In a heated showdown with Western cattlemen, Idaho environmentalist Jon Marvel, tries to outlaw livestock grazing on public lands.
A profile on Western Watersheds Project’s Executive Director, Jon Marvel
True grit University of Chicago Magazine
By Lydialyle Gibson
He can’t help looking. Even though Jon Marvel knows there’s probably no bluebunch wheatgrass here, that its numbers in this field have been declining for years, so that a person could walk a mile through the sagebrush—and Marvel has—without seeing a single delicate blond seedhead, he can’t help searching the ground for one. In central Idaho’s dry sage-steppe grasslands, bluebunch wheatgrass is a key native species, year-round forage for elk, deer, and antelope. It’s part of what keeps the ecosystem whole.
Meat the Truth is a high-profile documentary, presented by Marianne Thieme (leader of the Party for the Animals, the Netherlands), which forms an addendum to earlier films that have been made about climate change. Although such films have convincingly succeeded in drawing public attention to the issue of global warming, they have repeatedly ignored one of the most important causes of climate change, namely: intensive livestock production. Meat the Truth has drawn attention to this by demonstrating that livestock farming generates more greenhouse gas emissions worldwide than all cars, lorries, trains, boats and planes added together.
Sage-grouse require expanses of mature and old growth sagebrush habitats in gently sloping areas, tall residual grass cover with sagebrush overstory for nesting, and wet meadows for brood rearing. Their habitat has decreased about 60% over the last 100 years with acceleration in that decline in recent years.
Now, sage-grouse populations are facing high risks from new energy projects across their habitat. Industrial wind energy projects and huge utility corridor proposals are proposed for some of the West’s most remote and intact sagebrush landscapes.
Developers of these projects parrot the same fearbased talking points that have driven so many policies of the US in over the past decade, only with a climate twist: “If we can’t build the Windy Ridge kazillion megawatt wind farm on top of 20 sage-grouse leks, polar bears will die”.
Two current examples of destructive energy projects are the proposed China Mountain wind farm near Jackpot, Nevada on the Idaho-Nevada border, and the Ruby Natural Gas Pipeline that seeks to build a new energy corridor through critically important sage-steppe landscapes of northwestern Nevada.
In response to the recent Wild Horse hazing/roundup on the East Fork of the Salmon River allegedly to cut down on resource damage to public lands, Kenny Bradshaw, a rancher from Clayton, Idaho asks:
“Why don’t they make these big cattle outfits cut down on their damn cows ?”
Oct. 7, 1865 when Apostle Orson Hyde, one of the 13 leaders of the Mormon Church, speaking at General Conference in Salt Lake City to the assembled members of the church, had this to say about how the church wanted Mormons to live their lives:
“There is a good deal of ambition among our people to cultivate a great quantity of ground, the result of which is, that we cultivate our lands poorly in comparison to what we would if we were contented with a smaller area, and would confine our labors to it. We have found some difficulty with regard to water, and complaints have been made about a scarcity of water in many places, when, indeed, I suppose the Lord has apportioned the water to the amount of land He intended should be cultivated. I do not think that these things are passed over unnoticed by Him … He understands perfectly well what the elements are capable of producing, and how many of His people may be established here or there with profit and with advantage.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Western Watersheds Project first petitioned the Service to list the Big Lost River mountain whitefish in 2006. After reviewing the petition in 2007, the Service determined it did not present substantial information to indicate that listing was warranted. The Western Watersheds Project then filed a complaint in 2008 challenging the Service’s finding. In response to that lawsuit, the United States District Court in Boise, Idaho, directed the Service to conduct a status review of mountain whitefish in the Big Lost River and, within one year, issue a finding on whether the population should be protected as a threatened or endangered species. The court ordered the Service to make a final listing determination by March 31, 2010.
But some environmentalist outlaws like the Western Watersheds Project had no interest in compromise and since have used and abused the legal system of this country to deny the ranchers their rights and seeks to have the U.S. Government abrogate the legal contracts that allows them to use public lands for grazing.
It’s a funny diatribe, Patrick goes to great lengths to sling every possible piece of mud drawing upon over a decade of uninformed cliché and baseless accusation.
WWP’s challenge of 17 BLM Resource Management Plans incorporating tens of millions of acres of public lands has gotten the attention of Eureka County, Nevada. The County seeks to intervene in the lawsuit.
Marvel said the lawsuit “charges that the BLM failed to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act by not analyzing adequate alternatives that would protect sage grouse and other sage steppe wildlife species.”
“WWP claims that all the RMPs (resource management plans) are inadequate and violate the law in similar ways. The lawsuit affects about 34 million acres of BLM-managed lands,” he said.
But others react differently.
Nevada Cattlemen’s Association President Dan Gralian told Elko County Commissioners in June the Western Watersheds lawsuit is intended to drive people off public lands, and the suit affects all of rural Nevada. More than 300 grazing permits in the state would be affected if Western Watersheds wins.
Gralian called Western Watersheds a “radical environmental group.”
Western Watersheds Project’s Montana Office recently won Summary Judgment from the Interior Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals remanding the Bureau of Land Management’s attempt to build fencing for livestock grazing within a Wilderness Study Area on public lands in Southwest Montana.
The fencing would have altered the wilderness characteristics of the landscape for many reasons, but the Administrative Law Judge specifically cited BLM’s failure to consider the impact that the fencing would have on the view of the public landscape. Read the rest of this entry »
