Ranchers are cautiously optimistic that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) 11 new outcome-based grazing demonstration projects in six western states will give them more flexibility in managing their livestock herds under federal permits—five are in Nevada, two in Oregon and one each in Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
The projects are designed to give BLM officials and livestock producers greater latitude in managing permitted cattle on ranges, so they can respond more efficiently to changing conditions such as wild fires, high precipitation or droughts, and not be rigidly restricted by regulations. Participants hope the projects will help ensure healthy rangelands, high quality wildlife habitat and economically sustainable ranching operations.
After the program was first announced last September, the BLM recently has been conducting meetings with select cattle ranchers to get it under way. Among those participating in a recent BLM webinar has been Niels Hansen, secretary/treasurer of the national Public Lands Council, whose family members have been grazing both sides of the Continental Divide west of Rawlins, WY since the mid-1880s. They still operate on ground bought by a great uncle in 1899.
“Everybody’s common theme was more flexibility. Ranches are in varying degrees of rotation programs,” Hansen told WLJ.
Wyoming ranchers have had to deal with no snow this past winter, but there have been more encouraging light showers recently in his area, underscoring the need to be able to adapt to changing conditions. “We’ll pump all the water needed for our cow/calf operation,” he said.
While it has similarities to initiatives tried in the past, the latest BLM outcome-based grazing program could more deeply streamline the regulatory process so it is not as burdensome, he said.
“We hope to get some flexibility worked into our permits,” Hansen said, adding he would like rapid changes to be initiated without going through a lengthy National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. “Make it so people do not have to have a Ph.D. or a bureaucracy to manage permits and manage ranches. … We’re hoping we can move forward and make a difference.”
While a similar program started during the Obama administration, the Trump administration has been more assertively getting it functional and making it easier, said Hansen, who has been ranching for 44 years. “They’re asking us to think outside the box and come up with needed changes and ideas that would make our operations work better.”
Private land operators have a competitive advantage because they do not pay added expenses by running cattle on federal land, he noted. “There are a lot of hidden costs and missed opportunities because we can’t react to market changes,” Hansen said.
The third-generation rancher said some operational improvements can take years to take effect. If the land is overgrazed, cattle essentially are abused and profits suffer, Hansen noted.
Like Hansen, Stacy Davies, a partner in the Roaring Springs Ranch about 75 miles south of Burns, OR, also is engaged in the BLM’s outcome-based based program. The land he ranches extends all the way south to the Nevada border, and features a substantial number of sage grouse, redband trout in its streams and wild horse management areas.
“We’ve always been very biologically driven in grazing management, focusing on species of concern and overall rangeland health. Our management historically has been flexible,” Davies told WLJ, adding his ranch has been involved in controlled burns, riparian repairs and rangeland seeding. “We’ve always been pretty opportunistic in applying grazing works for those species, as well as what works financially for our ranch.”
Davies pointed out that most ranchers operate under rigid 10-year grazing plans with little room for adjustment. Forage allocations and head counts are set as much as a decade in advance. “I think it’s crazy because conditions change so much,” he said.
Underscoring the importance of flexibility, Davies recounted the horrendous wildfires of 2012 that ravaged vast swaths of rangeland in Oregon, Nevada and Idaho. Heavy spring rains of 2011 caused cheat grass to explode in growth like “gasoline in the valley,” he explained. Accordingly, his operation’s grazing plan changed in Catlow Valley.
Instead of 2,000 head of cattle grazing in the valley for about two months, that number was boosted to 6,000 head for six months to eliminate the cheat grass as tinder fuel. The cows were kept in the valley all spring and not turned loose on summer mountain range. Roaring Springs runs 8,000 cows.
During the summer of 2012, a nearby inferno consumed about one million acres and another fire burned up thousands of acres on a different range, but despite several hundred lightning strikes, there were no fires in Catlow Valley, Davies said.
Regulations originally were drawn up because of historic abuses, he noted. Because numbers of wild horses were excessive one year, the Davies operation had to scale back its cattle allotment one summer from 4,000 to 400.
“We voluntarily removed livestock to provide forage for wild horses,” Davies said. “We weren’t really happy about that, but as a rancher there’s a good side and a bad side. When years are tough, you’ve got to pull back.”
Davies praised the BLM’s outcome-based projects for encouraging alternative grazing systems to manage ranges. “It requires an attitude of cooperation and really working together and a willingness to be flexible,” he said.
Chris King, his wife and son run some 600 pair of cattle on about 20,000 acres roughly 50 miles east of Lewiston, MT, using range monitoring and rest rotation as part of their operation. The BLM’s outcome-based project allows for not being bound to one specific lease arrangement, i.e., X number of cows for X number of days on X amount of acreage, he said.
“We’re trying to do things differently going forward and be able to design our own grazing system, as long as we can show the range is doing well and improving,” King said. “We can’t control the weather and can’t really control the markets. We’ve got to go with what we have.”
King said the BLM meetings about the outcome-based projects have gone well, and he has always had a good working relationship with the bureau.
“I’m cautiously optimistic. I think it’s going to be a good thing, using range monitoring to guide decisions on pasture rotation rather than rely on something else,” King said. “It’s certainly not a confrontational relationship. They are a government agency. They certainly have to have rules to follow. I get that.”
Other permit holders chosen to serve as demonstration projects are:
• Little Snake Land Co., Craig, CO;
• Deep Creek Ranch, Burley, ID;
• Winecup-Gamble Ranch, Elko, NV;
• Elko Land and Livestock Co., Elko, NV;
• Willow Ranch, Battle Mountain, NV;
• Smith Creek Ranch, Carson City, NV;
• John Uhalde and Co., Ely, NV; and
• Fitzgerald Ranches, Lakeview, OR.
More information is available on the BLM website at www.blm.gov. — Mark Mendiola, WLJ correspondent
