More than a decade after Congress told the Forest Service to conduct
environmental analysis of grazing permits on federal lands, thousands
of such permits still have not been reviewed.
When lawmakers passed the Rescission Act in 1995, the environmental
community cheered the action as a way to force the agency to cut
through a backlog of some 6,800 grazing permits that had never before
been reviewed under terms of the National Environmental Protection Act.
Some hoped it would lead to major changes in the way those allotments
were managed.
However, the main culprits for this seeming defiance of the
law include later congressional riders that made the Forest Service's
application of the law discretionary and allowed hundreds of grazing
allotments to be categorically excluded from ever going through an
environmental analysis.
The first such rider, signed into law by President Bush in
November 2003 as part of the 2004 Interior Department appropriations
bill, leaves the timing of completing environmental analyses for Forest
Service grazing allotments up to the agency. The rider applied to
permits that had already been renewed as well as permits expiring
between 2004 and 2008, essentially allowing the agency to renew the
permits even though it had not completed any NEPA analysis.
The rider was prompted by a 2002 federal court ruling that
found the Forest Service could not modify its schedule for conducting
NEPA reviews, which were supposed to be completed by 2010, regardless
of whether it had the time and resources to do so. The rider
essentially repealed the court's decision.
"There's no way to hold the Forest Service to any sort of
schedule on those allotments," said Melissa Hailey of Forest Guardians.
Change discouraged
Hailey noted that the rider basically encourages the Forest
Service to continue poor management practices. Once the Forest Service
has conducted a NEPA analysis, it must continue to do so, barring a
categorical exclusion. If the Forest Service has never done a NEPA
analysis, it does not have to do one as long as it continues current
management. The rider deters the Forest Service from doing any kind of
conservation mitigation on overly utilized grazing allotments because
any change in management would require a NEPA analysis, she noted.
The second rider, which was part of the 2005 Interior
appropriations bill, allows the Forest Service to get around conducting
NEPA analyses by renewing permits under a "categorical exclusion" as
long as the agency renews the permit under the existing terms, the
allotment meets forest plan standards and there are no "extraordinary
circumstances" such as endangered or threatened species. Such
categorical exclusions are limited to 900 allotments.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has been tracking
the categorical exclusions since 2005, reports that 312 have been
issued and 426 are pending.
Environmentalists have accused the Bush administration of
abusing these categorical exclusions. "The Forest Service is using the
categorical exclusion protocol to purposely bypass NEPA on grazing
allotments that they know full well are not meeting the standards,"
said Bill Marlett of the Oregon Natural Desert Association.
With those riders set to expire in a few years, however, it is
unclear what will happen next. Will the Forest Service finally be
compelled to complete these analyses, or will Congress pass yet another
rider giving the Forest Service more time?
No one can say for sure, but Jon Marvel of the Western
Watersheds Project expects that the riders will eventually just die
out. "They will probably not be overturned," Marvel said. "They will
expire and not be renewed."
Even when the rider expires, however, Hailey said the Forest
Service would probably have to draw up a new schedule for completing
the analyses, rather than be held to its original plan. "The backlog
would be so intense, that would be impossible," she said.
Bobby McEnaney of NRDC hopes that when the discretionary rider
expires, environmentalists and ranchers will be able to find some
common ground in the form of "conservation withdrawals" bought by
environmental groups. "We believe conservation withdrawals would allow
private ranchers, with private funding, to find different ways of
ranching," McEnaney said.
Jeff Eisenberg, director of federal lands for the National
Cattlemen's Beef Association, would not speculate on whether the Forest
Service will be able to complete the remaining NEPA analyses by 2010 or
what would happen if it fails to do so. But, he said, regardless of
what happens, "the land needs to be taken care of, the requirements of
environmental laws need to be met and respect needs to be given to
people who make their living off the land."
In the meantime, the Forest Service is dutifully trudging
through performing these analyses, as time and money allow. For
instance, in Colorado's San Juan Mountains near Durango, land managers
are trying to complete analyses on all grazing allotments by 2010 --
the original timeframe set up by the Forest Service after the passage
of the Rescission Act.
"We're looking to reauthorize grazing allotments in such a way
that the desired condition of the landscape is being met," said Cam
Hooley, environmental coordinator with the San Juan National Forest's
Columbine District.
Forest managers have already completed such an analysis in the
Missionary Ridge-Lakes area, which was devastated by a 73,000-acre fire
in 2002. The Forest Service plans to continue livestock grazing in the
119,000-acre area using "adaptive management" and is currently
accepting public comments on its draft environmental assessment until
Aug. 15.
"We found a lot of the landscape in pretty good shape
considering a lot of it was burnt in 2002," Hooley said. "Certain areas
don't meet the desired condition at the moment, but we're setting up
steps that will bring it up to where we want it to be."
Ralph Giffen, the Forest Service's assistant director for
range management, said the Forest Service has so far completed NEPA
analyses on 4,763 allotments of the 6,886 that were originally on the
schedule. The Forest Service has set completing the rest of the
analyses by 2010 as a "high priority," he said.
"We're so close. We remain focused on getting that stuff done by our schedule date," Giffen said.
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