Livestock Prepare to Eat Dirt on the Smiths Fork Allotment

by Tom Darin

In April of last year, the Kemmerer office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made key findings under federal Rangeland Health Standards concerning the declining health of the 90,000-acre Smiths Fork Allotment near Cokeville. The agency documented miles upon miles of trashed stream banks and lack of vegetation due to poor livestock distribution and severe overgrazing. Under federal law, those findings required the BLM to take appropriate action to restore rangeland health to this long-abused area and come up with a final plan to do so before the 2001 grazing season.

With sheep scheduled to be turned out on the allotment on May 5, and cattle May 17, the BLM issued only a proposed plan in early May. Not surprisingly, the agency's "solution" to these severe problems was to issue all grazing permittees new four-year permits that will allow grazing at higher levels than last year, the worst season of livestock rangeland damage in five years. In addition, livestock turnout under the proposed plan would occur with no immediate protection for the Raymond Canyon Wilderness Study Area, which has been badly damaged by overgrazing for more than a decade.

While the BLM's proposed plan does cut permitted livestock use by 18% (allowing 11,500 AUMs for 2001), it's just a paper reduction - actual use in year 2000 was 9,200 AUMs. Even more startling, after the BLM Kemmerer office's own biologists conducted an allotment review this past winter and recommended an immediate 42% reduction in permitted use to begin recovering overgrazed vegetation, the proposed plan would reduce that use by 30%, but not until 2004.

The BLM's proposed plan flies in the face of proper multiple-use land management, and is an insult to citizens who value this area for its streams, stunning views, hiking and camping areas and remaining undisturbed landscapes. The proposed plan appears to be written by and for the Smiths Fork Allotment's grazing permittees.

Heading to Court

Over the years, we have attempted to work with the BLM on this seriously degraded allotment. WOC members have served on a Coordinated Resource Management (CRM) committee for the Smiths Fork and WOC has submitted comments to the agency regarding the allotment's improper management. The BLM has had years to implement a long-term plan-first called for by the agency in 1986 and still shelved to this day-but instead has proposed to perpetuate overgrazing and resource damage on the allotment.

As a last resort, WOC headed to federal court. It was clear that the Smiths Fork faced serious and imminent risks from a May livestock turnout of thousands of sheep and cattle, with no attempt to keep livestock out of the supposedly closed off wilderness study area, with only 9 of 58 miles of streams in the allotment in functioning condition and with BLM Field Manager Jeff Rawson admitting that no areas in the allotment were suitable habitat for the Bonneville cutthroat trout (a candidate for protection under the Endangered Species Act).

In May, WOC filed a complaint alleging that the BLM had failed to comply with its 2000 federal mandate to develop a final plan prior to the start of the 2001 grazing season that would make significant progress in restoring rangeland health to the Smiths Fork Allotment. In our view, the agency had no legal authority to allow the turnout of livestock without a final plan.

WOC also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to preserve the status quo on the allotment. Armed with evidence showing little or no vegetation re-growth on much of the allotment since the 2000 grazing season, just days before thousands of sheep and cattle would start searching for grass, WOC argued that proposed turnout levels higher than those of last year would create imminent and long-lasting harm to the natural resources on these public lands.

Unfortunately, after a two-day hearing, the U.S. District Court in Cheyenne denied WOC's motion, finding, among other things, that the threat was not "immediate." Evidence supplied by a game warden and an aquatic biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department who had worked on the allotment and its CRM for years documented that, due to high livestock numbers and mismanagement, the Smiths Fork had been in a state of "urgency" for proper management for five years or longer.

The court reasoned that if the BLM's mismanagement of the allotment over time made the threat "immediate" five or more years ago, not much more resource damage could happen during the 2001 grazing season. In essence, the court rewarded the BLM for decades of mismanagement.

Moving Forward

The court's denial of our TRO motion and the premature implementation of the BLM's proposed plan on the Smiths Fork are unfortunate, but they are certainly not the end of the matter. Because of substantial flaws in the proposed grazing plan for the Smiths Fork, WOC will continue to fight for proper stewardship of our public lands on this allotment in the coming months.

WOC firmly believes that if stocked in appropriate numbers and managed properly, livestock can be part of a healthy, functioning landscape. On the Smiths Fork, however, the BLM is allowing livestock to trample not only a vast majority of the streams on the allotment, but also to seriously damage other uses of the land that the agency is charged with equally protecting.