BLM Agrees To Remove Cattle
From Another Streamside Area

SANTA FE, N.M. — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to bar cattle from another 40 miles of streams in northern New Mexico, settling a 1996 lawsuit by the Santa Fe-based environmental activist group Forest Guardians.

Among waterways affected by the deal approved Sept. 10 by U.S. District Judge James Parker is an eight-mile stretch of the Santa Fe River south of the city.

Removing cattle would help restore overgrazed riverside areas that could provide potential habitat to the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a songbird on the federal endangered species list, Forest Guardians contended, though its real agenda is simply to remove cattle from all public lands.

"This is another agreement that establishes that the only way to heal badly damaged riparian habitats is to kick cows out," crowed John Horning of Forest Guardians.

Part of the Rio Puerco near Cuba also will be off-limits to grazing, as will stretches of the Santa Cruz River and the Rio Cebolla north of Espanola, and the Animas and San Juan rivers in the Farmington area.

The BLM contends it already had planned to fence cattle away from the streams.

"The agreement calls for us to proceed with our earlier plans to fence certain livestock grazing allotments and selected riparian (riverside) tracts," BLM state director Michelle Chavez said in a statement released in Albuquerque.

"With or without the settlement," she said, "the BLM would have continued our work on riparian habitat recovery and management in New Mexico."

The agreement does not force ranchers to reduce the number of cattle they can have on BLM grazing allotments, but a livestock industry advocate said depriving ranchers access to the rivers will hurt.

"They will be fencing off some of the most productive land ranchers have," said Bud Eppers of the New Mexico Public Lands Council, which represents about 4500 ranchers statewide. "What's beneficial to wildlife is also beneficial to livestock."

The BLM settlement came five months after a secret agreement between activists and the Forest Service calling for that agency to pull cows off 300 miles of riverside areas in the Apache-Sitgreaves and Gila national forests of Arizona and New Mexico.

The BLM agreement grew out of a 1996 Forest Guardians lawsuit that accused the agency of proceeding with grazing plans without consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The consultations, which concluded last year, resulted in a Fish and Wildlife determination that grazing levels allowed under BLM planning documents were likely to jeopardize the flycatcher.

The agreement requires the BLM to develop "riparian management plans" for a more than seven million acres in northern, northwestern and southwestern New Mexico.