Friends of Idaho Watersheds Project
Here is a news release which went to 17 Idaho newspapers and media outlets yesterday for your reading. Contact IWP for more information if you would like:
NEWS RELEASE
Friends of Idaho Watersheds Project
Here is a forwarding of a staff indictment of management of riparian areas in the Southwest Region of the Forest Service which IWP received from the Sierra Club and the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity. Their comments could just as well apply to the Intermountain Region of the Forest Service.
From SW Center for Biodiversity Alert #93:
FOREST SERVICE BIOLOGISTS BLAST GRAZING
PROGRAM-
CALL FOR REMOVAL OF CATTLE FROM STREAM SIDES
Four Forest Service fisheries biologists charged with evaluating the impacts of grazing, road building, and recreation on four endangered fish, issued a blistering briefing report to the Regional Forester on April 1, 1997, lambasting Forest Service leadership, the grazing program, and the agency's commitment to riparian areas and endangered species.
On October 6, 1994, the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal 60-day notice of intent to sue the Southwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service for not consulting under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act over the impact of the Region's eleven National Forest Plans on 61 threatened and endangered species. The Forest Service initiated consultation, resulting in a "preliminary draft jeopardy opinion" on seven species including the Loach minnow, Spikedace, Little Colorado River spinedace, and Sonora chub. To avoid a final jeopardy opinion, and the mandatory restrictions which would ensue, the Forest Service appointed a fisheries team to come up with a short-term mitigation plan. The team's briefing report is devastating:
"The fish team evaluated 199 projects on Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Coronado, Gila, and Prescott national forests. We visited four of those forests and interviewed 32 individuals, including a Forest Supervisor, a District Ranger, and 4 permitees...."
"No projects were found to have an effect severe enough to cause immediate extinction of any species. All of the species and populations will likely survive this year and perhaps for decades. Or perhaps not. The cumulative and synergistic effects of Forest Service management is causing long-term degradation of the habitats of these species, and contributing to their endangerment and downward trend in range and abundance. Many of these effects are due to irreversible activities that occurred in the distant past. But some are due to current and deliberate action."
"During our interviews we heard time and again that the needs of the species were not fully considered during NEPA analysis. We heard that terms and conditions of the programmatic BAE for grazing weren't being followed. We heard that biologists were pressured into changing effects determinations so that targets could be met without having to undergo consultation. We heard that mitigation measures weren't applied. But we were always assured that there actually was no problem."
"...what is needed is leadership, and a commitment from line that recovery and protection of riparian habitats for these species is the priority for management of their watersheds. But the commitment is not just for the four fish. There are several hundred other riparian dependent species in the region, wildlife that will become the subject of listings and lawsuits if we don't effect a change. We need incentives for line officers to commit to riparian area and endangered species management. We need to commit to management for forest health. Above all, we need a change in management attitude."
"For example, we found that range management is a chronic abuser of riparian habitats. Now range managers truly believe in their hearts that degraded riparian areas can be restored with cattle. And they have come up with an amazing variety of grazing systems to accomplish that. Light, moderate, and heavy grazing, early, late, year-round, season-long, cool-season, warm-season, winter grazing, deferred, rotation, rest-rotation, double rest- rotation, short duration-high intensity, time control, stuttered, herding, riparian pasture, seasonal riparian preference, set-back, corridor, Savory holistic, Merrill pasture method, and so on. Based on these, prescriptions have been developed, sometimes applied, and credit taken. But evaluations of riparian area condition 5 or 10 years later seldom show an upward trend. Why is that? It's because cattle grazing is a core value of the agency, and riparian area health and endangered species management is not. Prescriptions are developed and applied to meet the needs of the rancher, the cattle, or the agency. Soil, vegetation, water, and wildlife resources are secondary considerations."
"Recovery of riparian areas with cattle hasn't worked in the past, is not working now, and won't work in the future. And this is where a change in management attitude is necessary. The only practical way to restore riparian areas supporting endangered species is through removal of cattle impact. And based on experience, we advocate that prescriptions that call for complete rest or nonuse be the first step. A change in attitude to recognize that other multiple uses in riparian areas are more beneficial to the greatest number than a few AUM's is necessary."
"...But, management in this region has traded off its love and passion for the land in order to indulge in economically questionable targets. Gifford Pinchot's philosophy of "...providing the greatest good for the greatest number..." has been distorted to a doctrine of providing the most economic use for the few. And this has resulted in the current situation: the FWS threatening a jeopardy call on our management, outside groups taking us to court (and winning) on the same issue, and we being the subject of widespread ridicule and derision. This report sounds negative, and I am sorry for that. It's embarrassing to stand here and tell you these things. I don't like it. I hope that you'll accept these remarks as coming from a group who are trying to be, in the words of Jack Ward Thomas, "loving critic" of the agency..."
"That's the report of the fish team."
Kieran Suckling, Executive
Director
ksuckling@sw-center.org
Southwest Center for Biological Diversity
P.O. Box 710, Tucson, AZ
85702-710
phone 520.623.5252
fax 520.623.9797
http://www.sw-center.org