed frontier spirit.
--Wyoming Tourism Board

The Wyoming Tourism Board wants you and your family to come see the wild horses in Sweetwater County, but you better go quick. Beginning next month, federal officials and local contractors will roundup and remove approximately 700 of those horses (about 70 percent of the herd) to satisfy the complaints of the cattle and sheep ranchers in the area who don't want to share land with federally-protected horses. The "cherished," "living examples" of Wyoming's western heritage will be penned in and then given up for adoption or sold at auction. Many will soon die. Some may even be slaughtered for meat. All will likely be gone from view in Sweetwater County. You and your family, having traveled to southwestern Wyoming, may be plum out of luck.

This is my third take on these Wyoming horses in just the past few weeks, and I again beg your indulgence. First, I wrote about a failed federal plan to round up the horses, geld the stallions, and return some back to the herds to decrease natural procreation cycles. When the government was sued in federal court in Washington to stop the removal and castration, the feds backed off and came forward with a new pitch. The horses would leave, but none of the stallions would be castrated. This plan appears to be going forward. I wrote about that, too. The number of horses in two vast "herd management areas," located in a desolate part of the state, would again dip below 300, making it much less likely that a tourist family would see a wild horse in Sweetwater County.


The reason for my persistence isn't difficult to explain. Each time I write something about these horses, I learn something more about the politics of their plight that is worth sharing to a broader audience. This time, the story is not just about the hypocrisy evident in Wyoming's attitude toward these horses -- the state is both marketing them as tourist attractions and actively conspiring to get rid of them. It's also about the curious conduct of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which, again, has done the bidding of an industry that it is supposed to regulate. With friends like the BLM and Wyoming state officials, the horses and their human supporters don't need any enemies.

The cattle and sheep industries want the horses gone from the rangeland -- even though the ranchers reap the benefits of having their herds graze upon public land at low cost. To support their position, the ranchers cite a 1981 consent decree, overseen by a local federal judge, which limits the number of wild horses that are to be left in the Little Colorado and White Mountain herd areas to approximately 300. To the ranchers, the horses are a nuisance, not an asset, a point Wyoming doesn't happen to mention in its breathless tourism campaigns, which feature television ads of thundering herds.

"That our government is unwilling to find these horses room -- or even consider doing so -- contradicts the spirit, if not the letter, of federal law"

Meanwhile, the BLM and Wyoming seem more intent on justifying ways to get rid of the horses rather than upon figuring out how to preserve and protect them. Wyoming cites a 2003 agreement between state officials and the Bush-era Department of the Interior, which places legal pressure on the BLM to rid Wyoming of excess wild horses -- and the BLM itself gets to determine what constitutes "excess." These officials say they have history and the law on their side. But the facts seem to support those who support the horses. When you have the law going one way and the facts going another, it's typically time to go to court. And that's not the worst thing that could happen here.

Wyoming

Earlier this week, I asked Chuck Coon, Media Relations Manager at the Wyoming Office of Tourism, how he squared the evident contradiction of Wyoming's policies. How can you be advertising to tourists to come see the wild horses of Sweetwater Country while Wyoming's lawyers are in federal court endorsing the BLM policy to rid the area of most of its horses? Here is Coon's response:
As you know, management of wild horse herd sizes in Wyoming is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. No matter what decision is rendered in terms of herd reductions there will remain ample opportunities for visitors to see wild horses in several parts of this state. And we'll continue to help local tourism entities in the open landscapes where those horses still roam in Sweetwater County, Park County, Carbon County and Big Horn County as part of our overall marketing of the state as a tourism destination.

Coon understandably wants to reassure Wyoming's tourists that they still have "ample opportunities" to see the horses of Sweetwater County. We'll see. But the state didn't merely defer the question to the BLM, as Coon suggests. Instead, Wyoming weighed in heavily via litigation on behalf of its ranchers, one of whom, Matt Mead, happens to be the state's governor. No small wonder. The ranching lobby in Wyoming (and Washington) is powerful. The wild horse lobby is not. When it comes to these horses, might makes right under cover of law.


Through a spokesman, and via email, Gov. Mead dodged the question of how Wyoming could market its wild horses with one hand and decimate its wild horse herds with the other. "The Governor's approach, which follows the approach of past governors, is to ensure there is balance on the range and right now with the number of wild horses in this herd there is an imbalance." When pushed, the spokesman wrote: "The State of Wyoming has an interest in defending its consent decree. That agreement allows for horses on the range, but also prevents overpopulation that damages the public lands for other uses, which are equally important for tourism and other industries, like ranching and hunting."

