Grazing

Professor Defends FS Wildlife Biologists (and Other FS Folks): Sierra Club Policy on Federal Lands Grazing

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There is a potential lawsuit  in Wyoming about temporarily opening grazing allotments on the BT, apparently to support ranchers that lost forage due to wildfires.

Here’s a link to the Cowboy State Daily story. Not surprisingly, the Cowboy State Daily’s Wyoming counterpart has an op-ed about the situation..from a Sierra Club worker.

Here’s Rodeo Professor’s take:

Cattle and livestock grazing have been happening in the Bridger Teton National Forest for well over a century, especially in the Upper Green River. The Green River Drift is a historic cattle drive route in use since 1896, literally one of the America’s oldest traditional cattle drives (even listed on the National Register of Historic Places). Multigenerational families have been keeping the American cultural practice of cowboying and grazing on public land alive here for over 130 years. American law (called “MUSYA” or the Multiple Use Sustainable Yield Act) says that National Forests must equally balance recreation, grazing, timber, watershed, and fish/wildlife. This has been the case in our National Forests since they were created. It’s a uniquely American land management institution and we should be proud of it.

The coalition of NGOs are planning to use the Endangered Species Act to sue the Bridger Teton for “not doing all its paperwork properly.” So instead of managing trails and fuels, many will be focused on fighting endless lawsuits in court.

The truth is that the BT did conduct a thorough Review of Environmental Compliance Docs to determine whether it could temporarily allow cows to graze in Elk Ridge to let other pasture rest for a season or two after a very large fire.

Using the original Environmental Assessment the Forest Service decided a 1-2 season temporary grazing permit fell within the scope of using the preexisting assessments (so new consultations with Fish and Wildlife to study grizzly conflict and take would be necessary). They did do a voluntary consultation with Fish and Wildlife on whether this existing compliance framework was suitable for short term grazing permits (2026) and FWS said yes. If the grazing exceeds 1-2 years, the BT will conduct a more thorough NEPA and a newer environmental impact assessment. As part of the 2026 consultation with FWS, the Forest Service will keep livestock numbers the same, seasons/use, kind of livestock, and implement grizzly conservation measures. Depicting the BT as being reckless towards grizzly management is just a fiction created by the NGOs to sue.

The Forest Service Biologists also conducted a Biological Assessment showing grazing will not have impacts on grizzlies. If you’ve never met a Forest Service biologist, they’re not rubber stamping grazing. They’re wildlife lovers, if they say there’s no impact to grizzlies, I trust them. Beyond all these assessments the state agency is involved. Game and Fish will trap and relocate grizzlies in conflict with cattle long before any lethal management tools are ever used.

Here’s his or hers or their (the Rodeo Professor, I don’t know) take on the op-ed.

At one time, I wondered what the actual Sierra Club grazing policy was, and if it was equivalent to the “no commercial timber” policy. It turns out that it is.. with an interesting caveats:

(4) The Sierra Club recognizes that restrictions on grazing may have negative impacts on the cultural and economic stability of some communities. These impacts are apt to be most severe in Native American, minority and low-income communities. We are committed to developing partnerships with community members to identify and implement strategies to protect both traditional communities and the ecological integrity of public lands, without sacrificing either.

(5) The Sierra Club is committed to helping ease the economic burden on small family ranch operations with federal public lands allotments that would be affected by termination or reduction of their grazing leases.

Since the policy was approved in 2000, I wonder if anyone knows of examples of the strategies in #4, and how the SC has implemented #5. I wonder if there’s a report out there somewhere on how well this policy is working and if any changes are appropriate. Such a report might not be public.

 

Friday Round-up and Important Correction

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From NY Times virtual fencing story

Important Error Correction. I was gently reminded by a retiree that I was wrong about who made the appeals decisions, it was the DRF.  Also I didn’t mention that OGC was at the table.  I don’t know that every RO has an OGC office in the same building, but it was very important for our work to have them close at hand.  We had several acting RF’s through time, and they had different levels of interest/experience in the kinds of projects, legal requirements and potential pitfalls.  Again, also substantial variation in personalities. My memory is that if the Forest Supe (Appeal Reviewing Officer) and the RART Team came up with something and OGC raised concerns, the DRF would tend to go with what OGC said, because, after all Appeals were basically pre-litigation checks, in a sense.  I also didn’t point out that objections are different from appeals (or at least were intended to be) so I’m not sure how they are currently handled and whether that varies by Region.

