by Mary O'Brien, Utah Forests Director
A district ranger for the Fishlake National Forest had a choice in 2015: continue to protect the Price Spring Exclosure, a 47-acre parcel of fenced public land within a larger cattle allotment that showcases astounding recovery of the land in the absence of grazing…or let a billionaire rancher (called a “permittee”) use it as a cattle corral. Guess which happened.
For the past six years, these 47 acres have offered a rare glimpse of what public lands can look like when cattle aren’t chomping down and trampling fragile vegetation as they are elsewhere throughout the surrounding 12,470-acre Ten Mile Allotment and the rest of the Tushar Mountains.
Between 2007 and 2009, the Grand Canyon Trust helped develop joint recommendations alongside Forest Service representatives, grazing permittees, scientists, and other stakeholders as part of the Tushar Allotments Collaboration. The collaboration recommended fencing off the Price Spring Exclosure for the purpose of studying the effects cattle have on the land.
The Trust has been visiting Ten Mile Allotment and the exclosure ever since. In July 2015, when Trust volunteers weeded wooly mullein and bull thistle out of the exclosure, and in August 2015, when the Trust brought an artist to observe plants inside the exclosure, the presence of hip-high native bunchgrasses, wildflowers, and young aspen was a true testament to the restoration that can happen by simply removing cattle from the land. This was in stark contrast to the grazed land surrounding the exclosure.
But on October 4, 2015, when we visited once again to continue a six-year study, the once thriving native plants had been massively grazed by cattle. Countless cow flops the size of dinner plates smothered the plant life below, the tall bunchgrasses were bitten down to 1”-2” tall stubble, and plants cattle normally ignore were broken and browsed: sagebrush, rose, horsebrush, rabbitbrush, and even lupine (toxic to cattle). Six years of slow, steady growth of the recovering mountain mahogany had been chewed off. The cattle had trailed down steep banks to get to the springs, eroding them into bare strips of dirt.
As part of the initial collaboration that led to the exclosure, a series of photopoints within the fenced area had been repeatedly documented by the Forest Service, tracing how the sagebrush, aspen, and spring waterways were recovering, and at what rate. Now the recovery has been reversed. The differences between the recovered landscape and the recently decimated one are striking—see for yourself:
Fences can hold cattle in just as well as they can keep cattle out, and so far, the only reasonable explanation seems to be that cattle had been purposely locked inside the exclosure.
We’re trying to piece it all together through several Freedom of Information Act requests, but the district ranger indicates she told the permittee and the permittee’s private range consultant they could use the exclosure for a “few days” to hold up to 160 cow-calf pairs before the permittee planned to herd them down the road into the adjacent pasture.
Something similar had happened before, without the previous district ranger’s permission. In 2012, when the Forest Service had discovered cows inside the exclosure early in the season, the permittee had been barred from grazing cattle on the entire 12,472-acre Ten Mile Allotment that year.
There is no way the Forest Service can understand or face the adverse impacts of its grazing management without observing ungrazed areas for contrast. In the entire 1.5 million acre Fishlake National Forest, only one allotment is not grazed. The district ranger indicated that her staff “doesn’t have time” to visit the fairly remote, livestock-free allotment, to the north of Ten Mile Allotment. As for this easily-accessed 47-acre exclosure inside Ten Mile Allotment, the district ranger indicates that since assuming the position eight months ago, she has only “driven by” the exclosure once.
So it came to be that sometime between August 13 and October 4, cattle were locked inside the exclosure until they were really hungry (when cattle eat rabbitbrush, you know they’re desperate), and the slate was wiped clean of six years of recovery.
According to the Forest Service, only 22 percent of the 12,470 acre Ten Mile Allotment is considered “capable” for cattle grazing, as much of it is very steep or near-desert with practically nothing to eat. The wealthy Ten Mile permittee has obtained permits to numerous other allotments on the Dixie and Fishlake National Forests, and on Bureau of Land Management lands (e.g., Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument).
Why did these 47 acres have to be grazed after the time-intensive two-year collaboration that created it, the public investment in a well-built exclosure, and the multi-year Forest Service photo documentation of recovery?
As we wade through responses to our Freedom of Information Act requests, we are trying to piece together how this happened, and what should now be done about Ten Mile Allotment and the 47-acre exclosure. The allotment’s ten-year term permit is due for renewal in late November 2015, but the Forest Service has not completed an allotment management plan for Ten Mile Allotment, as promised in a 2007 administrative appeal resolution.
If you wish to send your thoughts on the value of livestock-free areas to the Forest Service, you might direct them jointly to District Ranger Kathleen Johnson (kathyjohnson@fs.fed.us), Fishlake National Forest Supervisor Mel Bolling (mfbolling@fs.fed.us) and Intermountain Regional Rangeland Management Staff Officer Terry Padilla (tpadilla@fs.fed.us). You might also ask a question or two, and request some answers.
If you have questions, please contact Mary O’Brien, Utah Forests Program Director for the Grand Canyon Trust, at maryobrien10@gmail.com.
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