When the governor's office uses the word "balance" to describe how Wyoming's vast range lands ought to be used, what it really means is "imbalance." Cattle and sheep dominate the Wyoming range when compared to wild horses. And when the governor's office uses the word "imbalance" to describe the current situation, what it really means is the growing "balance" between and among species when wild animals are left to their own devices. Meanwhile, as you will see below, reasonable people disagree about what constitutes an "overpopulation" of wild horses in or near Sweetwater County.

According to statistics compiled by Jonathan Ratner, of the Western Watersheds Project, one of the plaintiffs who initially filed suit to block the Wyoming removal/castration plan, Wyoming and the BLM currently allocate nine times more forage for livestock than for wild horses in the two herd management areas from which the horses soon will be taken. There are approximately 850,000 acres of public land in those two areas -- and the ranchers won't tolerate more than approximately 300 wild horses there. You do the math. There is plenty of room for all of Wyoming's four-legged creatures.

The BLM

If Wyoming is not a neutral player here, state actors like Gov. Mead have plenty of company. The BLM, the statutorily-mandated stewards of the horses, also have made clear on which side of the saddle they sit. Even the new plan to remove Wyoming's wild horses is full of circular logic and unanswered questions. What justifies such a low limit for wild horses on the wide expanses of the two herd management areas? Don't wild horses affect grazing lands far less than livestock do? Has the federal government asked the ranchers, benefits of so much public land use, to ease off their pursuit of the wild horses?

More than that, now there are now allegations -- made by the ranchers themselves -- that the Bureau of Land Management actually advised them on how best to maximize their position vis-a-vis the horse groups. The solution? The BLM told the ranchers to sue the federal government (advice, I am sure, that is simply appalling to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department has to defend those lawsuits). Here are the specific allegations contained in a complaint filed on July 27th by the Rock Springs Grazing Association (the RSGA) which acts on behalf of ranching interests in the area:

69. RSGA also met with Deputy Assistant Secretary Sylvia Baca to deliver its demand that BLM remove all of the wild horses on RSGA lands, to explain its rights under the 1981 order, and to formally request removal of all of the stray wild horses. RSGA also presented a copy of its letter to the U.S. Marshal officially asking for removal of all wild horses that have strayed onto the RSGA lands in light of repeated failure on the part of BLM to manage and control the wild horse numbers.

70. The Assistant Secretary attributed the failure to comply with external influences on the Department and Congress, and the lack of funding due to the need to contract for sanctuaries. The Assistant Secretary stated that litigation would be necessary to secure additional funding for wild horse gathers (my emphasis).

I have asked the BLM to comment upon these allegations, but I don't expect the Bureau's lawyers to allow anyone to say anything insightful about the topic. Assuming these allegations are true, they are another black mark upon the Interior Department. Here is a federal official, sworn under at least two federal statutes to guard the welfare of the wild horses, telling ranchers to sue the federal government to prompt quicker political action against the horses. And even if the BLM now backs away from Baca -- "she wasn't authorized to make those representations" -- the allegation itself is compelling insight into the atmosphere that surrounds the BLM's attitude toward these horses. Like the ranchers, the BLM seems to consider them pests and certainly not "cherished" symbols protected by law.

The BLM is part of the Interior Department. The Secretary of the Interior is a man named Ken Salazar and, although his Wikipedia entry strangely is silent on the matter, he is part of a long-time ranching family from Colorado. Salazar's brother, John, who recently represented Colorado's 3rd Congressional District (it's Western Slope), also is a rancher. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R), who alone represents Wyoming in the House of Representatives, evidently raised Heifers when she was younger. These are some of the people who are judging the competing interests that clash over the fate of the herds. What chances do you reckon those horses have?

The Facts On The Ground

If Wyoming were the size of Delaware, a battle over what to do with federal land might make more sense. But Wyoming contains vast tracts of land owned by the federal government and, to a lesser extent, by the state. If we were talking about a huge number of wild horses and a relatively small number of sheep and cattle then the dynamic of the argument might differ as well. But the number of sheep and livestock in Wyoming now grazing on public land is far greater, orders of magnitude greater, than the number of wild horses who cross over between public and private land. And if the horses were, indeed, as destructive to the rangelands as the ranchers assert, perhaps the mass expulsions might be justified. But the horses aren't nearly as destructive as the cattle and sheep who roam the range.

If you don't believe me, just ask the BLM. The Bureau's own statistics tell the story of the "imbalance" the government and the ranchers want to maintain. Livestock grazing in the United States is authorized on 157 million acres of BLM land. For wild horses, it is restricted to 26.9 million acres of that land (and, as we have seen, there are limits within the limits). There may be over one million cattle and sheep now grazing public land in many western states. At the same time, there are approximately 38,000 wild horses and burros stuffed into only 11 percent of all BLM land. And even this relatively small figure is too high for the BLM; the feds say only about 26,000 wild horses should remain on public land.

