WWPBlog

On Friday June 20, a federal judge allowed the Alturas, California office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to withdraw a recent decision to authorize a ten-year grazing permit on the Yankee Jim allotment after that decision was appealed by Western Watersheds Project. The BLM’s Alturas Field Office had attempted to renew the grazing permit for Yankee Jim based on a claim that it was categorically exempt from environmental analysis but quickly backed down in the face of judicial review.

The Yankee Jim Ranch is a small allotment consisting of only 1,500 acres but the entire site was designated as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) in April 2008, a fact that BLM had ignored when it issued its decision in May. The Yankee Jim ACEC was designated due to the presence of numerous important archeological sites, including over 90 pre-historic sites in the meadow and upland areas, and important historical connections. According to the BLM’s own reports, cattle have been trampling, trailing and dispersing artifacts, pawing and digging, and even wallowing on the archeological sites and these disturbances have escalated in recent years. Despite this, the BLM had proposed to permit livestock grazing on the allotment without even the most basic environmental analysis.

The allotment is also important wildlife habitat for sage grouse, sandhill cranes, waterfowl, and one of the largest pronghorn herds in California. It includes unique riparian habitats including the only “fen” found in the BLM’s Alturas Resource Area.

“The BLM was required by law analyze the impacts of livestock grazing and to develop mitigation measures. The Yankee Jim ACEC is a national register-eligible treasure with irreplaceable cultural remains that are being irretrievably damaged by livestock,” said Michael J. Connor, California Director for Western Watersheds Project. “The BLM should have considered alternatives to the destruction of this culturally and ecologically important site, including ending grazing completely on this tiny 1,500 acre-allotment.”

We have now appealed the annual grazing authorization that BLM has been using to authorize grazing on a yearly basis since the last permit expired in 2005. The annual grazing authorization is based on no environmental documentation at all. We’ll be watching to see what the BLM tries to sneak through next. It just isn’t acceptable to green-light grazing projects in such special places.

For more information about WWP’s California program, please see our California webpage, here.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.