Diversity and species conservation

Forest disturbances promote diversity, Mark Swanson, WSU

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Mt. St. Helens, 25 years later, from Wikipedia via WSU

Mark Swanson of WSU on biological diversity. Thanks to Bob Berwyn for his post which led me to the WSU press release here. Since it’s a press release, I posted the whole thing below.

Forest disturbances promote diversity
Researcher sees how forests thrive after fires and volcanoes
Monday, Aug. 6, 2012

PULLMAN, Wash.—Forests hammered by windstorms, avalanches and wildfires may appear blighted, but a Washington State University researcher says such disturbances can be key to maximizing an area’s biological diversity.

In fact, says Mark Swanson, land managers can alter their practices to enhance such diversity, creating areas with a wide variety of species, including rare and endangered plants and animals.

“The 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, for example, has created very diverse post-eruption conditions, and has some of the highest plant and animal diversity in the western Cascades range,” says Mark Swanson, an assistant professor of landscape ecology and silviculture in Washington State University’s School of the Environment.

Swanson, who has studied disturbed areas on Mount St. Helens and around western North America, presents his findings this week at the national convention of the Ecological Society of America in Portland.

His findings run counter to a widely held perception that most, if not all rare species tend to require older forests, not younger. In fact, he says, a substantial proportion of Washington’s state-protected forest plants and animals spend some or all of their life cycle in areas rebounding from a major disturbance. That’s because such habitats often include woody debris and snags, varied landscape patterns, and a rich diversity of plants that can be exploited for food and shelter.

“Severe fire in the northern Rockies creates conditions for some rare birds that depend on abundant dead trees, like the black-backed woodpecker,” says Swanson. “It can benefit a host of other organisms, too, like elk, deer, bighorn sheep, some frog species, and many more.”

Forest disturbances can be natural events, says Swanson, but they can also be the product of carefully designed forest harvests. In either case, he says, forest managers can help maximize biological diversity with practices that extend the time it takes the forest to return to a climax state with a closed canopy.

Clearcutting often leaves too little behind to provide habitat for a diversity of species, Swanson says. Also, clearcut areas are often reforested too quickly to allow open conditions and a diverse herb and shrub community to persist. By the same token, post-disturbance logging can hurt diversity by removing structures favored by plants and animals.

However, where maintaining biodiversity is an objective, like on federal lands, timber harvests can be designed to mimic natural disturbance and create habitat for some species that depend on a forest’s recovery, or succession, says Swanson. Afterwards, he says, managers should avoid dense “recovery” plantings that can so shorten a forest’s succession that they give short shrift to the ecological role its early stages.

Note from Sharon… shortening forest succession by growing trees faster can sequester carbon faster, but slower is better for biodiversity. Clearly we won’t find a nirvana-esque state that is good for everything. Guess we’ll have to consciously choose.

MT Groups Petition Montana to Halt Trapping of Rare Wolverine

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Photographer Chad Harder captured these images of a rare wolverine running across a snowfield on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest earlier this summer.

The Western Environmental Law Center, on behalf of eight local conservation groups and one individual, submitted a formal petition Tuesday to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission (“MFWP”) to halt the trapping of wolverine in Montana – the only state in the contiguous U.S. that still allows the imperiled animal to be trapped.

Wolverines resemble a small bear that is custom built for high-elevation, mountain living.  They have large, crampon-clawed feet designed for digging, climbing, and walking on snow, and an extremely high metabolic rate. Its double fur coat includes a dense inner layer of wool beneath a cover of frost-shedding guard hairs and is the reason trappers target the animal.

Once prolific across the West, the wolverine population in the Lower 48 is now down to no more than 250-300 individuals. Montana has the highest concentration of wolverine in the Lower 48, but still only about 100-175 individuals.  A substantial number of the remaining wolverines in Montana are likely unsuccessful breeders or non-breeding subadults.  This means Montana’s “effective population” of individuals who are able to breed is significantly smaller, perhaps less than 40.

So rare are these native carnivores that in December 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“Service”) designated the wolverine a species that warrants protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, but the level of protection has not yet been determined.  The Service determined that an already small and vulnerable population of wolverine in the lower 48 will continue to decline in the face of climate change, which is causing a reduction in suitable wolverine habitat in Montana (wolverine depend on late spring snow and cold temperatures) and increasing the speed by which isolated populations vanish. Warming temperatures are also increasing the distance, and thus fragmentation, between islands of suitable habitat.