A variety of interesting things..

1. F&AM Director to Stay On. The Hotshot Wakeup reported that the F&AM Director for the Forest Service, Sarah Fisher has agreed to stay on for the FY26 Fire Season to help with transition. According to THW, she is widely respected in the wildfire community.

2. Story in NY Times About PERC’s Virtual Fencing
Via PERC you can get the story for free. Great videos.

Virtual fencing is infinitely adjustable. Ranchers can set precise limits on pastures to keep cows away from sensitive areas like streams or sagebrush. They can move cows around more often to prevent overgrazing, which stresses ecosystems. It can also make cows eat less-palatable invasive species such as cheatgrass and medusahead.

The collars also let ranchers monitor where their cows are, which has many benefits. A big one is reducing conflict with predators. If a rancher sees on their phone that cows are bunched up, it could be a sign that a wolf or grizzly is lurking. Tracking also makes it easier to help a cow or calf that is injured. If ranch hands notice that an animal has died, they can remove the carcass before it attracts predators.

Wild animals can get stuck in wire fences and die, or they can just plow through. One season, Mr. Taylor replaced the same section of fence three times. Now, with virtual fences, he can simply leave gates open.

Mr. Graves is leveraging another perk of virtual fences: They can’t burn down. Last September, wildfire burned nearly 100,000 acres of the Bighorn Mountains, destroying thousands of miles of fence. He’s encouraging private landowners and the United States Forest Service to replace burned fences with virtual fences, and to use virtual fences to keep cattle off the burned landscape while it recovers.

3. Permitting Reform Current Drama
I thought Shawn Regan’s piece in City Journal on the current permitting reform efforts was well done. One of the current disagreements is over permit certainty..

To address those concerns, Westerman recently added an amendment addressing permit certainty. The provision would prohibit federal agencies from revoking, suspending, or otherwise interfering with already-approved permits. The amendment was a direct response to the Trump administration’s efforts to cancel previously permitted wind and solar projects, a campaign that has alarmed clean energy developers and their Democratic allies.

But permit certainty ought to appeal to Republicans too. Republicans have their own scars from the Obama and Biden years, when projects like the Keystone XL pipeline were approved, canceled, revived, and re-canceled again depending on who occupied the White House. A durable permitting regime that protects approved projects from the whims of future administrations should, in theory, attract bipartisan support. Yet some Republicans now worry that the provision too significantly hamstrings Trump’s ability to target disfavored renewable projects—illustrating just how difficult it is to build a coalition around neutral rules.

4. Podcast: Sara Ghafouri and the Legal Frontlines of Forestry
i always like Nick Smith’s interviews as he tends to ask the same questions I would ask, plus others that I would never think of, but have interesting answers.

AFRC General Counsel Sara Ghafouri provides an in depth look at the legal landscape shaping active forest management in the West. Sara shares what is new in AFRC’s Legal Program, recent legal wins, and the biggest challenges and opportunities facing forest management over the next year. She also breaks down how AFRC decides when to engage in litigation, how changes in the courts are influencing outcomes, and why it is essential to bring workers, local governments and community voices into the courtroom.

5. ABA podcasts on forest law.
Here’s a link, it sounds like it is going to be a series. I think their idea is that there are more laws for public forests than private ones, so started there.

We are pleased to be joined by Professor John Leshy, author of Our Common Ground and the preeminent scholar on the history of America’s public lands. Public land management is the cornerstone of forest law in the United States, and Professor Leshy’s insights into its scope and evolution are invaluable in helping to piece together the fundamentals of forest law.

Forest law presents a daunting barrier of entry to the uninitiated. Forest law is composed of and delimited by a broad swath of statutes, regulations, and norms, all shaped by a diverse array of stakeholders. The implications of forest management decisions are vast and varied, ranging from the hyperlocal—with decisions concerning timber harvest and wildfire mitigation bearing directly on the continued prosperity and existence of some rural communities—to the planetary, as climate change intensifies and the health of the world’s forests grows ever further imperative to slow its most devastating effects. Complicating things further, today, forest law in the United States is undergoing rapid changes at the federal level.

6. Salvage Speed Record in Idaho

“This was a collective effort,” said Kyle Laven, Supervisory Forester and GNA Program Manager for the USFS, Boise National Forest. “From start to finish, this sale was prepared and awarded in six weeks; immediately after the categorical exclusion was signed, which was an immense turnaround in itself.”

