by Bill Hedden, Executive Director
We’ve been working with ranchers and government agencies for years to protect a tiny portion (just 3.6%) of the most fragile parts of Utah’s Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument from cows.
Now Congress wants to go backwards and force cattle back onto the entire monument. The legislation could be a deathblow to endangered birds and threatened fish on some of the West’s most delicate desert public lands.
On Thursday, May 20, the Public Lands Subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing on Senate bill 365: “A bill to improve rangeland conditions and restore grazing levels within the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Utah.”
Despite its innocuous title, the bill would effectively dump cattle back on any areas of Grand Staircase-Escalante that have been closed since President Clinton established the monument.
For no apparent reason (96.4% of the monument is already open to grazing), Senator Orrin Hatch has introduced the bill as a way to undo voluntary grazing retirements in Grand Staircase-Escalante – effectively nullifying agreements by desperate ranchers who sold their grazing permits (where it was impossible for them to make a living) to the Trust.
Hatch wants to drag us back to 1996, before President Clinton designated the monument, and to undo years of collaborative solution-oriented land management.
The key provisions of the bill are found in Section 1:
As soon as practicable after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall implement a management program within areas of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that are administered by the Bureau of Land Management:
1.) to improve rangeland conditions for wildlife and livestock carrying capacity in those areas; and
2) to restore livestock grazing to the level of usage in those areas that existed as of September 17, 1996.
Buying grazing permits from ranchers who want to sell is a common-sense solution that helps protect our public lands and preserve some un-grazed areas for land managers and ranchers to use as references, the only way to keep tabs on the effects of grazing on the landscape.
Grazing retirements have helped heal the cattle-damaged landscape in critical areas like the Escalante River Canyon and Calf Creek, a coveted destination for wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts alike. If Hatch’s bill passes, retiring other grazing leases on public lands across the West will become a pipe dream.
Testimony submitted by the Trust outlines why Senate bill 365 is a bad idea and how it threatens to cripple creative land management solutions in the West. The photo gallery below shows what is at stake.
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