“Authorizing the trapping of wolverines under these circumstances is making a bad situation worse,” said Matthew Bishop, a local attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center, who is representing the petitioners. “Wolverines are the polar bear of the Lower 48 and need all the help they can get right now in the face of a warming planet, shrinking habitat, and increased isolation. Montana shouldn’t be kicking them when they’re down,” added Bishop.

Trapping is a major source of wolverine mortality in Montana and has had significant negative effects on wolverine inhabiting Montana’s small, isolated island ranges. In one study, of the 14 wolverines tracked in the Pioneer Mountains during a three-year period, 6 were killed in traps, including 4 adult males and two pregnant females.  As a result of trapping, the wolverine population in the Pioneers was reduced by an estimated 50%.

In another study of wolverine on the Flathead National Forest, trapping killed five times more wolverine than natural causes in a population that can ill afford it, killing nearly two-thirds of the wolverines being studied in just five years.

“We’re lucky to see wolverine on rare occasions here in the Swan Range of Northwest Montana, where they were first studied back in the 1970s,” said Keith Hammer, Chair of petitioner Swan View Coalition. He asserted, “Trapping must stop if these rare and wonderful animals are to return from the brink of extinction.”

Arlene Montgomery, Program Director of petitioner Friends of the Wild Swan, stated, “Trapping adds insult to injury for the wolverine.” She added, “They are already teetering on the brink from climate change and other threats. Trapping them is unnecessary and not sport.”

The petitioners are asking MFWP to close the wolverine trapping season now, before the 2012 trapping season begins on December 1, 2012, and to not reopen it until wolverine populations have recovered enough to no longer need protection of the Endangered Species Act.

“This is the right thing to do – morally, scientifically, socially, and ecologically – for the future of wolverine and the future of trapping in Montana,” said Gary Ingman, a board member of the Helena Hunters and Anglers Association, a local sportsmen’s group and petitioner. “The biological models show that the current population levels simply are not self-sustaining,” concluded Ingman.

The following organizations and individual joined WELC’s petition: Friends of the Wild Swan, Helena Hunters and Anglers Association, Montana Ecosystem Defense, Native Ecosystems Council, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Swan View Coalition, WildEarth Guardians, Footloose Montana, and George Wuerthner.

Oregon Field Guide: Biscuit Fire 10 Years Later

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The most recent episode of Oregon Field Guide, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, takes a look at southwestern Oregon’s Biscuit Fire 10 years after the 2002 wildfire.  You can watch the ten minute program here and then offer your thoughts in the comments section.

Bernard Bormann, with the Pacific Northwest Research station, had been studying the forests’ of the Siskiyou mountains for years. When the 500,000 acre Biscuit fire burned through his research plots, he first thought all was lost. But in the 10 years since the fire, he’s been able to compare life before and after fire to reveal an amazing amount of new information about how life returns to the forest after fire.

Dousing the Claims: Extinguishing Republican Myths about Wildfire

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Democrats on the House Resources Committee released a new report on Tuesday.  Phil Taylor, a reporter with E&E, has a story out about the report and subsequent hearing.  Unfortunately, E&E doesn’t have a free link to the entire story, so some snips from the story are below.

Environmental groups over the past three years have appealed less than 5 percent of projects on federal lands designed to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire, and, of those, less than one out of five involved endangered species issues, according to a new report from Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee….

“Environmental laws, land management agencies, litigation, endangered species and even immigrants share the Republican blame for this year’s devastating wildfires,” Markey said. “These accusations are just a smokescreen.”

Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management data obtained by committee Democrats seemed to back up his claim.

Out of 8,000 fuel reduction projects in federal forests over the last three, less than 1 percent of all of the work was affected by appeals, according to the Democrats’ report. Endangered Species Act challenges affected less than 0.05 percent of all hazardous fuels work on roughly 10 million acres of land, the report found.

“This report shows that political fact-checkers should create a new category called ‘pants on wildfire’ for the ill-informed Republican myths on forest fire prevention,” Markey said. “When climate change is baking the country in drought and actually increasing the risks of catastrophic wildfires, these half-baked ideas from Republicans do a disservice to the people who have suffered from wildfires.”….

Democrats said the findings are consistent with a Government Accountability Office report in 2010 that found less than 20 percent of the 1,191 fuel reduction projects on about 9 million acres from 2006 to 2008 were appealed. About 2 percent of all fuel reduction projects were litigated and those involved about 124,000 acres, the report says.

