26th Annual Meeting and Symposium of the
Desert Tortoise Council, March 16-18, 2001
Abstracts

The Western Range Revisited:
Removing Livestock from Public Lands to Conserve Native Biodiversity

Debra L. Donahue, Professor of Law
University of Wyoming College of Law, Box 3035, Laramie, WY 82071

The continued use of 270 million acres of federal public land for domestic livestock production is endangering species and disrupting ecosystems at unprecedented rates. Impacts are greatest on arid and semiarid lands and in riparian areas. In these areas, livestock, and "improvements" undertaken for their benefit or management: (1) introduce and spread nonnative plant species and disease; (2) compete with native species for habitat; (3) destroy sensitive native plants, (4) contribute to soil compaction, drying, and excessive erosion; (5) disrupt aquatic systems; and (6) alter hydrological patterns. This paper (based on the book by the same title) concludes that eliminating livestock would be the single most effective strategy for conserving native biodiversity on arid public lands, and it outlines an interdisciplinary rationale for making this policy choice.

Several writers have suggested that "livestock grazing may be the major factor negatively affecting wildlife in the 11 western states" (Ohmart and Anderson, 1986; Fleischner, 1994). The U.S. Forest Service concluded that livestock grazing is the number one cause of species endangerment in arid regions of the West, such as the Colorado Plateau and Arizona Basin (Flather et al., 1994). Agriculture (which includes grazing) is the chief source of water quality impairment of rivers nationwide (EPA, 1996); grazing was identified as the number one cause of nonpoint source pollution of surface waters in the western states (Western States Water Council, 1989). The impacts of livestock in western riparian areas, and the high values of these areas as native species habitats and for clean water, are well documented (Belsky et al., 1999; Fleischner, 1996; USDA-Forest Service, 1992; Platts, 1991; Ohmart, 1996; Horning, 1994).

Only relatively recently have range ecologists come to understand that traditional theories of vegetative succession do not apply on arid and semiarid lands, and that livestock grazing in these areas can have irreversible ecological impacts (Westoby et al., 1989; Friedel, 1991; Laycock, 1991; NRC, 1994). Indeed, livestock grazing has been the principal cause of desertification in North America (Sheridan, 1981). Once disturbance factors (usually livestock grazing) cause vegetation and soil conditions to exceed certain threshold conditions, pre-disturbance conditions cannot feasibly be reestablished. (For purposes of the author's proposal, "arid or semiarid" denotes those areas receiving 12 inches or less average annual precipitation (see Noss and Cooperrider, 1994; Department of Interior, 1994; NRC, 1994; Sheridan, 1981; Sanders, 1994).

The bulk of BLM rangelands qualify as arid or semiarid. The condition of areas that receive less than 12 inches annual precipitation has not improved under BLM management, and BLM riparian areas are in their worst condition ever. According to the agency, "watershed and water quality would improve to their maximum potential" if livestock were removed from public lands (Department of Interior, 1994).

Congress was well aware in 1934 that western ranges were widely and severely degraded by overgrazing and that many desert lands were simply unsuited to livestock use. Thus, in the Taylor Grazing Act Congress authorized the Interior Secretary to establish grazing districts on lands "chiefly valuable for grazing or raising forage crops," or, as the legislative history reveals, lands not more valuable for other uses. While grazing continues to be allowed on 170 million BLM acres, the Interior Department has never determined which of its lands are "chiefly valuable" for grazing.

Since 1976 federal law has required that BLM lands be managed for the sustained yield of multiple resources, including grazing, wildlife, watershed, and recreation, without impairment of the land's productivity. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), 43 U.S.C. §§ 1701-1784, the BLM's principal statute, further directs the BLM to weigh long-term benefits to the public when it allocates lands for use, and to consider the "relative scarcity of values" and the availability of alternate means and sites for realizing those values. Most important, FLPMA charges the BLM with managing the public lands to prevent any "unnecessary or undue degradation." The agency has not justified livestock grazing using any of these criteria. Instead, it rationalizes grazing as a means of sustaining small communities and preserving an important western way of life and culture (Department of Interior, 1994).

These justifications are belied by the facts. There has never been a single, identifiable ranching "way of life." Federal grazing permit holders include banks, other large corporations, grazing associations, wealthy individuals, and small family operations. Only a minority of permittees have been in the business for more than a generation. For some, the ranch is a hobby or a tax write-off. The majority are small operators, who depend on other, non-ranch income to support themselves. (Department of Interior, 1994; GAO, 1992). Nor does public-land grazing support western communities. On the contrary, the services and employment opportunities afforded by small towns help sustain public land ranchers (Power, 1996; Smith and Martin, 1972; Department of Interior, 1994).

