If it is Spring, then it must be time to sue the BLM for inaction.

[JoseCuervo]

This is some awesome country, that if taken care of could product some Monster bucks.

Western Watersheds Project Joins With the Oregon Natural Desert Association In A New Lawsuit In Oregon Over the Louse Canyon General Management Area

On Monday March 8, 2004 Western Watersheds Project joined with the Oregon Natural Desert Association (http://www.onda.org), to bring a lawsuit in federal District Court in Portland, Oregon against the Bureau of Land Management.

The law suit alleges the BLM illegally withheld action to change management in the Louse Canyon Management Area of southeast Oregon. The BLM's own regulations, the Fundamentals of Rangeland Health (43 C.F.R. 4180), require livestock management changes before the next grazing season when livestock are determined to be the cause of failure.

The Louse Canyon Area is located adjacent to Idaho and Nevada in the southeast corner of Oregon in a landscape dominated by the elaborate rhyolite canyons of the Owyhee River watershed. The BLM's recent assessment of the area which encompasses over 500,000 acres is quite lengthy (several hundred pages) and quite revealing. The BLM determined that standards were not being met, and livestock were the cause of the failure, on 6 of 21 pastures in the LCGMA. These 6 pastures account for approximately 220,155 acres of public lands, which is about 42% of the 523,000 acres of land the LCGMA encompasses. The PFC results are equally shocking: Close to 50% of the streams in the LCGMA are not meeting Standard 2 (Watershed Function-riparian/wetland), with 43% Functioning at Risk, Trend Not Apparent, 5 reaches Functioning at Risk, Downward Trend, and 3 reaches Not Functioning. In addition, 75% of the meadow/wetland complexes in the LCGMA are not functioning due to livestock grazing.

WWP and ONDA are confident that Judge Garr King of Oregon's federal District Court will find in our favor, and that the BLM will be obliged to change management in significant ways as a consequence.

 

[1_pointer]

WWP sucks!!!!

Effective? Most times.

Misguided? Some times.

 

[Ithaca 37]

"In addition, 75% of the meadow/wetland complexes in the LCGMA are not functioning due to livestock grazing."

That's about average. I hope some of the welfare rancher defenders will try to justify that!

 

[JoseCuervo]

It is easier to keep the cows off, then try and remove them after they have been turned out....

WWP has re-written the rules of the West!

 

[1_pointer]

If cows are to blame, then the grazing should change or halt altogether. I'd bet the distribution of the livestock is the culprit.