 

Climate, Man-Created Landscapes Feed Wildfires

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The following guest post is from Bryan Bird, Wild Places Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. He writes from Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Bird received his Masters in conservation biology from New Mexico State University in 1995 and holds an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1990. He has undertaken conservation research, planning, and protection projects in Central America, Mexico, and the Southwestern United States. Since first working for the Guardians in 1996, Bryan has focused on restoration of national forestlands and their critical ecological processes, as well as monitoring, reviewing, and challenging destructive Forest Service logging proposals and land management plans.  – mk
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An incendiary situation is rising in the West’s wildlands – but it’s not just wildfire. It’s the explosion in the number of homes and structures in highly flammable landscapes and climate change-driven conditions that are leading to a public policy crisis.

We need to revisit our commitment to military-scale fire-fighting at massive taxpayer expense as well as federal, state and local policies that promote development into the West’s “fireplains.” As we recover from the largest single wildfire recorded in New Mexico history as well as the most destructive to homes and communities, we must consider effective and economical solutions.

Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman, Mont.-based think tank, points out the tremendous development potential in the West for the remaining 86 percent of forested private land adjacent to public land – known as wildland urban interface, or the red zone.

It calculated the astronomical costs of battling these fires. If homes were built in just half of the red zone, annual firefighting costs could range from $2.3 billion to $4.3 billion per year.

Here in New Mexico, Bernalillo, Lincoln and Otero counties have the largest portions of their red zone already developed. Sadly, these are foreseeable and expensive disasters.

A paradigm shift in how people live in fire-prone landscapes is upon us, similar to floodplain regulation in the 1970s. Insurers are taking notice, and so should county policymakers examine their building codes.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stated last week at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, “Though the number of fires across the country is actually less than last year, and the acreage burned is less than last year, the number of structures and infrastructure burned is significantly higher, and that’s in part because of where the fires have been, and the growth of the wildland-urban interface.”

The latest science suggests weather and climatic conditions, rather than fuels, drive the large fires we are now witnessing. But despite all the rhetoric about “historic” fire seasons, the total acreage burned over the last decade, 7 million acres on average, is quite low by historic standards. Over 140 million acres burned annually in the U.S. in pre-industrial times. As recently as the 1930s Dust Bowl years, the number was close to 40 million acres. The past 50-70 years may actually be an abnormality in terms of acreage burned as well as fire severity.

Any single year’s fire activity, according to recent science, is related more closely to high temperatures than to previous fire suppression efforts, age of trees, or other factors. Higher spring temperatures, especially, lead to more fires. Scientists have found that the period from 1987-2004, compared to the 16 years prior to that, averaged a longer fire season, by two and a half months, four times as many fires, a fivefold increase in the time needed to put out a wildfire, and 6.7 times as much area being burned.

We simply cannot fireproof forests, but we can fireproof homes and structures. Thinning and logging far into the backcountry forests may or may not have any effect on saving communities in the red zone. But with changing climate and recurring droughts of biblical proportion, it’s a safe bet that expensive thinning and logging will not make a difference under such extreme conditions. In fact, it could make the fire hazard even worse.

When people build and live in the “fireplain,” it’s not the federal government’s responsibility to look after them.

In addition, we cannot ask taxpayers to foot the bill for costly thinning of public forests far from home in an uncertain attempt to change fire behavior. Homeowners must be required to treat their own landscapes and build with fire-resistant materials: a proven practice known as Firewise.

Western forests have burned since time immemorial, and this natural process is both intimidating and worsening with climate change. But we do not have a wildfire problem as much as a people in flammable landscapes problem.

Praise the Dead: The Ecological Value of Dead Trees

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The following is a guest post from George Wuerthner. 

Dead. Death. These are words that we don’t often use to describe anything positive.  We hear phases like the walking dead. Death warmed over. Nothing is certain but death and taxes. The Grateful Dead. These are words that do not engender smiles, except among Grateful Dead fans.  We bring these pejorative perspectives to our thinking about forests. In particular, some tend to view dead trees as a missed opportunity to make lumber. But this really represents an economic value, not a biological value.

From an ecological perspective dead trees are the biological capital critical to the long-term health of the forest ecosystem.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but in many ways the health of a forest is measured more by its dead trees than live ones. Dead trees are a necessary component of present forests and an investment in the future forest.

