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<DIV><FONT size=4>From: <EM>LA Times</EM> 06-18-05</FONT></DIV>
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<H4>THE NATION</H4>
<H1>Land Study on Grazing Denounced</H1>
<H2>Two retired specialists say Interior excised their warnings on the effects
on wildlife and water.</H2>By Julie Cart<BR>Times Staff Writer<BR><BR>June 18,
2005<BR><BR>The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific
analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before
announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those
lands, according to scientists involved in the study.<BR><BR>A government
biologist and a hydrologist, who both retired this year from the Bureau of Land
Management, said their conclusions that the proposed new rules might adversely
affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised
and replaced with language justifying less stringent regulations favored by
cattle ranchers.<BR><BR>Grazing regulations, which affect 160 million acres of
public land in the Western U.S., set the conditions under which ranchers may use
that land, and guide government managers in determining how many cattle may
graze, where and for how long without harming natural resources.<BR><BR>The
original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would
have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife, but that phrase was removed.
The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are "beneficial to
animals."<BR><BR>Eliminated from the final draft was another conclusion that
read: "The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on
wildlife and biological diversity in general."<BR><BR>Also removed was language
saying how a number of the rule changes could adversely affect endangered
species.<BR><BR>"This is a whitewash. They took all of our science and reversed
it 180 degrees," said Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada and
a 30-year bureau employee who retired this year. He was the author of sections
of the report pertaining to the effect on wildlife and threatened and endangered
species.<BR><BR>"They rewrote everything," Campbell said in an interview this
week. "It's a crime."<BR><BR>Campbell and the other retired bureau scientist who
criticized the rules were among more than a dozen BLM specialists who
contributed to the environmental impact statement. Others who worked on the
original draft could not be reached or did not return calls seeking
comment.<BR><BR>A bureau official acknowledged that changes were made in the
analysis and said they were part of a standard editing and review process.
Ranchers hailed the regulations as a signal of new openness from the
administration.<BR><BR>"We're hopeful that some of the provisions will
strengthen the public lands grazing industry and give our members certainty in
their business," said Jenni Beck of the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. "We are
encouraged that this [environmental impact statement] demonstrates the benefits
of grazing on public lands."<BR><BR>Livestock graze on public land in 11 Western
states, including 8 million acres in California. The vast acreage is needed to
support a comparatively small number of livestock because in the arid region
topsoil is thin and grass is generally sparse.<BR><BR>About 2% of the nation's
beef is produced from cattle on public lands.<BR><BR>The new rules, published
Friday by the BLM, a division of the Department of Interior, ensures ranchers
expanded access to public land and requires federal land managers to conduct
protracted studies before taking action to limit that access.<BR><BR>The rules
reverse a long-standing agency policy that gave BLM experts the authority to
quickly determine whether livestock grazing was inflicting damage.<BR><BR>The
regulations also eliminate the agency's obligation to seek public input on some
grazing decisions. Public comment will be allowed but not required.<BR><BR>In
recent years, concerns about the condition of much Western grazing land has been
heightened by drought, which has denuded pastures in the most arid areas,
causing bureau managers to close some pastures and prompting ranchers to sell
their herds.<BR><BR>The new rules mark a departure from grazing regulations
adopted in 1995 under President Clinton and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
Those regulations reflected the view of range scientists that a legacy of
overgrazing in the West had degraded scarce water resources, damaged native
plant communities and imperiled wildlife.<BR><BR>Babbitt ordered the bureau to
establish standards that spelled out when public lands were open for grazing,
and for the first time required range specialists to assess each pasture to
ensure it held enough vegetation to support wildlife and livestock. It was the
first time in about 50 years that the federal government had tried sweeping
overhauls of how Western ranchers operated on public lands.<BR><BR>By 1994,
studies from scientists at the Department of the Interior and the Department of
Agriculture convinced government land managers that livestock grazing was the
most pervasive threat to plant and animals in the arid West.<BR><BR>Some
conservation groups seized on the studies to mount a campaign to eliminate
grazing on public land altogether, prompting a backlash that accused
environmentalists of engaging in "rural cleansing" that would drive families off
the land, some of whom had been there since the 19th century.<BR><BR>This week,
environmentalists were sharply critical of the new rules.<BR><BR>"It's an
explicit rollback," said Thomas Lustig, staff lawyer for the National Wildlife
Federation in Boulder, Colo. "What [Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton] did was
take Babbitt's regs and found parts where they could put a hurdle in to
undermine the reforms."<BR><BR>Bureau officials said the new rules represented a
step forward in improving its management of livestock grazing on federal
land.<BR><BR>Bud Cribley, the agency's manager for rangeland resources, said the
report was written by a number of specialists from different offices within the
BLM. When it was finished, in November 2003, the agency believed it "needed a
lot of work," Cribley said.<BR><BR>"We disagreed with the impact analysis that
was originally put forward. There were definitely changes made in the area of
impact analysis. We adjusted it.<BR><BR>"The draft that we published we felt
adequately addressed the impacts. We felt the changes we did make were based on
good science."<BR><BR>Most of the changes came in sections analyzing projected
impact of the rules on fisheries, plant and animal health as well as water
quality and quantity.<BR><BR>Bill Brookes, a former hydrologist with the bureau
who assessed the regulations' effect on water resources, said in the original
draft the proposed rule change was "an abrogation of [the agency's]
responsibility under the Clean Water Act."<BR><BR>"Everything I wrote was
totally rewritten and watered down," Brookes said in an interview
Thursday.<BR><BR>"Everything in the report that was purported to be negative was
watered down. Instead of saying, in the long term, this will create problems, it
now says, in the long term, grazing is the best thing since sliced
bread."<BR><BR>Brookes said work that the bureau's original specialists required
more than a year and a half to finish was changed in a matter of weeks. He and
Campbell said officials in Washington said the document did not support the new
rules so they called in a new team to redo it.<BR><BR>According to the agency
officials, the new grazing regulations were meant to give land managers and
ranchers more flexibility in making decisions about whether to allow grazing on
a particular parcel.<BR><BR>Though an array of conservation and environmental
groups decried the new rules, Cribley said changes were minor but
necessary.<BR><BR>"We don't look at this as a significant change from the
current regulations," he said. "This is fine-tuning and making adjustment in
existing rules. We came out with some significant changes in the grazing rule in
'95, and we have been implementing changes since that time. We needed to make
corrections after almost 10 years of experience." <BR
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