WOC Weighs in on Smiths Fork Grazing Allotment

by Tom Darin

In June, WOC submitted comments on the environmental assessment prepared by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on the seriously degraded Smith Fork grazing allotment northeast of Cokeville.  Our comments were bolstered by the keen insights of board member Darrel Short, who knows the allotment well from his 35 years of experience as a BLM range conservationist and area manager.

The Smith Fork is a 90,000-acre cattle and sheep allotment that has been grazed for decades.  The area includes a wilderness study area and fragile watersheds that are home to the imperiled Bonneville cutthroat trout, recently proposed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

When the BLM Kemmerer Field Office developed its resource management plan (RMP) in 1986, it identified the Smith Fork as the number one priority of 39 "I" category allotment.  ("I" allotments are those that are in a state of declining health with unsatisfactory management.)  The BLM noted that the allotment was being overgrazed in riparian and wetland areas, livestock were poorly distributed, conflicts were occurring between livestock and wildlife and soils were being excessively eroded.

The RMP, developed with public comment and input, clearly promised an allotment management plan (AMP) for the area which would require the development of long-term goals and objectives, better management and close monitoring of the Smith Fork to restore the land, to the extent possible, to proper functioning condition.

Fourteen years later, after a series of failed interim management plans, the Smith Fork allotment remains in very bad shape.  In April, the BLM analyzed the allotment under six rangeland health standards, and the Smith Fork failed two of them miserably.

First, of 58 miles of streams in the area, only 9 miles are in proper functioning condition, with seven miles completely non-functional.  In simple terms, this means that the allotment's riparian and wetland areas cannot support biological diversity, lack forage and cover for wildlife and hamper groundwater recharge.  Of the six miles of Raymond Creek that are home to the rare Bonneville cutthroat trout, a dismal 1/3 mile is in proper functioning condition.  Second, the BLM admitted that the Smith Fork's rangelands are, in their present state, incapable of sustaining viable populations of native plant and animal species appropriate to the habitat.

Given the Smith Fork's continued state of poor health, one might think that the BLM would aggressively address these problems with an AMP.  Amazingly, yet predictably, the agency's proposed action for this allotment is a two-year interim allotment plan, very similar to the failed interim plans of the past.  The agency proposes no reduction in Animal Unit Months or AUMs (stocking rates based on the amount of forage it takes to feed a cow-calf pair or five ewe-lamb pairs for one month), basing its recommended stocking rates on a study completed in the early 1960s rather than analyzing the allotment's actual current carrying capacity.  In fact, the only real difference between the proposed plan and past plans is a several-mile fence across the middle of the allotment to create a two-pasture system.

Darrel and I minced no words in our comments to the BLM concerning these issues.  First, we noted that the interim plan violates the Federal Land Policy Management Act, which requires all actions to conform with the underlying RMP.  We reminded the agency that its Kemmerer 1986 RMP calls for an AMP for the Smith Fork, and rated the allotment as its number-one priority.  Fourteen years later, and after numerous failed interim plans, the badly degraded allotment deserves the proper management required by an AMP.  Interim management that ignores - and tacitly condones - past abuses that simply cannot continue.

We emphatically stated that, given the clearly failing standards of rangeland health guidelines, the proposed action - basically the status quo plus a new fence - is wholly inadequate.  We pointed out the serious need to reduce cattle and sheep stocking rates and to implement pasture rest-rotation plans, deferred-rotation plans and riparian zone restoration measures to heal this badly scarred landscape.  The Smith Fork cannot possibly recover if the same numbers of livestock that have caused serious degradation in the past are permitted in the new plan.

Darrel and I also stressed that the "no grazing" alternative is perhaps the most logical one for a landscape that has been so seriously trampled by livestock.  The Smith Fork needs a rest.  Grazing should only be considered after the landscape has healed, and only after the allotment's carrying capacity is thoroughly studied and a long-term AMP is in place.

A final decision on the BLM's interim management plan is due in July.  Hopefully, the agency will take WOC's and others' comments seriously.  If not, we  will consider an appeal to an appellate tribunal to halt the continuing mismanagement of the Smith Fork.