I had a good lesson in the value of dead trees last summer while hiking in Yellowstone. I was walking along a trail that passes through a forest dominated by even-aged lodgepole pine. Judging by the size of the trees, I would estimate the forest stand had its start in a stand-replacement blaze, perhaps 60-70 years before.  Strewn along the forest floor were numerous large logs that had fallen since the last fire. Fallen logs are an important home for forest-dwelling ants. Pull apart any of those old pulpy rotted logs and you would find them loaded with ants.  Nearly every log I pass along the trail had been clawed apart by a grizzly feasting on ants. It may be difficult to believe that something as small as ants could feed an animal as large as a grizzly.  Yet one study in British Columbia found that ants were a major part of the grizzly’s diet in summer, especially in years when berry crop fails.

Who could have foreseen immediately after the forest had burned 60 years before that the dead trees created by the wildfire would someday be feeding grizzly bears? But dead trees are a biological legacy passed on to the next generation of forest dwellers including future generations of ants and grizzly bears.

Dead trees have many other important roles to play in the forest ecosystem. It is obvious to many people that woodpeckers depend on dead trees for food and shelter. In fact, black-backed woodpeckers absolutely require forests that have burned.  Yet woodpeckers are just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. In total 45% of all bird species depend on dead trees for some important part of their life cycle.  Whether it’s the wood duck that nests in a tree cavity; the eagle that constructs a nest in a broken top snag; or the nuthatch that forages for insects on the bark, dead trees and birds go together like peanut butter and jelly.  Birds aren’t the only animals that depend on dead trees. Many bats roost in the flaky bark of old dead snags and/or in cavities.

When a dead tree falls to the ground, the trunk is important habitat for many mammal species. For instance, one study in Wyoming found that without big dead trees, you don’t have marten. Why?  Marten are thin animals and as a consequence lose a lot of heat to the environment, especially when it’s cold. They can’t survive extended periods with temperatures below freezing without some shelter. In frigid weather, marten dig out burrows in the pulpy interiors of large fallen trees to provide thermal protection. They may only need such trees once a winter, but if there are no dead fallen trees in its territory, there may not be any marten.

Many amphibians depend on dead trees. Several studies have documented the close association between abundance of dead fallen logs and salamanders. Eliminate dead trees by logging and you eliminate salamanders.  Even fish depend on dead trees. As any fisherman can tell you, a log sticking out into the water is a sure place to find a trout lying in wait to grab insects.  If you talk to fish biologists they will tell you there is no amount of fallen woody debris or logs in a stream that is too much. The more logs, the more fish.

Even lichens and fungi are dependent on dead trees. Some 40% of all lichen species in the Pacific Northwest are dependent on dead trees and many are dead tree obligates, meaning they don’t grow anyplace else.

Dead trees fill other physical roles as well. As long as they are standing, they create “snow fences” that slows wind-driven snow. The snow that is trapped, melts in place, and helps to saturate the ground providing additional moisture to regrowing trees.  Dead trees that fall into streams stabilize and armor the bank, slowing water, and reducing erosion.  Dead trees create hiding cover and thermal cover for big game as well.

I was once on a tour with a Forest Service District Ranger who wanted to conduct a post fire logging operation. We were standing near the open barren landscape of a recent clearcut that was adjacent to the newly burnt forest.  I pointed out to him that the black snags still had value. He couldn’t see anything but snags waiting to be turned into lumber. I said the snags were still valuable for big game hiding cover. He dismissed my idea out of hand.  So I challenged him. I said I have a rifle and you have two minutes to get away from me. Where are you going to run? He didn’t have to ponder the point very long.

Even more counter-intuitive is that dead trees may reduce fire hazard. Once the small twigs and needles fall off in winter storms their flammability is greatly reduced.  By contrast, green trees, due to the flammable resins contained in their needles and bark, are actually more likely to burn than snags under conditions of extreme drought, high winds and low humidity. Under such extreme fire-weather conditions, I have seen trees like subalpine fir explode into flame as if they contained gasoline.  Fine fuels are what drive fires, not large tree trunks. Anyone who has fiddled around trying to get campfire going knows you gather small twigs, and fine fuels. You don’t try light a twenty inch log on fire.

Dead trees are the biological capital for the forest. Just as floods rejuvenate the river floodplain’s plant communities with periodic deposits of sediment, episodic events like major beetle kill and wildfire are the only way a forest can recruit the massive amounts of dead wood required for a healthy forest ecosystem.  Such infrequent, but periodic events may provide the bulk of a forest’s dead wood for a hundred years or more.

