May 26, 2000

This report prepared by Miriam L. Austin of Red Willow Research for Idaho Watersheds Project documents consistent and extremely widespread mismanagement of public resources located on lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Idaho Department of Lands in Twin Falls, Cassia, and Power counties. The level of degradation by inappropriate livestock use of these lands, especially of the riparian areas including springs, seeps, wet meadows, aspen groves and perennial and intermittent streams, confirms that neither the land management agencies nor the livestock permittees whose cattle and sheep use these areas every year are complying with federal and state law and regulations or the Constitution of the State of Idaho.

Idaho Watersheds Project is providing this report to the public, the media, and decision makers at all levels of the state and federal government in the hope that it will result in positive management actions being taken this year so that there will be no repetition of this documented destruction of public land resources.

Idaho Watersheds Project looks forward to working cooperatively with all public and state land managers to help protect and restore these damaged areas. It is our hope that the land managers whose responsibility it is to protect public resources in perpetuity will begin to carry out their legal obligations.