Win for the Whetstones!
The Whetstone Mountains are a large, rugged Sky Island range in southern Arizona on the Coronado National Forest. Largely due to limited access, these mountains have been spared the intense recreational pressure of some of the other areas of the national forest. Unfortunately, they haven’t been spared the adverse effects of livestock grazing.
However, Western Watersheds Project’s Arizona office has now successfully appealed a grazing decision for several allotments that would have entailed ambitious water developments - including well-drilling, spring development, and pipeline construction - throughout the range. We appealed the decision based on a number of issues, but our chief concern was the water developments and the impact of grazing on wildlife habitat in this remote and biologically-rich area. The Forest Service has been issuing a number of decisions for allotments on the Coronado National Forest, and they’ve been failing to provide the requisite site-specific analysis or to comply with the National Forest Management Act.
The new appeal decision remands the District Ranger’s grazing and water development plans for approximately 50,000 acres.
Thanks for WWP attorney Erik Ryberg for this win for wildlife and water.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Well done !
November 15th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Hear, hear ! I second Brian’s comment !
Since I know absolutely nothing about the on-the-ground conditions there — but assume the political and bureaucratic conditions aren’t much different than in Idaho — I wonder if there’s a realistic chance of any time soon getting domestic livestock grazing shut down completely in the Whetstones ? Whether yea or nay, every victory like this helps, puting a little tighter squeeze on them; and hopefully they’ll eventually see the writing on the wall and realize that it just plain ain’t worth the hassle, you betcha !
November 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
[...] in the Western Watersheds Blog. Win for the Whetstones. Posted in Grazing and livestock, Wildlife Habitat, cattle, mountain ranges. Tags: Arizona, [...]
November 18th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
A great victory. Let’s keep charging.