Focusing upon Wyoming alone, the "imbalance" between land uses is pronounced. A 2007 article in the Wyoming Business Report indicated that the Rock Springs Grazing Association alone had between 50,000-70,000 sheep and 5,000 head of cattle on its grazing lands (that figure may be more or less four years later). By contrast, the BLM allows only 2,100 wild horses total in the five herd management areas of interest to the RSGA, a swath of land that encompasses thousands of square miles. But, again, even that relatively small number of horses is too great for the ranchers. While the horse advocates were suing the BLM for being too quick to get rid of the herd, the RSGA was suing the BLM for being too slow to remove the horses.

There are costs incurred by the federal government in allowing ranchers to use public lands (at low costs). From a 2008 Congressional Report on grazing fees:

BLM and the FS typically spend far more managing their grazing programs than they collect in grazing fees. For example, the GAO determined that in FY2004, the agencies spent about $132.5 million on grazing management, comprised of $58.3 million for the BLM and $74.2 million for the FS. These figures include expenditures for direct costs, such as managing permits, as well as indirect costs, such as personnel. The agencies collected $17.5 million, comprised of $11.8 million in BLM receipts and $5.7 million in FS receipts. Receipts for both agencies have been relatively low in recent years, apparently because western drought has contributed to reduced livestock grazing.


Other estimates of the cost of livestock grazing on federal lands are much higher. For instance, a 2002 study by the Center for Biological Diversity estimated the federal cost of an array of BLM, FS, and other agency programs that benefit grazing or compensate for impacts of grazing at roughly $500 million annually. Together with the nonfederal cost, the total cost of livestock grazing could be as high as $1 billion annually, according to the study.

Finally, in just the past few days, questions have arisen about the factual bases for the most commonly-stated reason given for removing the horses -- that they mess up the range lands for other users and uses. The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, another one of the plaintiffs fighting wild horse removals all over the West, recently commissioned a study from Robert Edwards, a range scientist who worked for 30 years for the BLM before becoming an independent consultant.

With the legal battle joined in Washington over the fate of the herds, the horse advocacy group asked Edwards to go to the two Wyoming range lands in question, check out the horses, and evaluate the impact they have upon the land (and the impact the land has upon them. Here is a link to the Edwards's August 4th Report. It's main findings:

All areas observed and/or documented were found to be in only fair grazing range condition, which is typical of what is found on BLM range lands throughout the west.

Removing a large percentage of the wild horses is not likely to result in an improvement of range condition since the percentage of forage allocated to wild horses is very small compared to the amount of forage allocated to livestock (the forage allocation for wild horse use is only 2% to 3% of the total forage allocation for the [two herd management areas].

Information from the BLM indicates that there are well water sources in these HMAs which are turned on and off to accommodate livestock use. If true, this would reduce the number of water sources available for wild horse use in the summer months.

Limiting the number of water sources forces the wild horses to congregate in areas where water is available, and consequently increases the negative impact they are having on the range areas they are using.

There is no emergency situation in the area that would cause significant damage to the range or harm to the wild horses if they are not removed.

The forage resources needed to support the wild horse population are more than adequate and the horses observed are in good condition.

In other words, the land can sustain a much larger number of wild horses than the BLM, Wyoming, or the ranchers have been willing to admit. Not only that, but the land (the water, actually) is evidently being manipulated by ranchers and/or the BLM in a way that is detrimental to the horses (by denying them water and by pushing the herds toward livestock areas, which which gets them in more trouble with the ranchers). Soon, the BLM, Wyoming, and the RSGA will unleash their own experts to discount Edwards' conclusions. They will likely say that the BLM's calculations are reasonable, supported by evidence, and that the law is settled by consent decree.

This war is eternal and the horses almost always lose. Even if Edwards' conclusions don't hold up in court -- federal judges are required by law to give deferences to the findings of administrative agencies like the BLM -- they have common sense on their side. Blaming the relatively tiny number of wild horses in Wyoming for tearing up the trail, when there are tens of thousands of sheep and cattle roaming around, is like blaming the lifeboats for the sinking of the Titanic. It was a weak argument even before Edwards' findings cast doubt upon it.

As I wrote in my first piece on this topic, I recognize that this is a complicated issue; that the ranchers and government officials don't always wear the black hats in our western tale. There should be reasonable limits on the number of wild horses on public land. What strikes me about this story, however, is how little protection the wild horses of Wyoming really have, despite federal laws and regulations designed to protect them. What jolts me, too, is the strength and ferocity of the political forces arrayed against the horses. There are millions of acres upon which these horses can roam without materially interfering with livestock. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of such room in Sweetwater County alone.

