Since the start of the Wyoming office a few months ago, I've been out in the field gathering information on two of our top priority projects, renegade rancher Frank Robbins' grazing operation near Thermopolis and the Wyoming Range Allotment Complex in the northern third of the Wyoming Range.

Both areas vividly bring home the extent of the destruction of our public lands from negligent livestock grazing practices. The allotments leased by Robbins were severely impacted with massive headcuts that had lowered the water table, vast sheet erosion that had long since eliminated any topsoil and major changes in the biotic communities.

This area is crucial to large wildlife in the region due to its unique geography, but its usefulness has all but expired due to the impacts of livestock grazing.

The Wyoming Range Allotment Complex is a good example of the severity of grazing impacts. This area has endured continuous sheep grazing since the 1880s. The result, according to U.S. Forest Service researchers, is the loss of between 2 to 4 feet of soil from much of the allotment complex.

The massive erosion continues. In my travels around the complex, I found many fallen trees half buried in soil. By the looks of them, they'd toppled over 15 or so years ago. That's a lot of moving soil.

All topsoil has been stripped off, creating major changes in the rare tall-forb communities. More than 3,000 acres of the complex are what the Forest Service calls "mass erosion sites" areas along the divide with no vegetation that are dumping huge amounts of silt into all the headwaters in the area.

The silt has nearly eliminated the last few strongholds of the threatened Colorado River cutthroat trout. Research from the Wyoming Department of Game and Fish Department shows declines in these last few remnant populations of 65 percent over the past 10 years.

Domestic sheep grazing in the area causes yet other impacts. Dispersing grizzly bears and wolves are routinely shot to protect domestic sheep from predation.

Domestic sheep also transmit pasteurella to bighorn sheep, resulting in major dieoffs of the Jackson bighorn herd every few years. In spite of all this, the Forest Service has proposed that sheep grazing be expanded in this area. WWP will be doing everything in our power to overturn this proposal and eliminate domestic sheep from the northern Wyoming Range.

Jonathan Ratner is Wyoming Director of WWP. He lives in Pinedale, Wyoming. Contact him at wyoming@westernwatersheds.org.