JoseCuervo
New member
I am trying to find the links to an AP article that was in both the Idaho Statesman and the Idaho Free Press today, as they both clipped it off the Wire Services. But it appears that the County Commissioners gave three Welfare Ranchers the $50,000 that this article refers to.
It seems the Commissioners want to help the Welfare Ranchers out bid the Grand Canyon Trust for Leases they bought from willing Sellers... And one of the Welfare Ranchers was the County Commissioners son-in-law in either Garfield or Kane county. Starting to be a little "investigation" happening...
If you know where the link to this new accusation is, please post.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Deseret Morning News, Saturday, March 08, 2003
The BLM's cow wars
Copyright 2003 Deseret News
By Donna Kemp Spangler
Deseret News staff writer
A century ago, Western cattlemen fearful of losing their way of life hired gunslingers to protect their interests.
Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
Times have not changed all that much.
Kane and Garfield counties in southern Utah have hired the West's top legal gun on land issues, Wyoming attorney Karen Budd Falen, to represent their interests in a landmark lawsuit that will challenge the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's policies on grazing in the 1.9 million-acre reserve.
"It looks like (the Bureau of Land Management) is eliminating grazing without jumping through the legal hoops," said Falen, a former aide to Interior Secretary James Watt and an architect of the modern Sagebrush Rebellion.
In Falen's cross hairs is a long-held practice by environmental groups of buying up grazing permits from ranchers and then not using them, or asking that the BLM permanently "retire" them.
The Grand Canyon Trust has been doing that in the Grand Staircase, much to the consternation of local county officials who see it as a conspiratorial elimination of the historic ranching way of life.
"We think it is an illegal act," said Garfield County Commissioner Maloy Dodds.
"We fear they will put an end to livestock grazing in the United States," added Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw. "What's happening on the monument is a stepping stone."
Utah lawmakers apparently agree, clearing the way for a $50,000 appropriation of mineral lease monies to help the counties with the lawsuit, a small but symbolic gesture pushed by Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, and Sen. Tom Hatch, R-Panguitch.
Commissioners have been chafing ever since President Bill Clinton created the monument by presidential order in September 1996, an action seen by locals as a move to curry favor with environmentalists in the presidential election.
Clinton's designation clearly states that grazing would continue on the monument. But in the years since, the Grand Canyon Trust has been actively working with ranchers to buy up grazing permits in sensitive areas. The trust still holds those permits but doesn't use them.
The BLM is compiling an environmental study of the impacts of grazing in the monument. And monument manager Dave Hunsaker insists "it is not my intention, nor the intention of the BLM, to eliminate livestock grazing from the monument," he wrote recently in a guest editorial in the Southern Utah News.
Bill Hedden with the Grand Canyon Trust's Moab office calls the lawsuit "a colossal waste of taxpayer money."
"Our path has always been to work with ranchers," he added. "We have never sued anyone over grazing, and this is our thanks for it. Suddenly, we are Satan."
Political pressure
The growing rebellion in southern Utah over BLM grazing policies has come to the attention of Utah's congressional delegation, which is divided.
Freshman Rep. Rob Bishop wrote last month to BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, a Utahn intimately versed on the political quagmires arising from the monument designation, saying he was "deeply troubled by the BLM's actions."
"Unfortunately, in many instances, local BLM offices have been taken hostage by environmental groups whose views are in opposition to the needs of rural communities," Bishop wrote. "This has led to unfortunate circumstances we are now facing in Utah."
Bishop's political pressure is welcome news to southern Utah commissioners, even though Bishop does not represent southern Utah. Neither does Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, who has weighed in supporting the Grand Canyon Trust's buyout of the grazing permits.
"This project is a good example of the way we can work together to benefit the community and the land," he wrote, adding the buyouts give ranchers the cash they need to retire debt and purchase grazing permits in less environmentally sensitive areas.
The monument is actually in Democrat Rep. Jim Matheson's new district.
Matheson has talked to locals about the dispute, but as he sees it, the deals where the Grand Canyon Trust bought the permits "involve a willing buyer and a willing seller. I am a free-market kind of guy."
Matheson said he has not seen anything to indicate monument managers are trying to shut down grazing, pointing out that the permits in dispute amount to only 5 to 10 percent of those on the monument. "We're talking about a small number, a small percentage," he said.
Grazing formula
Southern Utah commissioners disagree.
They point out that the BLM's record shows a gradual demise of grazing since 1998, a total elimination of more than 10,000 "annual unit months," a grazing formula that determines the number of cows allowed on public range.
On the other hand, Hunsaker said that in 1996, before the monument was created, there were 100 permittees. Now there are 101 permittees.
Fueling the lawsuit is an opinion by U.S. Solicitor William Myers that states permit-holders, like the Grand Canyon Trust, cannot force the BLM to retire grazing permits as a way to end grazing on public lands.
Instead, the BLM must conduct detailed environmental reviews and establish the lands are "no longer chiefly valuable for grazing."
"A decision to cease livestock grazing is not permanent," he wrote. "It is subject to reconsideration, modification and reversal."
Southern Utah commissioners insist monument managers will be violating the Taylor Grazing Act if they permanently retire permits purchased by the Grand Canyon Trust. Only Congress, they say, has the authority to permanently retire those permits.
Old vs. New West
The Grand Canyon Trust currently controls grazing permits on 350,000 acres of the 1.9 million-acre monument, spending $1.5 million to get the permits. Hedden said the permits were purchased with the intent the BLM would eventually retire them, something that has not yet occurred.
If that happens, commissioners say it marks the beginning of the end of ranching in southern Utah.
"We have a conflict between the Old West and the New West," Habbeshaw said. "We don't want monument staff to determine our destiny."
But Hedden said the dispute isn't really about ranching but politics.
"They have been railing against the monument since it was created," he said. "They are making this issue a surrogate in the fight against the monument."
Falen doesn't think so. She said she took on this case to ensure the survival of the cowboy's Western way of life.
"I think it's important to keep ranchers on the land," she said. "And we need to force the Department of Interior to follow the rules."
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