Furthermore, the BLM has no statutory authority, much less a mandate, to promote local economic or lifestyle concerns. FLPMA directs the agency to consider the national interest. Nowhere does it suggest that the agency give priority to the short-term economic interests of any subset of public-land users. Producing livestock on public lands, despite the ecological damage and conflicts with other multiple uses, thus violates the letter and spirit of both FLPMA and the Taylor Grazing Act and is contrary to national policy in the Clean Water Act and Endangered Specie Act.

Public-land livestock grazing continues largely because the federal agencies are reluctant to buck politically powerful western livestock interests. Permittees, though few in number, are disproportionately represented in state legislatures, county commissions, and the U.S. Senate. Their allies are also found in governors' mansions, the federal land management agencies, extension offices, and land-grant colleges. The organization of BLM field offices along state lines renders the agency more susceptible to political pressure applied by governors' offices or congressional delegations. And a grazing advisory board system established in the Taylor Act led to a grazing regime dominated by grazing permittees (Clawson, 1983; Calef, 1960; Foss, 1960).

Much of the range science literature and agency publications (EISs, land use plans, and educational materials) consists of promotion or apology, rather than sound science or management advice. That "rangelands" will be used for livestock production has been an implicit premise of range research and management decisions. Only rarely have investigators or managers considered whether livestock grazing is an appropriate or sustainable land use. Grazing apologists have exaggerated the importance of public lands for livestock production and demonstrated an uncritical devotion to the mythical "Old West" (Power, 1996; Noss and Cooperrider, 1994).

Public-land livestock grazing is challenged based on its ecological impacts and interference with other public-land uses. Permittees, agency officials, and even some conservation organizations have countered these challenges with socio-cultural arguments. Notably, they claim that public-land grazing is key to preserving the ranching "way of life" and valuable open space (Department of Interior, 1994; Natural Resources v. Hodel, D. Nevada, 1985; Sindelar et al., 1995). They predict that small communities would disappear and private-land open space would be lost to development if public range privileges were rescinded (Quigley and Bartlett, 1990; Department of Interior, 1994; Cotton and Cotton, n.d.; Senate Bill 852, 1995; Senate Bill 1459, 1996).

In fact, few if any western communities are dependent economically on public land grazing. Agriculture as a whole comprises a small fraction of the economies of most western states; livestock production, a still smaller part. Fewer than 23,000 livestock producers (of 1 million nationwide) possess federal grazing permits. Seventy percent of western cattle producers own all the land they operate. Although livestock grazing is the most widespread commercial use of public lands, it is by far the least valuable. Federal grazing fee revenues (assessed at the rate of $1.35 per AUM) are swamped by the costs of administering the program. Average returns to ranchers range from negative to 2-4 percent. Other regions and private-land operators could easily replace the 2 percent of U.S. livestock products attributable to public lands, and the 18,000 low-wage jobs directly related to federal land grazing could be replaced in a matter of days by normal job and income growth in the national economy (Department of Interior, 1994; Power, 1996).

Similarly, public land grazing has no demonstrable role in maintaining private-land open space. Private ranch land comprises a tiny fraction of the West's land area; an even smaller fraction enjoys federal grazing privileges. Absent state or local land-use restrictions, nothing prevents ranchers from subdividing or developing their private lands. Moreover, the loss of federal grazing privileges would not lead most federal grazing permittees to sell or develop their lands. When surveyed, they indicated that they would find some other way to stay in the ranching business -- downsize, find off-ranch income, diversify ranch operations, etc. (Smith and Martin, 1972; Department of Interior, 1994). The appropriate mechanisms for preventing the subdivision of ecologically important private lands are regulation (such as zoning) or public incentives (such as tax breaks). Incentives should not perpetuate an ecologically unsustainable use of public lands. In ecological terms, open space filled with the nonnative species which grazing fosters might as well be empty space.

Under FLPMA grazing permits may be canceled to devote the lands to another public purpose. Cancellation requires two years notice; less, if an emergency exists. Emergency action could be justified in areas approaching an ecological threshold, i.e., where continued grazing will bring about irreversible changes in soil or vegetative conditions. Livestock should be removed even where ecological thresholds have been exceeded and restoration might not be feasible (e.g., on cheatgrass-dominated areas). Otherwise, land degradation will continue, and the resulting grazing-induced communities will be even less desirable for native species and ecosystem functioning.