On Oct. 22, just 22 days after the fire was contained, the GNA Rock Fire Salvage sale on the Boise National Forest sold 224,000 board feet to Tamarack Resort. Harvest work on both the IDL sale and the complementary GNA sale is wrapping up this week and will resume in the spring.

PERC’s Virtual Fence Conservation Fund Now Open for Applications

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Here’s the link.
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The future is here. Be part of it.

PERC’s Virtual Fence Conservation Fund is a quarter-million dollar initiative aimed at empowering ranchers and conservationists to adopt virtual fencing technology on public and private lands.

By testing and expanding this pioneering technology, the fund aims to support both wildlife and working lands.

What is virtual fencing?

Virtual fencing technology uses GPS-enabled collars on livestock and base station towers to create invisible boundaries without needing physical fences. This allows for more flexible and wildlife-friendly land management without the need for physical barriers, which benefits both agriculture and conservation.

Ranchers also benefit by eliminating the time-consuming and expensive task of repairing, replacing, and maintaining traditional barbed-wire fences.

Show us the conservation benefit. We’ll show you the money.

Successful applicants must demonstrate a clear benefit for land, water, and/or wildlife. Examples could:
  • Conserve key wildlife migration corridors
  • Protect ecologically sensitive habitats
  • Manage predator risk
  • Protect regrowth areas after wildfire
  • Restore riparian corridors
  • Safeguard important waterways

PERC’s Crazy Mountain Virtual Fence Project

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Lanie White, and her brother, Harrison White, manage the ranch’s operations.

I’m always a fan of cool conservation technology.. from PERC

PERC is partnering with Montana’s McFarland White Ranch to help implement an innovative virtual fence project for cattle, a cutting-edge technology that could revolutionize both ranching and wildlife conservation.

The project will initially remove 16 of the ranch’s 75 miles of internal barbed-wire fencing and replace it with a virtual fence network that allows the rancher to remotely map and manage livestock through a series of signal towers and GPS collars worn by cows. Barbed wire fences are a key barrier to wildlife migration throughout the West. While other pilot projects and implementations are underway, this is the first to explicitly evaluate the technology for both migratory wildlife conservation and its effect on production agriculture—specifically, economic impact, range, and livestock benefits.

Under the agreement, PERC is funding key infrastructure to implement the virtual fence and clear a path for wildlife migration, including directly purchasing one of six signal towers needed to establish a signal across the virtual network.

Fences are trouble for wildlife and ranchers
Located at the doorstep of Montana’s Crazy Mountains, the McFarland White Ranch is home to 2,000 head of cattle, rough landscapes, and abundant wildlife. Thirty-two bird species of concern including Clark’s nutcracker, ferruginous hawk, thick-billed longspur, bobolink, sharp-tailed grouse, and sandhill cranes are found on the Audubon-certified ranch. Migratory wildlife including elk, deer, and pronghorn are also common, as well as predators such as wolves, mountain lions, and black bears.

Wildlife including elk and pronghorn can get caught in traditional fences, birds often fatally collide with wires, and ecologically sensitive areas are difficult to fence off with any degree of flexibility.

Repairing barbed-wire fencing is a constant worry for ranchers as well.

How virtual fencing works:
Cattle are equipped with a GPS collar that emits a sound when the livestock approaches a virtual boundary, then a light shock if the animal crosses the boundary, which continues for several yards, effectively deterring cattle from entering the areas that the rancher has fenced off. Cattle need only a few days to learn that the sound from the collars means it is time to turn around.
Solar-powered signal towers connect across the virtual network. Each solar-powered tower covers roughly 10,000 acres of range, depending on topography, and costs approximately $12,000.
An app tracks the cattle’s location and sends alerts if the cattle attempt to leave the virtual fence boundary. The rancher can also adjust the boundaries directly from the app.
External fencing will be maintained to prevent commingling with neighboring herds and comply with Montana law.


Benefits for ranchers:
Virtual fencing significantly reduces the need for traditional barbed-wire fences, bringing notable benefits:

The virtual system allows for easily customizable boundaries.
Ranchers can more easily track the location and status of their cattle, helping with predator control and herd management.
Removing bared-wire fences, which require costly and time-intensive repairs, can save ranchers considerable time and money.

And we can imagine tracking wolves at the same time,  and maybe sending drones to scare them off..

