Arizona Stockman Optimistic
Despite Assaults On Grazing

By David Bowser

DUNCAN, Ariz. — Jeff Menges doesn't think putting up 25 steel fence posts in rural Arizona should require major government action in Washington.

"We're seeing them having to do an environmental assessment just to do all those sorts of things," he says.

Micro-management of the land and single-species management are the major problems Menges sees among ranchers who graze public lands in the Southwest today.

Menges, former chairman of the Federal Lands Committee for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, says the federal agencies that oversee public land management, spurred on by the fear of lawsuits by radical environmental activists, are trying to manage every aspect of public grazing. That, plus the Endangered Species Act, threaten to put ranchers in this area out of business.

"We're in the crosshairs," Menges says. "There's a pretty radical faction that wants to see all the cattle removed. I certainly hope it doesn't come to that. I don't think it will."

Eventually, he thinks, livestock producers will come to the table with environmental groups and develop a system that gives ranchers more management flexibility as long as they meet reasonable environmental goals.

Menges was raised on a Forest Service ranch across the state line at Glenwood, N.M.

"I've been involved in it all my life," says the fourth generation stockman. "I've been on BLM land for about the last 19 years."

His great grandfather, Tuck Hollimon, moved to New Mexico in the 1870s when his native Texas lay under the heavy hand of federal Reconstruction policies.

"My great grandfather came to Glenwood from Texas and settled that ranch that ended up being my grandparents' and later my parents'," Menges says. "Then we sold that and ended up here in Arizona."

The family has two places, one here in Southeast Arizona and one in New Mexico that covers state and private grounds.

"This place is a 300-head mother cow outfit," he says. "It's not a big operation, about 45 sections."

But grazing public land is in a lot of trouble, Menges says.

"You put up with so much regulation," he explains. "The regulation is just overwhelming."

Right now, ranchers are feeling a lot of frustration, Menges says.

"Because of the environmental movement, we're seeing a lot of pressure on the agencies," he says. "Through the courts, through the legislative channels, through the administration, what we're seeing are a lot of decisions that are not necessarily based on science, but more based on politics. We're seeing the removal of cattle from areas that I don't think they can justify scientifically. That's a real frustrating thing and the cause of a lot of contention and litigation."

But Menges remains optimistic.

"We basically feel that the ranchers, when it comes right down to it, want the same thing for the resource as the environmentalists do," he says. "They have the same goals for the resources. They want healthy rangelands, healthy riparian areas, healthy upland areas, but I think that anyone who knows anything about range management knows that we can design management systems that will allow us to meet environmental goals and still graze the land, too."

The Bureau of Land Management lands were created in 1934, as the result of the Taylor Grazing Act.

"The reason for that act was that at the time, there was all this land left over that hadn't been homesteaded in the West," Menges says. "It was a chaotic situation. People were grazing and shooting each other. They needed some sort of stability."

The grazing acts were passed to codify what was already happening on the open range and avoid range wars.

"I think it was something that was needed because there was all this land and people out there grazing it, and there was no incentive for good stewardship," Menges says. "They needed to set some boundaries and start putting some fences in to divide up the areas."

The general public doesn't realize, however, that ranchers don't go down to the BLM officer of Forest Service office and apply for a permit to graze cattle.

"What they don't understand is that we have to go buy it from somebody else who had it previously," he notes. "When you buy it, you buy water rights, range improvements and the grazing preference rights. They issue you permits 10 years at a time on both BLM and Forest land."

Grazing preference rights, established by the Taylor Grazing Act, are what make the permits valuable.

"It means whoever owns that permit has the preferential right to renew it when the 10-year permit expires," Menges explains. "The grazing preference is very important. That's what actually gives these things value. You buy a 10-year permit, but then you have the preferential right to renew it at the end of 10 years."

He says that while there has been a great deal of debate about grazing fees, there is scant attention paid to the fact that a rancher has to buy the rights before he can lease the land.

"They sell anywhere from probably $1000 to $2500 a cow unit," Menges says. "Some of them are as expensive as comparable private mixed ranches."

The Menges family operation cost $350,000 in capital outlay just to buy the right to pay for the lease.

Even after paying for the rights and the lease, Menges finds himself, like other ranchers using public lands, at the mercy of a bureaucracy. Menges maintains that setting out specific goals in his grazing plan should be sufficient, but now every time he wants to move a fence, he is second-guessed by Washington.

He believes, however, that what is really playing havoc with public lands grazing is the Endangered Species Act.

"We're getting ourselves into a lot of situations where the agencies want us to manage for a single species," Menges explains. "Then you find out that what's good for one species may not be good for another."

Part of the Gila River runs through his property, and he serves it up as an example.

"If we maintain for a proper functioning river condition, which is the highest category they have, what happens is you build up woody vegetation, you stabilize the banks, but the stream becomes narrower and deeper," he says. "That's probably good for the bird species there, but it's not good for the endangered minnows because they want the shallower water. The deeper the water, the better the predator fish do, and they're the ones that eat the minnows.

"You get into these Catch-22 situations where you try to manage for one and you hurt another, and it turns into a mess."

Menges praises the Forest Service, as do many ranchers in this area, for conservation methods they developed and instituted, such as rotational grazing programs and water developments.

"That's the sad thing about all this," Menges says. "The BLM and the Forest Service have a huge success story to tell. The last 25 years, they've made huge strides with their grazing programs. These lands are in a lot better shape than they used to be."

Over the years, however, the management philosophy appears to have changed. The system has gone from one of incentives and rewards to one of control.

"I've always had the incentive to go down there and clean the cattle out of the river and keep it clean during the summer, because I've had the reward of using it in the winter when it's most valuable to us," Menges says. "Plus, that's a dormant time for all the stuff they're concerned with, the riparian vegetation. It was a good system. Now, it's pure command and control. It's more of a heavy-handed approach."