U.S. Forest Service Attacks
On New Mexico Must Be Stopped

By Norm Plank
Executive Vice President
New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau

(Editor’s note: This article appears in the current issue of New Mexico Farm & Ranch, the official publication of the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau)

The U.S. Forest Service is fencing New Mexico ranchers out of business, and the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau is asking the state's congressional delegation to put a hard stop to this latest attack on our citizens by the federal government. I want to personally thank Senator Pete Domenici and Congressmen Skeen and Redmond for their support of our ranch families in this battle. Most of our delegation is right on top of this issue. Our newest Congressperson, Heather Wilson, is just getting settled in and we'll be in contact with her as well.

As the result of yet another lawsuit by a minuscule group known as the Forest Guardians, the Forest Service has begun fencing ranchers, with legitimate grazing and property rights, off of their vital watering sources. Ranchers in New Mexico and Arizona are intervenors in this lawsuit and legally must agree to such actions, especially ones that put families out of business. Despite this fact, the Forest Service sent notices to ranchers in the two affected states telling them to stop grazing on their allotments. In what seems the height of cynicism and arrogance, the Forest Service bureaucrats said in the letter that cutting cattle off from water would not affect their private land on the ranch. It might if it puts them out of business.

With this action, we clearly see the strategy that the Forest Guardians and their cohorts in the Forest Service have planned. It's fairly simple. File endless lawsuits — which the taxpayers end up footing the bill for — and beat down the financially strapped families who are the targets of these left-wing groups. Then fill the ranks of the Forest Service and other agencies with people who espouse similar political "anti-everything" views and have them do the dirty work for you.

The two groups filing all these suits at your expense, the Guardians and the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, have members associated with the radical group Earth First, which advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. The U.S. Forest Service has no business being in bed with such groups, especially when you consider the fact that the USFS is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The N.M. Farm and Livestock Bureau is asking our members in Congress to take the Forest Service to task over this frivolous action and to put the heat where it belongs, on Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. Following a request from the N.M. Farm and Livestock Bureau, Senator Pete Domenici and Congressmen Skeen and Redmond went to work to resolve this problem inside the government and to tell this story to the general public.

The problem is that this fish has rotted from the head down. The Clinton administration has waged a constant battle against the people in the West since its first day in office. They are out to get our water, our land and our independent way of life.

The vast majority of ranchers in the West practice good land management because to do otherwise would simply put them out of business. Many of these ranches are more than 100 years old, passed down from generation to generation. Once upon a time the Forest Service worked as partners with the folks being productive out in the countryside. It's sad to see that the Forest Service — especially at the upper management levels — is simply a pawn for radical environmental groups bent on destroying what made this country great.

David Stewart, the Forest Service's acting regional director for rangeland management, was quoted in the Albuquerque Journal as saying, "One of the problems of the livestock industry is they're so darn traditional. If they don't change themselves ... they will put themselves out of business. It's not us putting them out of business." While the sheer arrogance of that statement is stunning enough, someone should ask Mr. Stewart who put Kit and Sherry Laney — and many families like them — out of business. It was the Forest Service and the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, Mr. Stewart. Get your facts straight.

This attack on the citizens of New Mexico by the Forest Service and their friends in the radical environmental movement must be stopped. Ruining ranching and the forest products industry is just their first step. They have a much broader agenda. And it includes you.