Anti-Grazing Groups
Still Gaining Ground

SANTA FE — A U.S. Forest Service appeals officer is upholding a radical environmental group's claim that the federal agency violated the law in allowing grazing on Forest Service allotments.

James T. Gladen, appeals officer for the Southwestern Region of the Forest Service, says the Forest Guardians, a self-proclaimed environmental group in Santa Fe, were right in their contention that the Forest Service violated the National Forest Management Act when they allowed continued livestock grazing near Silver City.

The Forest Guardians claim federal law requires the Forest Service to maintain viable numbers of all species on federal land.

The Forest Service authorized grazing in the Silver City Ranger District, the Gila River, Mangas Valley, Silverdale and Little Rough allotments.

About 700 cattle graze at one time or another during the year on these four allotments.

Gladen overturned the Forest Service's decisions, saying they did not adequately consider impacts on management indicator species.

The decision sets a precedent that grazing will be held to the same standard as timber sales.

The Forest Guardians say future decisions with regard to livestock grazing on public lands will require population monitoring data for management indicator species.

The administrative ruling follows a federal court decision by Judge James Parker to halt a timber sale on the Cibola national forest because the Forest Service failed to evaluate population trend data for management indicator species found in the sale area.

In a related development, anti-grazing activists are filing suit over grazing permits they claim endanger various species in Arizona.

The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, and the Forest Guardians are challenging grazing of 13,000 head of cattle on 633,870 acres of public land in Arizona.

The activists say they are suing the U.S. Forest Service over 55 grazing allotments, claiming that livestock are damaging six endangered species on the Coronado, Coconino and Tonto National Forests. The species listed in the suit are the Gila topminnow, razorback sucker, Little Colorado spinedace, lesser long-nosed bat, cactus ferruginous pygmy owl and Huachuca water umbel.

The new lawsuit follows a string of earlier suits that closed more than 250 miles of public rivers to cattle and resulted in a series of mandatory restrictions on land use by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The radical environmental groups say they are suing the Forest Service because that agency is ignoring the Fish and Wildlife environmental restrictions.

The case has been assigned to Judge John Sedwick in Anchorage, Alaska, because the Arizona federal court's docket is overloaded.