Experts Find Little Or No Data
To Support Grazing Cuts By NFS

ABIQUIU, N.M. — It's a pleasant, cool evening outside in the Espanola Valley. Inside, however, emotions are hot.

About 35 people representing a number of grazing allotments gathered in a ranch shop here to hear an update from Caren Cowan, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, and Dr. John Fowler, head of New Mexico's Range Improvement Task Force, which reviewed the forage availability on the allotments. The two are discussing the U.S. Forest Service's decision to reduce or remove cattle from the Santa Fe National Forest because of drouth.

In late June, letters went out from Forest Service officials ordering cutbacks or removal of cattle from grazing allotments in the Santa Fe National Forest, citing a lack of forage due to drouth.

In the wake of a public outcry, the Forest Service stayed those orders until further investigation could be made. That further investigation has raised new questions.

Letters went out from ranger districts about June 25, ordering a number of permittees to reduce the number of cattle grazing on allotments in the 1.6 million-acre national forest. In some instances, all cattle were ordered removed.

The cattle operations here, compared to some other parts of the state, are relatively small. They are not large corporate ranches. Many of them have only 10 to 30 head of cattle.

Where permits are often held in other parts of the country by one person, here several people will graze their cattle on one allotment. Often, those on an allotment will be related and the cattle will be run as a family operation.

Most of the families involved have been here longer than the U.S. Forest Service.

"This is their life," Cowan says.

She says they work hard to maintain the lives they want to live here.

Initial reports indicated roughly 275 grazing permittees on 86 grazing allotments were to be involved, but Forest Service officials now say there are between 250 and 300 individual permit holders on about 70 grazing allotments in the Santa Fe National Forest with permitted livestock of about 14,000 head.

David Stewart, regional director of rangeland management for the Forest Service, says about 60 individual permit holders were ordered to remove about 1500 to 1800 head of livestock from seven or eight allotments.

The action was apparently the result of a memo by Stewart accusing local rangers of mismanagement of their districts and deploring the range conditions in the forest.

Representatives of the livestock industry here say the resulting removal orders were a knee-jerk reaction to Stewart's memo and that the action was taken without any hard data.

The New Mexico Cattle Growers Association asked New Mexico's Range Improvement Task Force, an interdisciplinary group of Ph.D.s from New Mexico State University, to look at the allotments and review the Forest Service's records. There are accusations that the Forest Service sent task force teams to the wrong allotments.

"When we finally got somebody that could get up there and look at the files," Cowan says, "the newest monitoring data they had was from 1984. Most of it was from the 1960s. This is what they're making decisions on."

"We got complete access to every ranger district on the Santa Fe National Forest," Fowler says. "We found several things that were quite revealing."

On one allotment, Fowler says, there was quantified production data. The next data goes back to 1984.

"There was a huge data void," Fowler says. "That is going to be of great concern to every permittee."

Without data, he says, the permittees can't document stewardship, and they can't document longterm increase in range condition and range trends.

There is a good supply of data from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Fowler says, but then the paper trail ends.

"It looked like they just stopped, either putting it in the file or stopped recording for whatever reason," Fowler says. "That is a serious problem for the future."

While key areas on the allotments were being visited, other members of the task force went to the ranger stations and reviewed records, Fowler says. They compiled a complete history of grazing data that was available from the ranger stations.

"We did not want to be guilty of doing a one-time survey," Fowler says. "We wanted to make sure that we were as comprehensive and as complete as possible."

The task force looked at this year's growth and previous growth. The task force looked at forage and what grazed it. They looked at grazing by livestock, elk and deer. They also looked at available moisture.

"That is the data we compiled and that was the basis of our recommendations," Fowler says.

Every person in the field had a range degree.

"We have built a complete record for every one of the 25 allotments in the Santa Fe National Forest that has been issued a letter or potentially were going to be issued a letter," Fowler says.

"When all was said and done," Cowan says, "there were three allotments on which they agreed with the Forest Service that cattle should come off, that they were in tough shape and no rain came."

The task force says there should be some reduction on another five allotments.

There are eight allotments the task force says can hold the cattle until the end of the growing season, but that will need to be re-monitored.

"Then there are nine allotments where they said, 'Hey, we don't understand what the problem is here,'" Cowan says.

Normally, the cattle would come off the allotments during the month of October.

"A lot of these guys, simply because of the hunting season, have chosen to come off earlier just to avoid conflicts with hunters," Cowan adds.

The task force recommended no removal or reduction from the other 17 allotments. They did suggest that eight of the 17 remaining allotments be re-evaluated at the end of the growing season.

Fowler says he expects task force members to return at the end of the growing season and examine the allotments.

