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Judge to decide whether rancher may graze cattle on Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument’s Jenny Creek drainage
By PAUL FATTIG
Mail Tribune
WHITE CITY — A U.S. Department of Interior administrative law judge began hearing an appeal Monday morning from a rancher whose request to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to allow her cattle to graze on the former Box O Ranch has been repeatedly denied.
Jennifer Walt, whose family owns the Box D Ranch adjacent to the former ranch in the Jenny Creek drainage of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, wants Judge William E. Hammett to overturn the BLM’s denial.
Hammett is based in Sacramento with the interior department’s hearings and appeals office.
However, the judge is not expected to make a decision any time soon. The hearing, being held in the Jackson County auditorium in White City, is scheduled to last at least through Wednesday.
The purpose of the hearing is to gather information from which the judge will eventually render a decision.
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Although Walt is an attorney who practices in San Francisco, she is a co-counsel in the case alongside Sacramento attorney Timothy J. Swickard with the law firm Stoel Rives LLP.
The BLM, represented by solicitor Brad Grenham, has rejected Walt’s request for a temporary grazing permit each year since 2001.
The 1,200-acre former Box O Ranch was acquired by the BLM in a land exchange on July 19, 1995. Since then, the agency has been working to restore the land which agency officials say had been overgrazed for decades.
They say overgrazing on the former Box O had caused Jenny Creek to become wide and shallow, threatening the habitat for the native Jenny Creek sucker, redband trout and a tiny fish known as a speckled dace.
Both the sucker and trout are listed by the state of Oregon as sensitive species. The northwestern pond turtle, listed by the state as critical, also inhabits the area.
Once the Jenny Creek recovery project is completed and the grazing impact study is finished on the monument, the agency will decide whether to allow cattle to graze again at the former ranch, officials said.
Beyond that, they declined to comment on the hearing, noting the legal sensitivity.
But Dave Willis, chairman of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council which is an intervenor alongside the BLM in the case, didn’t mind commenting. He led the effort to create the monument.
"The BLM has spent thousand of dollars and hours and citizens have spent thousands of volunteer hours working on Jenny Creek recovery and restoration," he said. "They haven’t done it so a San Francisco lawyer can turn this special area into a subsidized cow pasture."
He described the case as frivolous with an intent to harass the BLM.
Although Walt could not be reached for comment after the first day of the hearing, she indicated during an interview last fall that the right to graze cattle on nearby federal land came with the ranch her family purchased more than a decade ago.
"I personally think there is absolutely nothing inconsistent with grazing cattle in the monument and maintaining the biodiversity and the native species which are the concerns expressed in the proclamation," she said.
The monument proclamation on June 9, 2000, directed the agency to conduct the study. Basically, it states that current grazing is allowed but that if grazing is found to be incompatible with the monument’s purpose, then the grazing leases would be retired.
The 52,000-acre monument was established to protect the unique flora and fauna in the region, which scientists say is a rich biological crossroad where the Cascade, Siskiyou and Klamath mountain ranges intersect.
The area has been used by local ranchers for more than a century for high-mountain grazing when the lowlands dry up each summer.
Under the Taylor Grazing Act of 1936, open-range use is permitted on federal land.