BLM Range Whistleblower and Potential Risks of Bundy-Phobia

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he Rio Grand River flows on Feb. 16, 2022, near Monte Vista. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

The Denver Post had an intriguing story  about a BLM whistleblower:

Melissa Shawcroft, who has been a BLM rangeland management specialist since 1992, is facing a two-week unpaid suspension after her supervisor disciplined her over discourteous emails and a failure to follow rules. Shawcroft is arguing that the discipline is retaliation for her insistence that the Bureau take action to stop area ranchers from trespassing by allowing their livestock to graze on BLM property without permits.

The illegal grazing has gone unchecked for years on the nearly 250,000 acres she manages and her pleas for enforcement, which must be authorized by her supervisors, have gone unheeded, she said. Shawcroft has documented damage to the land and riverbanks and has heard repeated complaints from ranchers who pay to use BLM land.

The way the above sentence is written it sounds as if illegal grazing has gone on on all 250K acres. This seems unlikely.

“I’m sick and tired of them telling me it’s my job to solve the problem when I don’t have the authority to do it,” Shawcroft told The Denver Post. “I jabbed at them and they fired back.”

The Bureau has the power to impound livestock or levy fines, but managers are timid because they fear another armed standoff similar to the ones led by the Bundy family in Oregon and Nevada, Shawcroft said. In 2014 in Nevada, Cliven Bundy, his family and an armed militia organized a standoff with federal agents who had come to round up the rancher’s cows that were illegally grazing on federal land.

“They come right out and tell me we don’t want another Bundy situation,” Shawcroft said.

Steven Hall, the BLM’s Rocky Mountain communications director, said the agency does not comment on personnel issues, but the agency takes unauthorized grazing seriously and is adopting measures to better enforce the rules, he said.

Under federal law, livestock may graze on Bureau of Land Management property when a rancher holds a permit authorizing the land use. Permits are passed down through families and rarely become available for purchase.

The permits determine how many cattle, sheep or horses a rancher can place on federal land and which months the animals are allowed to feed on it. Those rules protect the land from overgrazing and give grass, brush and water time to recover throughout the year.

Shawcroft manages rangeland along the Rio Grande River where property on the east side is private and cows and horses are crossing the river to the federally-owned Rio Grande Natural Area on the west side, she said.

If it’s true that BLM managers said that.. is Bundyism (fear of armed conflict) a real thing, or an excuse?  Reminds me a bit of the FS claiming escaped prescribed burns were due to climate change.  Bundys are a thing. Climate change is a thing.  But both things can also be used as excuses for not doing better.  When we read these things, we need to think about which is which.

Interestingly, the ones who are most irritated are .. other ranchers.. who apparently are not going All Bundy on the law-breakers.

Area ranchers who pay for the permits are complaining that law-breakers are ruining the land for their livestock. It’s such a problem that “chronic livestock trespass” was on the June agenda for the BLM’s Rocky Mountain Resource Advisory Council meeting.

At that meeting, Dario Archuleta, the acting field manager for the BLM’s San Luis Valley field office, said there is a “fine-tuned administrative process they believe will be vastly more effective than the criminal approach,” according to minutes from the meeting.

Archuleta told the meeting’s attendees that the process for impounding livestock is lengthy and complicated and that courts have been lenient on violators.

The BLM has assigned up to 14 employees to address unauthorized grazing through site visits that require a minimum five-hour time commitment, including travel, Hall told The Denver Post.

The agency also has implemented a new GIS tracking tool to collect data such as identifying livestock and the improved documentation has resulted this year in trespass notices being issued, Hall said.

Shawcroft is represented in her complaint by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a non-profit that works with public employees who want to point out government wrongdoing.

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The Bureau of Land Management named Shawcroft its range management specialist of the year in 2012 and she’s only had one other disciplinary action taken in her 31-year career, Jeff Ruch, PEER’s Pacific director said.

“She doesn’t mince words and apparently some of her male supervisors took offense,” Ruch said. “The idea that you’re being hit with a heavy sanction when you use words like ‘gumption’ in an email strikes me as an overreaction.”

Now, having been involved in a variety of different personnel difficulties, I am sympathetic to everyone involved, and especially the HR and Labor Relations who I’m sure are trying to sort things out. I wonder what the maleness of (some) supervisors has to do with it. Perhaps this is intended to imply that male employees can get away with more acerbic statements? Curious.