The key question for now, however, is whether there is enough available forage to allow livestock grazing to continue.

"That was the fundamental question that we answered," Fowler says.

But Fowler's recommendations drew fire from the Forest Service, which accused the task force of overstepping their bounds by making managerial recommendations.

"The Forest Service contends that we went way too far, that we went into a managerial mode," Fowler says. "I don't work for the Forest Service, and we will make recommendations on what we do."

He says the task force didn't make any recommendations as to fencing, class of livestock or range improvements to make or what season to graze.

"We didn't make managerial recommendations," Fowler counters. "We told them where there was forage available. That was the basis for what we told the Forest Service."

The Forest Service claims to have additional data on six of the allotments where they did not agree with the task force, but on one of the three allotments the Range Improvement Task Force says is in tough shape and where cattle need to be removed, the Forest Service has decided the cattle can stay.

"They're going to let them stay with some adjustments," Cowan says.

Everybody agrees that cattle need to be removed from two allotments.

"They're re-evaluating the data on everything else," Cowan says.

As of the end of August, the Forest Service appeared reluctant to share their new data with the task force, though the task force turned over their data to the Forest Service.

The Forest Service says they will proceed with their decisions. New letters ordering removal or cuts in grazing numbers were expected to go out this week.

Cowan, however, says she has assurances from Mark Rey, the Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment who oversees the Forest Service, that he will review the decisions.

The major issue revolves around the drouth that has plagued this area and much of the Southwest since 1996, but part of the problem involves local wildlife.

A permittee from the nearby Carson National Forest complains that elk moving through her pasture cropped 50 percent of the grass in one weekend.

In New Mexico, the wildlife belongs to the state and grazing by elk and deer on Forest Service allotments has long been a point of contention. New Mexico Farm Bureau authorities broached the subject earlier in the summer.

Cowan says Forest Service officials told her they had discussed elk problems with the New Mexico Game and Fish Department, but game and fish officials told her the Forest Service had not requested reductions in elk numbers.

Forest Service officials told Cowan that the game department had done everything they could do, but the director of the game department said that was not true.

The New Mexico Game and Fish Department says it can order targeted population reduction hunts in specific areas and have the discretion to increase hunting licenses by as much as 20 percent.

"That's in the best interests of the wildlife as well," Cowan says. "They're going to suffer the effects of drouth."

It took two weeks and several meetings, however, to get the Forest Service to tell the state game department that elk were indeed part of the problem, Cowan says.

The task force data indicates heavier grazing by elk than cattle in 11 of the 25 allotments.

While some environmental and animal rights groups are pressing for more protection for wildlife, one of the permittees points out that cattle have grazed here for more than 400 years, since the Spanish first arrived in Northern New Mexico. The elk were introduced for hunting in the 1960s.

Another issue in the dispute is where the cattle to be removed are going to go.

Several of the permittees have sold parts or all of their herds based on verbal orders from Forest Service officials. Their lawyers have now told them not to do anything until they receive written orders.

"One of the relief valves that we proposed to this mess was that if the Forest Service was going to put these people off and the resources were really that bad, it was incumbent on the Forest Service to help us find someplace to go with the cattle," Cowan says.

The New Mexico Cattle Growers Association proposed using the nearby Valles Caldera Preserve, the Baca Ranch that the government purchased two years ago.

When Congress approved money for the purchase, they specified that the property remain a working ranch.

"That ranch has run as many as 6000 head of steers at different times," Cowan notes.

The ranch was turned over to the Forest Service until a board of directors, appointed by the President, could be organized. There are nine people on the board, representing a variety of interests from wildlife to ranching to banking to timber to the environment.

The ranch has not been grazed for four years.

The newly appointed board says it will run only 1024 head and plans to charge permittees moving their cattle there 36 cents a head per day with a maximum of 25 head per permittee, not including transportation to and from the ranch.

"That's over $400 for 45 days," Cowan says. "These are people who are in trouble already."

The average grazing fee on other federal lands is six cents a day.

There has also been fear among the permittees that the Forest Service will retaliate against them next year.

That strengthens the need for accurate data and sound information, Fowler says.

"The game isn't about now," Fowler says. "The game is about being ready and being ready to go on again in the spring. If there is any retaliation, that's where it will show up. We need to be acutely aware of that."

That won't be tolerated, Cowan insists.

"We're just sitting tight, waiting to see what decisions come out," she says.

Action has to be taken within seven to 10 days from when letters go out or the permits could be in jeopardy.

"There is an administrative appeals process," Cowan says. "If they do something that we feel like will support a fight, we'll go back to the mat on the deal."

Unfortunately, the issues aren't going to go away.