That our government is unwilling to find these horses room -- or even consider doing so -- contradicts the spirit, if not the letter, of federal law. The governor of Wyoming is a rancher. The Secretary of the Interior is a rancher. The lone member of the House of Representatives grew up around cattle. And today ranching interests are routing the wild horses of Sweetwater County. That's an angle you won't see pitched anytime soon by Wyoming's tourism board. It wants you to come to Wyoming to see all the pretty horses, for sure, but it wants you to remain oblivious to what is being done to those horses, and why, in your name.

Read more at www.theatlantic.com
Enhanced by Zemanta

1/13/10

LIFEBLOOD OF THE WEST



This is only one of many excellent reports from the book Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West

LIFEBLOOD OF THE WEST
Riparian Zones, Biodiversity, and Degradation by Livestock

J. Boone Kauffman, Ph.D


Riparian, or streamside, areas are critical habitat for many plants and animals in the arid West. Livestock grazing is the leading cause of riparian degradation. Impacts to vegetation, stream hydrology, and geomorphology can separately or synergistically affect stream functioning and many wildlife species. Thus, riparian restoration, including the removal of livestock, must be a high priority for the conservation of biodiversity.


J. Boone Kauffman is professor of ecosystem sciences in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University, Corvallis. He studies the ecology and restoration of riparian zones in the arid West, as well as tropical forest ecology in Central and South America, and has written more than a hundred scientific papers on natural ecosystems. He grew up on the West Texas plains and holds a Ph.D. degree in forest ecology from the University of California at Berkeley, as well a B.S. degree in range management and an M.S. degree in range ecology.

Riparian zones are a unique wetland environment adjacent to rivers or streams. People have long recognized that riparian zones and rivers are the lifeblood of the western landscape, being more productive and home to more plants and animals than any other type of habitat. Scientists refer to riparian zones as hotspots of biodiversity, a characterization that is particularly apparent in arid and semiarid environments, where such zones may be the only tree-dominated ecosystems in the landscape. The presence of water, increased productivity, favorable microclimate, and periodic flood events combine to create a disproportionately higher biological diversity than that of the surrounding uplands.



Cattle graze in a wet meadow along Blacktail Creek, Beaverhead National Forest, Montana. Streamside vegetation is cropped low, parts of the stream bank are bare, and other parts are sloughing into the creek.
In the Intermountain West and Great Basin, about 85 percent of native animal species are dependent on riparian zones for all or part of their life cycles. In these same riparian zones, more than 100 plant species commonly can be found on a single gravel bar of about 150 feet in length. In Oregon and Washington, about 71 percent of the native animal species utilize riparian zones. Given that riparian areas make up only 0.5 to 2 percent of the landscape, their value in terms of biological diversity is incomparable.

Healthy riparian zones are of special importance to native fish, aquatic insects, and other stream-dwelling organisms. Particularly in headwater areas, most of the nutrients and energy used by aquatic organisms come from riparian zones--either plant materials that fall into the stream or nutrients dissolved in groundwater flows. Riparian zones are also the source of large pieces of wood that provide important in-stream habitat. Riparian vegetation gives shade over creeks, strongly influencing water temperature and thereby the distribution of coldwater species such as bull trout and other salmonids. Roots bind soil together and create resistance to stream erosion, resulting in complex habitat features such as overhanging banks, deep pools, and clean gravels. Finally, riparian zones are important in influencing water quality through nutrient uptake, chemical transformation (such as the conversion of nitrogen compounds into forms more useful for a variety of plant and animal species), and the mechanical filtering of sediments when flood waters flow high over stream banks.

Many of the same attributes of riparian zones that result in high productivity and high biodiversity are of great economic value to human society. Unfortunately, many current uses of riparian corridors and wetlands by society do not correspond with preservation of these places as wildlife habitats or as providers of important natural services, such as the reduction of flood velocity and intensity. Broad floodplains formed along streams through the millennia have been productive not only because of their complex wildlife habitats and linkages to the aquatic biota but also because of their nutrient-rich soils. In fact, although the best lands for tilled agriculture, livestock forage, and timber growth are riparian zones and wetlands, these same activities, along with a variety of others, have been conducted in such an abusive fashion as to diminish greatly the value of riparian and stream ecosystems, from both utilitarian and ecological viewpoints.