Here’s what PEER says:

On July 28, 2023, Melissa was served with a proposed 14-day suspension without pay for a series of four emails dating back to December 2022 in which she expressed consternation at BLM’s hands-off posture on grazing trespass. In one email, she questioned the agency’s lack of “gumption” and in another whether the agency would “live up to the task of taking care of our resources.” For those emails, she is charged with “discourteous” behavior.

IF this is all it is.. I would say I have read many snarkier emails in the FS about FS activities. On the other hand, when it comes to personnel issues, there are at least two sides to every story.

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Cattle Free by ’93- A Thirty-Year Retrospective and Discussion

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BLM photo

Thanks to John Persell, in his comments on Les Joslin’s multiple use post,  for reminding me that this has been on my list.   Rebecca Watson’s comment today on sustainable mining also reminds me of the two common dichotomies (or threads or ??) in our work. 1. Don’t do it (or not on some lands) and/or 2. Improve the practices.

Anyway, I thought a good kickoff to the discussion would be an undergraduate honors thesis from 2019here by Cloe Dickson. I tried to contact the author prior to publishing this, but was unsuccessful. There’s much good stuff in this 77 pages and I only excerpted a few bits below. She begins:

Three distinct questions will guide my study of the public lands ranching issue:

(1) What were the motivations of ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’?
(2) What were the direct and indirect outcomes?
(3) What does the formation of the ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’ movement tell us about the nature of rancher/environmentalist conflict?

She traces the relationship in the Sierra Club between zero-cut (remember that?) and zero-cud policies. She also tracks the extremism of no-cud and Cattle-free to being an impetus for efforts at collaboration between ranchers and environmentalists like the Malpais Borderlands Group and the Quivira Coalition. Her view is that the dialogue has shifted.

Cattle-free by ‘93’ has evolved significantly in the last 25 years. Widespread exurban development on and near western rangelands has dramatically changed the way in which people view the public lands ranching debate. The fear of habitat fragmentation from the environmental community, coupled with the desire to continue the western ranching tradition in the face of the ranchette and dude ranch phenomena, may prove to be an area of compromise between the once divided respective camps. In formal and informal arenas, the ‘Cows Not Condos’ campaigns marks a significant shift away from the cattle-free mindset that once dominated the western range.

I thought these arguments about social justice were interesting..

When viewed in an environmental justice frame, the public lands ranching issue becomes much more complex. Atencio argued that, “this is more than a ‘cows versus condos’ argument. And it is more than an argument of cows versus the loss of mere lifestyle or profession choice. It is an argument of a unique culture and communities that have endured in this region for 400 years. It is an argument of environmental justice” ( 2004, p. 23). It is not just about removing ranchers from public lands; the ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’ campaign directly interferes with many components of the culture of the rural American West. Atencio argued that viewing cattle ranching as a profit-motivated industry forces environmentalists to think that the only way to stop the damage done to rangelands is to outright remove all livestock. He warned that the “…the danger of straight and narrow economic thinking is that it fails to take into account the less quantifiable, though no less important, issues of social well-being and cultural vitality” (Attencio2004, p. 23). Atencio’s claims prove valuable in understanding the responses generated by ‘Cattle-free by ‘93’ and how broader anti-ranching rhetoric was received in the 21st century.

If you are a fan, as I am, of Justin Farrell’s book “The Battle for Yellowstone”, that might resonate with some of his observations that in the debates around Yellowstone, issues that are actually values and culture-based are treated as if they were really scientific and economic. Which gives folks much funding to generate more info, but does not address peoples’ real differences. As we used to say in planning, sometimes you need more analysis, but sometimes you just need more dialogue. Which may be why local collaboratives are more successful at finding middle ground.

Another topic Dickson discusses is why the Clinton Admin backed off their original Range Reform package. Seems like they lost the fire in their belly, they didn’t have the votes and or ????

I know many TSW readers were involved in all this. I’d be interested, as I’m sure future students will be, on your perspective on all this history.

And are the strategies of “just say no” and “fix the practices” in some sense complementary? Does emotional intensity developed in a “make those pesky ranchers go away” campaign get transferred in political capital that can be used to improve practices? Not sure that it has worked that way for “no-cut”.

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Final historical question:

In the paper..

Preservation, or the notion that wilderness must be put aside for its own sake, has long been a source of division within the natural resource management community. When Congress passed the Forest Management Act of 1897, forest reserves were opened up to logging, as well as mining and livestock grazing (Wuerthner 2002). While conservationists like Gifford Pinchot was a proponent of this move, John Muir on the other hand remained adamant that livestock grazing threatened watersheds and wildlife, as well as negatively impacting the ecology of the overall forest ecosystem (Wuerthner 2002).

