Anti-Grazing Groups
Protest Federal Plan

SANTA Fe, N.M. — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service announced last week that they will allow livestock grazing to continue essentially unaltered on 11 national forests in New Mexico and Arizona, a decision that essentially rebuked efforts at interference by anti-grazing activist groups.

The activists, predictably, are now striking back.

Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians and Tucson's Southwest Center for Biological Diversity claim that dozens of officially "endangered" and "sensitive" species would decline under the joint FWS and USFS plan.

In what may be the prelude to yet another of their dozens of lawsuits, the activist groups are publicly challenging the agencies' findings that livestock grazing will not jeopardize the continued existence of "endangered" birds, fish and other wildlife.

For their part, the agencies say their data has demonstrated that grazing is not harming species on 940 of the 962 grazing allotments they studied.

The ant-grazing groups complain that the study period was limited to one to three years and claim the agencies ignored "widespread ecological collapse" of the region's watersheds and streamside habitats.