The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released on Nov. 30 a plan to restore sagebrush habitat while reducing wildfires across the Great Basin region.
The final programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) released by the BLM calls for fuel reduction and rangeland restoration on approximately 38.5 million acres of BLM-administered lands in the Great Basin, including portions of California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
According to the BLM, approximately 45 percent of the range of sagebrush has been lost due to wildfires, the spread of invasive annual grasses, and the encroachment of pinyon-juniper. Sagebrush communities support almost 350 different species of plants and wildlife, including the greater sage-grouse.
After the scoping period, which consisted of input from staff, tribes, 15 public meetings and scores of comments, the BLM has decided on four alternatives. The preferred alternative would use a range of methods including manual, mechanical, chemical, prescribed fire, and targeted grazing methods to remove undesirable vegetation such as cheatgrass and other invasive species depending on the vegetation state.
“Native plant species would be prioritized for use in restoration treatments; however, areas, where successful restoration is unlikely, could be improved using nonnative vegetation species to stabilize sites until adequate technology/funding for full restoration are available,” the PEIS states.
This PEIS supports the objectives of the Greater Sage-Grouse Resource Management Plan and also the construction of 11,000 miles of fuel breaks in the Great Basin that was issued last spring. The PEIS would exclude areas including riparian habitats and streambanks, areas identified as wild and scenic rivers, national conservation areas and national monuments, and “national scenic and historic trails and trail rights-of-way corridors as identified in the Trailwide Comprehensive Plan.” It would also establish a 15-mile buffer around the sage grouse management plan and recovery habitat in Washington and Utah, and the bi-state critical habitat in California.
Impact on ranchers
The BLM will communicate project objectives and proposed timelines with permittees, and any temporary modification to the permit will happen at the field office level.
Targeted grazing would be “strategically applied” in the project area for fuel reduction treatment in areas with over 10 percent invasive annual grass or nonnative perennial grass cover and when native perennial bunchgrass cover is below 20 percent. Targeted grazing would also be used to prepare a site for seeding and reduce cover in the treatment area by “consuming and trampling aboveground biomass.”
If targeted grazing is used to reduce all annual aboveground biomass in the spring, the timing of grazing may need to extend past the time of current year growth. Fall grazing may also be used to reduce invasive annual grass fuel loads. The BLM would coordinate with the permittee to establish site-specific guidelines such as temporary fencing versus herding and water and mineral supplements.
Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, claimed the plan would benefit ranchers while harming wildlife.
“With this project, the BLM is clearly trying to write itself a blank check to do large and damaging vegetation removal without any further input or detailed analysis,” Molvar said. “This is an agency whose track record of vegetation manipulation has overwhelmingly resulted in habitat destruction.”
The PEIS noted some commenters wanted a reduction in livestock grazing “to address better one of the causes of rangeland degradation and disturbance.” However, the BLM determined it was not within the scope of the PEIS as it states, “The purpose of the project is to enhance the long-term function, viability, resistance and resilience of sagebrush communities through vegetation treatments to protect, conserve, and restore sagebrush communities in the project area.”
Other alternatives considered but eliminated included the use of wild horses and burros, but herding the animals would be required, which is a violation of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. Furthermore, transferring the animals’ ownership to private or state ownership is outside the project’s scope, and “realistically transfer ownership of excess wild horses and burros to enough willing and capable partners to reduce fuel loading,” could not be achieved.
Wildfire
According to the Associated Press, “Ecologists have offered mixed responses on the plan, noting it will fragment habitat and likely harm some wildlife, including sage grouse. However, they note, the massive and at times unstoppable wildfires can destroy huge chunks of habitat.”
The PEIS states that population growth in the Great Basin was twice of any other region in the U.S. since 2000 and that “17.3 percent of the project area wildland-urban interface contains homes.”
During the five years between January 2014 and December 2018, 11 separate wildfires exceeded 100,000 acres in size. They burned a combined total of 2.2 million acres within the Great Basin, mostly on BLM-administered federal lands. The cost of fighting these fires was $72.4 million, including firefighting costs and the rehabilitation of burned areas.
Since 2018, fires have continued to increase in size. They have consumed over 9 million acres of sagebrush habitat from 2014 to 2018, said Michele Crist, a landscape ecologist with BLM at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID.
Crist said sagebrush is a perennial shrub, and when sagebrush burns, it has to be reseeded and can take up to 20 to 30 years to regrow.
After the 30-day public review period, the BLM will issue a record of decision and local offices can plan specific projects. — Charles Wallace, WLJ editor