I was under the impression that grazers and loggers, in different places, had been there first. For example in this history of the SW Region of the Forest Service

By the time the first forest reserves were proclaimed in 1891, the free use of public lands by cattlemen and sheepmen had become a way of life. They knew nothing of grazing capacity and there was no fund of technical knowledge about forage management to rely on. Overgrazing could not readily be recognized until in an advanced stage. Thus, when the Forest Service came into being February 1, 1905, the most complex problems facing southwestern foresters related to grazing rights and range management. Instructions to foresters in the Use Book regarding grazing responsibilities were very simple: “Inform yourself as to what sheep and cattle men graze their stock upon your district, the number he actually owns, and whether or not he confines himself to the range described in his permit.” [12]

What was actually going on on the land before the federal reserves were established? Does this vary by area?

We Still Don’t Understand What’s Killing Cow and Elk Calves in Colorado: and Draft Wolf Reintroduction Plan

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It’s fascinating to me that scientists are thought to be able to predict movement of wildlife populations in fifty years due to climate change, but we don’t actually understand what makes them tick (or not, in this case).  In my view, better models are built from understanding what makes animals tick.. physiology, behavior, genetics, diseases, predation, and so on.

Mysterious Deaths of Cattle Near Meeker Colorado

This has attracted the attention of media across the country and in Britain.

The best one I’ve read for those interested in the details of biology, was written by the Klinglesmith family who owns the dead calves.  It’s an interesting story of how the ranchers, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Wildife Services, and various diagnostic laboratories  have worked together to figure out what happened.  The article even has references.  Apparently the cause is till  not clear. Warning: some of the photos are graphic.

This whole process has taught us that these investigations will require a lot of time and effort on the part of CPW staff and landowners in rural Colorado. We promise to continue to work with the local staff here in Rio Blanco County to figure out whether wolves are present or if there is another explanation for the apparent stress and trauma these calves suffered.
As a multi-generational ranching family, we are committed to running a progressive livestock and wildlife operation. However, we are also committed to working with those in our state and keeping them updated on our scenario.
Bridging the gap that exists between urban and rural is important to us. The future of livestock production in our state remains equally important. We understand this is a highly contentious issue, but hopefully we can agree on the fact that collaboration is key to working toward a solution. The relationship between state agencies, livestock associations, the Colorado public, and ranching families is crucial in moving forward with the process of coexisting with all wildlife on our landscape.

Colorado Draft Wolf Reintroduction Plan Coming Out

Comprehensive story on CPR here. Worth a read for those interested. CPW seems to have really engaged with the public on this one, certainly not an easy task.

Adding More Wolves to Colorado, Why?

So you may wonder why Colorado is adding more wolves when it already has them. Here’s a bit of history to give context.

You’d have to ask the folks (mostly urban) who voted for the state ballot initiative to reintroduce them.  At the time there were two schools of thought, one that they were coming in naturally, so why mess with Mother Nature, and the other.. I guess they felt Mother Nature needed help. But isn’t that unnatural? Oh well. Here’s where the $ came from.  Sorry about the ad in my screenshot.

 

Here’s the county votes..green came out for and red against the initiative.

The vote ended up being very close, Now a ballot initiative is an interesting critter. It’s a simple vote, so there is no analysis of say, impacts to communities.  Effectively, and unilaterally, urban areas are able to impact rural communities.  Even though the urban areas may have higher incomes, which in other contexts might trigger social justice concerns. In fact, Catholic moral theologians could probably have an entire conference devoted to whether this kind of decision-making follows the social justice principle of subsidiarity or not.

But it is what it is, and the CPW folks seem to be doing their best to honor the views of those impacted.

We Still Don’t Understand About SW Colorado Elk Calves

Interesting article by Bruce Finley today in the Denver Post.  There may be a paywall.

But in southwestern Colorado elk have been decreasing for two decades from more than 140,000 to around 122,000 – raising concerns.  Elk calf survival rates south of Interstate 70 are estimated at 30 or so per 100 cows,  compared with rates in northwestern Colorado near Craig and Steamboat Springs around 58 calves per 100 cows.

Going back to the previous article, northwestern Colorado is the area potentially planned for wolf reintroduction, and already has wolves moving in.

CPW crews also are conducting research into why more calves aren’t surviving.