All of the above benefits of dead trees are reduced or eliminated by our common forest management practices.  Sanitizing a forest by “thinning” to promote so-called “forest health”, post-fire logging of burnt trees , or removal of beetle-killed tree bankrupts the forest ecosystem.  And even our mostly ineffective efforts to suppress wildfires and/or feeble attempts to halt beetle-kill reduce the future production of dead wood and leads to biological impoverishment of the forest ecosystem.  Creation and recruitment of dead trees is not a loss, rather it is an investment in future forests.

If you love birds, you have to love dead trees. If you love fishing, you have to love dead trees. If you want grizzlies to persist for another hundred years, you have to love dead trees.
More importantly you have to love or at least tolerate the ecological processes like beetle-kill or wildfire. These are the major factors that contribute dead trees to the forest.

So when you see fire-blackened trees or the red needles associated with a beetle kill, try to view these events in a different light-praise the dead: the forests, the wildlife, the fish– all will be pleased by your change of heart.

Black sludge coats Poudre River after High Park Fire- Denver Post

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From this piece in the Denver Post:
Here’s a video.

Excerpt below.

“The ash will be disappearing soon, but erosion along the river will continue — through summer 2013. We’ll see lower erosion rates by 2014,” said MacDonald, who specializes in watershed science.

It could take three years for relief in the harder-hit spur canyons, engineers told Solley. Rebuilding should wait, they said.

While the ash in the river is not harmful to rafters or even swimmers, except for its power to obscure potentially dangerous debris, the fish have much more serious problems.

The 2002 Hayman fire caused the loss of 70 percent of adult fish in the the South Platte River, said Colorado Parks and Wildife aquatic biologist Ken Kehmeier . The South Platte still hasn’t responded well to efforts to repopulate the fish, he said.

“We still hear complaints from anglers on the South Platte. The Poudre fire will be that bad or worse,” Kehmeier said, partly because there are no large reservoirs filtering out heavy sediments to the benefit of the river downstream.

“We know we’re losing fish now, but the impacts could last more than 10 years,” Kehmeier said. “It’s a devastating thing. It’s a lengthy recovery process, and we will be continually working for years to bring the fishery back.”

One of the early efforts to save fish was made during the fire, when officials evacuated 100,000 small fish over two days from the Watson Lake Rearing Unit in Bellvue. The fish left the hatchery in a semi truck outfitted with seven 500-gallon tanks. Some were released in Horsetooth, Carter and Flatiron reservoirs. Others went to Chatfield State Park’s hatchery, Kehmeier said.

Now as storm runoff from burned areas hits the river, some sediment and ash is carried along and some settles, dropping into the small spaces between river rocks and gravel, smothering insects and other invertebrates that are food for fish.

The river’s pH changes, Kehmeier said. Ash makes it more basic. Yet in some parts of the river researchers are seeing the water become more acidic, possibly because of decomposing pine needles. The shifts in pH are one more stress on fish.

Note from Sharon: I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t have fires, which are “natural” and we couldn’t stop ’em if we tried. My point is that we ought to be clear-eyed about their costs and benefits when we manage them, which we will always do, as long as there are people in the woods and people using the water from the woods. I wonder if seeing them through the “timber wars” lens keeps us from seeing clearly.

Poisons on public lands killing rare forest creatures

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UCD researcher Mourad Gabriel with a sedated fisher. Poisons being used on public lands are killing rare animals. (Courtesy UC Davis)

Here’s the link to the story. I wonder if this poison also impacts other carnivorous avian and mammalian species?
Below is an excerpt.

Rat poison used on illegal marijuana farms may be sickening and killing the fisher, a rare forest carnivore that makes its home in some of the most remote areas of California, according to a team of researchers led UC Davis veterinary scientists.

Researchers discovered commercial rodenticide in dead fishers in Humboldt County near Redwood National Park and in the southern Sierra Nevada in and around Yosemite National Park. The study, published July 13 in the journal PLoS ONE, says illegal marijuana farms are a likely source. Some marijuana growers apply the poisons to deter a wide range of animals from encroaching on their crops.

