By David Bowser

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A federal appeals court has denied radical environmentalists a weapon in their war against grazing on public lands.

A San Francisco federal appeals court agreed with an Arizona federal district judge that the U.S. Forest Service did not violate its own procedures and can continue to allow cattle to graze in Prescott National Forest.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco late last month upheld a multiple use of public lands decision issued by Federal District Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt in Phoenix last year.

The decision gave livestock producers and the general public a victory over those who would eliminate multiple use in the Prescott National Forest in Arizona, says Karen Budd-Falen, a Cheyenne, Wyo., lawyer who represented the cattlemen.

"The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society filed suit against the Forest Service over grazing in the Prescott National Forest, claiming that the Forest Service had to do a site-specific evaluation on virtually every inch of the forest before they could allow grazing," explains Caren Cowan, executive secretary of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, who has been following the case closely.

The case, she says, attempted to eliminate livestock grazing based on a claim that the Forest Service had violated its land use planning procedures.

The plaintiffs asked the court, when they initially filed suit Aug. 6, 1996, to eliminate grazing before any decision regarding the environmental benefits or detriments of grazing were made, Budd-Falen says.

"Basically they were trying to make the Forest Service go to acre by acre studies which they called suitability studies," says L. Eric Lundgren of Budd-Falen's office. "To do the studies would have taken an indefinite period of time, probably years.

The Forest Service described what they wanted as virtually impossible.

"Like all of these cases where they argue that the studies should be done," Lundgren says, "what they're really after is an injunction to stop grazing while the studies are being performed. When they're done, then everybody using the ground is out of business. They win whether the study says grazing is okay or not. That's what it really came down to."

It is a legal theory that environmental activists had not tried before. The courts refused to accept their theory.

"Had they won, it would have provided them another weapon to attack grazing," Lundgren points out.

This was an important weapon that activists were trying to add to their arsenal, but they failed, Lundgren says.

"If their efforts had been successful, livestock grazing, which had occurred on the National Forest land for over 100 years, would have been completely eliminated and would never have returned," Budd-Falen says. "This in spite of the fact that the Forest Service scientists had determined that grazing did not harm the range or riparian resources."

Andy Groseta, president of the Yavapai Cattle Growers Association, an intervenor in the case, says the most frustrating thing was that the radical environmentalists did not focus their arguments on whether livestock grazing was physically harming the range or water in the forest. Instead, he says, the focus was on whether the Forest Service had adequately followed the environmentalists' interpretation of the Forest Service procedural regulations.

"This case was not about scientific procedure and riparian and rangeland health," Groseta says, "but about producing paper."

The activists asked the court to direct the Forest Service to complete detailed scientific studies on every acre of land in the national forest before grazing would be allowed. The Forest Service and cattlemen argued, and the court agreed, that it would be impossible to complete all the required studies. The court ruled that Forest Service use of computer models to predict future use and analyze alternatives is acceptable, Budd-Falen says.

The National Forest Management Act has a provision in it which requires in forest planning that the Secretary of Agriculture has to adopt suitability regulations, regulations to determine the suitability of lands for the various types of resource management.

"That includes range, timber, recreation, all of the things the Forest Service manages the forests for," says Lundgren.

The Secretary of Agriculture adopted regulations that say, in forest planning, the Forest Service has to determine suitability of lands for resource management. They define suitability as the appropriateness of lands for particular types of resource use considering economic and environmental factors. With regard to grazing, there are some specific factors to be considered.

"What the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society tried to do was expand that," Lundgren says.

A forest plan, he explains, is a document the Forest Service generates that is a general statement outlining how they intend to deal with certain issues. It governs the forest for a 10-year period.

"It governs a lot of land," Lundgren says. "It covers a lot of types of uses. It was not intended to be project or site-specific. It's a broad program document."

In the Prescott Forest plan, the Forest Service had looked at grazing and alternative uses while they were doing their environmental impact statement.

"This case was not about protecting the forest lands," Budd-Falen insists. "It was about eliminating livestock grazing on the forests, a use to which the plaintiffs are philosophically opposed."

"Not wanting any grazing at all in the Prescott National Forest," Lundgren continues, "the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society tried to argue that the suitability requirement is essentially an acre by acre study. They tried to say that the Forest Service had to go out and make an individual determination separate from the EIS for each acre, to determine whether each acre was suitable for livestock grazing."

Then they asked for an injunction, saying that until the studies were done the court should stop livestock grazing.

"Of course, the studies would have taken years," Lundgren says. "What they had hoped to do was create enough confusion with the court so the court would grant the injunction."

"If they had succeeded," Lundgren says, "livestock grazing would have been indefinitely suspended during these studies. By the time they were completed and the Forest Service got around to reauthorizing grazing, there would be no one left to graze."

Budd-Falen says the decision prevents the Sierra Club and Wildlife Society from manipulating national forest management to eliminate uses they do not like. It also reinforces the concept that the national forests are to be managed to provide the public with the best combination of uses under the Multiple Use and Sustained Yields Act.

"The court's action was well-reasoned and is very positive for the Yavapai Cattle Growers Association, its members and the general public who benefit from the availability of the national forests for multiple uses," Budd-Falen says.

"I'm very pleased that we won," Groseta adds. "The cattlemen here in this county are just pleased that we won."

He said it was an expensive battle, but one they felt they could ill afford not to fight.

The case, Wilderness Society et al v. Thomas and Yavapai Cattle Growers Association, was being watched carefully by many environmental groups.

"The environmentalists were watching this case, hoping that it would provide them with a way to challenge grazing at the forest level instead of allotment by allotment," Lundgren says. "If they could do this, they could kick out an entire forest at once instead of having to challenge each allotment. That would have made their job much easier."

The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society's goal in the lawsuit, Lundgren says, was simple.

"The Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society want the national forests for their own personal nature parks," he says. "The affidavits submitted to the district court demonstrated that the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society were not concerned about environmental issues. They simply did not want to see livestock, or evidence of livestock, when they went on nature hikes in the Prescott Forest."