A multitude of land uses show a lack of respect for, or ignorance of, the value of healthy and vigorous riparian zones and have resulted in the deterioration of not only riparian areas, but the entire landscape. In general, land abuses that have degraded riparian zones include logging, water diversion for irrigation or municipal uses, mining, roads, channelization, urbanization, industry, and agriculture. In the western United States, it is likely that livestock grazing has been the most widespread cause of ecological degradation of riparian/stream ecosystems. More riparian areas and stream miles are affected by livestock grazing than by any other type of land use.

Livestock, especially cattle, prefer riparian zones for many of the same reasons that so many species of wildlife use them: high plant productivity, proximity to water, favorable microclimate, and level ground. As much as 81 percent of the forage removed by livestock within a grazing allotment can come from the 2 percent of land area occupied by the riparian zone. Without controls on animal numbers, timing, and duration of use, cattle can rapidly and severely degrade riparian areas through forage removal, soil compaction, stream bank trampling, and the introduction of exotics. These factors have been defined as the direct effects of domestic livestock grazing on ecosystems.

Through time, the direct effects of livestock can have many additive or even synergistic impacts that dramatically change the structure, function, and composition of the riparian zone. Of particular importance are the effects of livestock on streamside forests of cottonwood, aspen, and willow. The highest densities of breeding songbirds in the West are found in these habitats. Long-term overgrazing can eliminate these stands, which are of inestimable value as centers of biological diversity. In the short term, herbivory can depress both plant growth and reproductive output. Depressing the vigor of native plant species, along with increased soil disturbance due to livestock trampling, facilitates the spread of exotic weeds. Herbivory also causes a corresponding decline in the root biomass of riparian vegetation.


This stream in northern New Mexico has become “entrenched.” Over time, grazing and trampling of the soils and banks by livestock have caused the stream to widen and cut downward. Typical results of this stream degradation process include lowered water table, drier soil in the zone adjoining the waterway, and riparian-type plants (such as willows) gradually replaced by more drought-resistant plants (such as sagebrush).
At stream edges, the combination of root loss and trampling weakens and collapses banks. Bank loss and the resulting sediment loads contribute to downcutting, channel widening, and degradation of water quality and fish habitats. As the channel downcuts, overbank flows cease, and subsurface water exchange between stream and floodplain is lost. Floodplain forests evolved to grow and develop in the environment created by large floods. By altering or eliminating the natural flood regime, channel downcutting impedes or halts the development of multi-layered, multi-aged--or "gallery"--forests, such as those composed of cottonwood trees and willows, along with other riparian plants. Loss of the riparian forests negatively affects not only the terrestrial wildlife, but the aquatic biota as well. Loss of shade and organic inputs from riparian vegetation results in increased stream temperature, altered water quality, and a change in composition and abundance of the aquatic biota.

Although occupying a small portion of the landscape, riparian zones are keystone ecosystems because of their high level of biodiversity and provision of other ecosystem services. The restoration of riparian zones would yield many positive benefits, including the return of flood events to something resembling their natural patterns. Because riparian plants have adapted to survive frequent floods and other natural disturbances, they often show great resilience after the cessation of human activities that are causing degradation. Such removal of harmful activities is termed passive restoration, and in the arid West, the most significant act of passive restoration would be the removal of grazing livestock. Logically, passive restoration should be implemented first, and its effectiveness assessed, before the initiation of more active measures, such as structural modifications and reintroductions of species.

Among the greatest barriers to effective riparian recovery are political and social factors. Land and river managers have often been limited to, or limited themselves to, band-aid approaches that do not address the real causes of degradation. For example, salmon have continued to decline in the Columbia Basin of the Pacific Northwest, despite the input of billions of dollars for restoration projects and mitigating measures, because, among other reasons, livestock continue to degrade riparian zones. A prominent and popular project on public lands in the Columbia Basin has been the installation of artificial structures in smaller streams, in an attempt to re-create aquatic habitat that has been lost to decades of poor resource management. However, artificial stream structures can be expensive and often are sited and constructed poorly.

In many cases, the most effective, cheapest, and simplest approach to restoring these river courses would be to halt grazing damage and allow the streams to recover their own natural vegetative and morphological characteristics over time. But it can be extremely difficult politically for managers to make such decisions. And restoration results can take a long time to appear, whereas political demands arise much more rapidly. Yet, given the inestimable natural values that arise from healthy riparian zones, a long-term commitment to riparian restoration, preservation, and sustainable management should receive high priority. The reduction or removal of livestock from vital riparian and wetland habitats throughout the West needs to be given serious consideration by all those concerned about ecosystem health.


References available in printed version of article
.


Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
"From my earliest memories, I have loved horses with a longing beyond words." ~ Robert Vavra