The forces impeding elk survival include loss of habitat and degradation due to roads, traffic, energy development, and increased residential and commercial construction along migration routes. Surging recreational activities in western Colorado also complicates elk survival.

State and federal ecologists point to climate warming as a factor, favoring hot and dry conditions that reduce vegetation elk in southwestern Colorado need. Aridity in some areas is shrinking vegetation that elk eat and that provides cover for calves facing predators: coyotes, bears and mountain lions.

Now it seems like we know what elk eat, and what they use for hiding cover for their calves,  thanks to observations and generations of researchers.  And it seems like different years are wetter or drier. For example check out this map of Colorado’s water year 2022. where many parts of SW Colorado seem to be doing quite well. So if it were climate warming, then CPW or someone could compare calf survival in years with more grass and less grass, or even elevations with different physical conditions.  Perhaps that’s what CPW is looking at.  Looks like there have been calf declines in other places as well. , in this example South Dakota. Maybe those folks figured out what was going on?

Moo calves disco up the Green River, griz and wolves not invited: from Wyofile

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Somewhere along the lines of discussing prescribed fire and slash burning, someone raised the point of “don’t our technologies allow us to monitor hot spots better?”  Which reminded me of this “cool technology to help reduce environmental conflicts.”

It’s about flashing lights that help protect livestock from predation, thanks to Wyofile.  This is not the ultimate solution, as mammals can adapt fairly readily, but perhaps will work for a while. Check out the video.

Nevertheless, even substandard prototype flashtags were effective when they were first tried out in summer 2021. One goal of that trial, attempted with a sheep herd near Stanley, Idaho, was to see if the motion-triggered flashing bothered the livestock.

“We actually would go out at sunset and sunrise and collect behavioral data on the sheep, to see if they were behaving differently than the ones that weren’t wearing the tags,” Young said. “We weren’t seeing any differences.”

At the same time, the LED lights did seem to afford some protection against predators. About 75 of the 300-member Idaho sheep herd got the flashtags, and although just 25% were lit, the whole population held up.

“Every year that same herd suffers depredation by wolves,” Young said, “and last summer there were no depredations by wolves.”

Some early results from a much more extensive trial in 2022 are equally promising. That one involved a Utah woolgrower who was experiencing “severe” coyote depredation on his small herd, Young said. All seven sheep that remained in that band got the flashtags.

“One of the sheep stuck its head through a fence and ended up ripping out the ear tag,” Young said. “And that was the only sheep that got killed by a coyote since we put the ear tags in.”

For his dissertation, Utah State University PhD student Aaron Bott, whom Young is advising, is investigating how wolves use human-dominated landscapes in order to mitigate conflicts. One chapter looks at the flashtags, 4,000 of which are being deployed in Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Wyoming after Amazon.com’s car rim lights were cleaned out.

Conservation in Cow Country: Guest Post by Toner Mitchell

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Here’s a post by Toner Mitchell. I always like to share stories of people working together to solve problems rather than enemizing and castigating.  But who is working with recreationists to reduce their impact?  And, when is tolerance a good thing (e.g. seeing cows)? Here’s a link to this story on the TU website.

In New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains, TU and ranchers are working together to keep streams healthy and improve range productivity.

On our way to inspect his grazing allotment, Manuel Lucero and I pull over next to a tree where some campers have left their trash in a neat and organized pile of boxes and tied up plastic sacks.

Lucero notes this as a common occurrence after most summer weekends, especially on this one dirt road, perhaps the busiest thoroughfare connecting Albuquerque to its playgrounds in the Jemez Mountains.

“They actually believe they’re being responsible,” he says. “Someone else is supposed to pick up after them, and they’re trying to make it easy. Tonight, the bears will drag all this down to the creek, and the trash will eventually float into our ditches and fields.”

Manuel Lucero working on well to provide off-stream watering.

In the years I’ve known Manuel, I’ve never seen him without his black cowboy hat on. He takes guilty pleasure in watching the TV series “Yellowstone” and in dropping the occasional irreverent joke. As president of the San Diego Grazing Association, however, this rancher in his thirties is dead serious.

Manuel runs cattle on about 96,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest, and he embraces the responsibility of stewarding so much land.

Some of the land he grazes provides habitat for native Rio Grande cutthroat trout and several listed wildlife species, as well as water for small farming communities downstream. With these realities in mind, Trout Unlimited reached out to Manuel’s grazing association in 2015 to explore the possibility of simultaneously improving riparian habitat and range productivity.