Surveys indicate that the public is educable on this issue; the chief impediment to reforming public land grazing policy is a lack of political will (Brunson and Steel, 1994; Evans, 1988).

Literature Cited

Belsky, A. J., A. Matzke, and S. Uselman. 1999. Survey of livestock influences on stream and riparian ecosystems in the western United States. J. Soil and Water Conserv. 54: 419-31.

Brunson, Mark W., and Brent S. Steel. 1994. National public attitudes toward federal rangeland management. Rangelands 16; 77-81.

Calef, Wesley. 1960. Private grazing and public lands. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Clawson, Marion. 1983. The federal lands revisited. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future.

Cotton, Scott E., and Ann C. Cotton. n.d. Wyoming CRM: Enhancing our environment. N.p.

Evans, M. Brock. 1988. In Benjamin C. Dysart III and Marion Clawson, eds. Managing public lands in the public interest. New York: Praeger.

Flather, C. H., L.A. Joyce, and C.A. Bloomgarden. 1994. Species endangerment patterns in the United States. USDA-Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Gen. Tech. Rep. RM-241.

Fleischner, Thomas L. 1996. Ecological costs of livestock grazing in western North America. Conservation Biology 8: 629-44.

Foss, Phillip. 1960. Politics and grass. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Friedel, M. H. 1991. Range condition assessment and the concept of thresholds: A viewpoint. J. Range Mgmt. 44: 421-26.

General Accounting Office. June 1992. Profile of the Bureau of Land Management's grazing allotments and permits.

Horning, John. 1994. Grazing to extinction: Endangered, threatened, and candidate species imperiled by livestock grazing on western public lands. Washington, D.C.: National Wildlife Federation.

Laycock, William A. 1991. Stable states and thresholds of range conditions on North American rangelands: A viewpoint. Journal Range Mgmt. 44: 427-33.

National Research Council. 1994. Rangeland health: New methods to classify, inventory and monitor rangelands. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Natural Resources Defense Council v. Hodel, 624 F. Supp. 1045 (D. Nev. 1985), affirmed, 819 F. 2d 927 (9th Cir. 1987).

Noss, Reed F., and Allen Y. Cooperrider. 1994. Saving nature's legacy. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Ohmart, R. D. 1996. Historical and present impacts of livestock grazing on fish and wildlife resources in western riparian habitats. Pp. 245-79 in P. R. Krausman, ed. Rangeland wildlife. Denver, Co: Society for Range Management.

Ohmart, R. D., and B. W. Anderson. 1986. Riparian habitat. Pp. 164-99. In Cooperider, B. S., editor. Inventorying and monitoring of wildlife habitat. Denver, CO: U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Platts, William S. 1991. Chapter 11, Livestock grazing. Pp. 389-423. In W.R. Meehan (ed). Influences of forest and rangeland management on salmonid fishes and their habitats. Amer. Fish. Soc. Special Pub. 19, Bethesda, Maryland. 751 pp.

Power, Thomas Michael. 1996. Lost landscapes and failed economies. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Quigley, Thomas M., and E. T. Bartlett. 1990. Livestock on public lands: Yes! In Frederick W. Obermiller, ed. Current issues in rangeland resource economics. Special Report 852. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Extension Service.

Sanders, Kenneth D. 1994. Can annual rangelands be converted and maintained as perennial grasslands through grazing management? In Stephen B. Monsen and Stanley G. Kitchen, eds. Proceedings--Ecology and management of annual rangelands. Gen. Tech. Rpt. INT-GTR-313. Ogden, UT: U.S. Forest Service Intermountain Research Station.

Sheridan, David. 1981. Desertification of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Council on Environmental Quality.

Sindelar, Brian W., Clifford Montagne, and Roland R. H. Kroos. et al. 1995. Holistic resource management: An approach to sustainable agriculture on Montana's Great Plains. J. Soil and Water Conserv. 50: 45-49.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 1992. Biological diversity assessment. Denver, CO: U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Regional Office.

U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management. 1994. Rangeland Reform '94: Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Washington, D.C.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Dec. 1997. National water quality inventory: 1996 report to Congress. Washington, D.C.

Western States Water Council. 1989. Preliminary Summary of Findings. Pages 25-28 in Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Workshop, Midvale, UT, July 1989.

Westoby, Mark, Brian Walker, and Immanuel Noy-Meir. 1989. Opportunistic management for rangelands not at equilibrium. J. Range Mgmt. 42: 266-74.