Fishers in California, Oregon and Washington have been declared a candidate species for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Fishers, a member of the weasel family, likely become exposed to the rat poison when eating animals that have ingested it. The fishers also may consume rodenticides directly, drawn by the bacon, cheese and peanut butter “flavorizers” that manufacturers add to the poisons. Other species, including martens, spotted owls, and Sierra Nevada red foxes, may be at risk from the poison, as well.

In addition to UCD, the study involved researchers from the nonprofit Integral Ecology Research Center, UC Berkeley, United States Forest Service, Wildlife Conservation Society, Hoopa Tribal Forestry, and California Department of Fish and Game

Fair Grazing Fee Bill Introduced

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What follows is a press release from Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson:

 
July 11, 2012 —Today, Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson introduced a taxpayer fairness bill to end the substantial federal subsidies that an elite number of livestock producers receive, saving American taxpayers about $1.2 billion. His bill requires that the Secretary of the Interior work in conjunction with the Secretary of Agriculture to set livestock grazing fees on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and National Forest System public rangelands at rates comparable to those found on nearby private grazing lands.

“The facts are clear. Two percent of ranchers are getting a benefit that 98 percent of other grazing ranchers have not been able to get. They pay far less than the market value for the right to graze on public lands,” said Senator Nelson. “This isn’t fair to the taxpayer, and this isn’t fair to the other 98 percent of cattle grazers who have to compete in the marketplace.

“The State of Nebraska charges over $20 dollars a head of calf to graze on state land. Why should the federal government charge $1.35?”

The senator has also offered his grazing fee bill as an amendment to the Small Business Tax Credit Bill currently before the Senate. If adopted, the amendment would help defray the legislation’s costs.

The Government Accountability Office has estimated that just two percent of American ranchers hold animal grazing rights to National Forest System public rangelands. The grazing fees charged by the federal government on the rangelands are far below market value, at times up to 95% lower than the market fees charged for grazing on state- and privately-owned lands, fees that 98% of grazing ranchers have no choice but to pay.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture Statistics Service, the State of Nebraska charged a state land grazing fee of $27.30/animal in 2011. The $1.35 figure cited by Nelson was published in a United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on Livestock Grazing-Related Federal Expenditures. Among the GAO report’s findings are:

• In 1934, the monthly public rangeland grazing fee was $1.23/animal.
• In 2007, the monthly public rangeland grazing fee was $1.35/animal.
• From 1980 to 2004, BLM and Forest Service grazing fees fell by 40 percent.
• From 1980 to 2004, the market price on grazing fees rose by almost 80 percent.
• The government collects nearly $21 million/year in grazing fees on public rangelands.
• The government puts about $144 million/year into the maintenance of public rangelands.

“Let’s go through some numbers. All the grazing fees on federal lands add up to about $21 million dollars,” said Nelson. “But it costs the federal government $140-some million dollars to take care of those lands. In other words, there is a shortfall of $120 million dollars coming from two percent of ranchers. If I’m one of the 98 percent, I’m going to say ‘that’s not fair.’ That’s why this is a matter of tax fairness.”

Nelson noted that the suppressed grazing fees deny Nebraska funds badly needed for infrastructure projects and education. He highlighted how a sizeable portion of the Forest Service’s collected grazing fees are allocated back to states that house public rangelands.

“In the Forest Service grazing program, 25% of the grazing fees are remitted back to the affected states for use on roads and schools as a payment in lieu of taxes, since counties and cities can’t levy property taxes on that land,” Nelson said. “So, these artificially-lowered grazing fees mean less money is going to states for roads and schools. This bill ensures that tax dollars currently going towards the two percent are redirected into Nebraska’s roads and schools.”

“I have yet to have heard anybody defend this practice by saying that it’s fair – to the 98 percent, or to American taxpayers,” said Nelson. “$1.35 per cow is too darn low.”

The GAO Grazing Fee Study can be found here.
The USDA State Grazing Fee rates can be found here.

Of all the eye-catching stats and information in that press release, this certainly caught my eye:  “In 1934, the monthly public rangeland grazing fee was $1.23/animal.  In 2007, the monthly public rangeland grazing fee was $1.35/animal.”  If only the 2007 price of gas, price of an automobile or the price of a house was as similar to 1934!

Video: Wyoming’s Noble Basin – Too Special to Drill

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The Center for American Progress and the Sierra Club have released a series of three short video documentaries, “Public Lands, Private Profits,” outlining threats to public lands.  Today, we’ll highlight “Too Special to Drill,” which looks at how proposed natural gas drilling would impact the pristine Noble Basin section of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.