Healthy riparian habitat means happy trout streams. And in the Jemez mountains, a recreational haven serving three of New Mexico’s largest cities, healthy riparian habitat increasingly means happy ranchers, who try to avoid conflict with other public land users when possible.

Since their partnership began, TU and the San Diego Grazing Association have joined forces on fence repairs and renovations of water lines and drinkers. We’ve shared expenses on a mobile corral, a water storage tank, and battery-powered chainsaws to clear fallen timber from fences during fire season.

Through these and other actions, this partnership has succeeded in distributing grazing pressure more evenly across the San Diego and neighboring Cebolla-San Antonio allotments.

Drinker drained by weekend campers and filled with trash; empty drinkers push cows to the creeks.

In 2021, we teamed up with the Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy on an effort to increase grazing efficiency and to discourage cows from loitering in riparian areas. The project, which included approximately $87,000.00 in funding from TNC’s Rio Grande Water Fund, entailed the drilling of two canyon-rim wells on the Cebolla-San Antonio allotment.

The wells will gravity-feed a network of drinking lines and enable the utilization of certain upland pastures with lots of clumpy tall grass. The grass in these pastures is decadent, a result of being left almost completely unbitten by elk and cattle.

With drinking capacity provided by the new wells, these under-used pastures will absorb more pressure (and manure), while enabling heavily grazed meadows to receive some rest.

Ten miles up the road, Manuel and I are parked at the upper end of a long meadow next to a fenced enclosure surrounding a locked well house with a sheet metal roof.

The well supplies drinking troughs across the Virgin, Stable, and Holiday mesas that rise above us to the south—it is essentially the nerve center of much of the San Diego allotment.

Having grazed for their allotted days, the cows have left the meadow for the mesa tops. From Memorial Day until school starts is the season of the weekender, when residents of Albuquerque seek relief from the urban heat and bustle.

Manuel points out thicker stands of forest where RVs can’t penetrate. The grass there has grown about a foot since being eaten. Elsewhere across the camping footprint, the only grass that grows is smashed into dusty ground.

“But if one cow shows up here this weekend, I’ll hear about it on Monday,” Lucero says. “I get it, campers don’t want to see cows, but cows don’t like people either. Cows are smart, but they’re also dumb. They’d rather be up top, but with people all over the mountain they get confused. Let’s be honest, people are everywhere.”

He’s not exaggerating. Scanning the sloping meadow, we see occupied, often illegal, campsites almost any place one can park a car; in ranching parlance, it’s quite a few “head” of people.

Manuel notes the irony in how, come evening, the whole canyon will smell like grilling beef and hot dogs and how the same people bashing his cows will leave their fire rings full of beer cans.

Already this summer, an RV owner broke the lock off the wellhouse and plugged into its power source; campers drained one of his troughs and used it as a trash bin; and on any given year, hikers will invariably bathe in the troughs, oblivious to the repellant effect soap and lotion have on thirsty cows and wildlife.

People cut fences to make way for ATVs. They do donuts in the pastures.

One fine individual used a Sawzall to cut a door in a water tank critical to minimizing cattle presence in riparian areas of the Rio Cebolla. Purchased jointly by TU and the San Diego Grazing Association, this tank was rendered into a suitable dwelling for the vandal and his small herd of goats, and useless for the purpose of watering cattle and wildlife.

Vandalized water tank paid for by TU and rancher partners. Functional watering systems help keep cows out of important riparian ecosystems.

As Manuel talks, I’m impressed by a patience seeping through his frustration, a seeming acceptance of adversity as a part of the ranching life that can drive one toward improvement.

Manuel, his father Mariano, brother Michael, and the members of the association all share common ancestors who settled in the Jemez country in the late 1700s. Back then, everyone was a rancher, a farmer, a hunter, a gatherer and, most important, a neighbor or friend to native Pueblo people already occupying the valley.

Back then the land was definitely public, but in an existential sense. Multiple use was not only a matter of cooperation, but of life and death.

As part of our commitment to protecting and restoring the Rio Grande cutthroat, itself a cultural icon, TU will continue building partnerships with ranchers and other stakeholders in the Rio Grande watershed. Honoring deep-rooted practices will be key to sustaining adaptive stewardship. As Manuel Lucero says, “Our people wouldn’t have lasted this long if we couldn’t find ways of understanding different ways of living.”