grazing BLM Wyoming Stock Growers Game Fish

    CHEYENNE -- At the behest of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the Joint Ag Committee has approved a bill that would ban the Wyoming Game & Fish Department from holding federal grazing permits.
    The bill, HB 4, grew out of a long-standing dispute in Carbon County, over whether Game and Fish should have any control or input in how the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages grazing permits.
    What's at stake is either an innovative partnership between Game & Fish and the BLM, for the benefit of wildlife; or the integrity of the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act -- the foundation of the BLM and the cattle industry in the West.
G&F view
    Since the late 1940s, the Wyoming Wildlife Commission has purchased some 400,000 acres of property around the state -- to conserve and enhance wildlife habitats, to provide hunting and fishing opportunities, and to prevent wildlife depredation on private lands. Approximately 386,000 acres are managed by the Wyoming Game & Fish Department (WG&F) as Wildlife Habitat Management Areas (WHMA).
    Of those WHMA acres are some properties that used to be old ranches, which historically have had some 118,000 acres of BLM lands attached to those base properties through grazing permits. According to the BLM, that's 0.7 percent of all BLM lands in Wyoming.
    According to John Kennedy, Services Division Chief for WG&F, the current trouble started a couple years ago on the Grizzly WHMA, south of Rawlins. Between the State Land Office and WG&F, Wyoming owns some 11,000 acres, which is surrounded by 25,000 acres of BLM lands.
    Kennedy said his agency and the Wyoming BLM have been managing those properties with an eye on winter range for wildlife -- antelope, deer, elk, sage grouse and Colorado cutthroat trout. Historically, at least one neighboring ranch grazed livestock on the BLM and WG&F lands.
    For years, said Kennedy, the BLM and G&F worked -- pretty successfully -- to find a balance between livestock and wildlife needs.
    Then two years ago, a new management regime was imposed on the Grizzly WHMA. "We were willing to allow multiple grazers on our base property" said Kennedy, "in exchange for the neighbors resting some high quality habitat for wildlife."
    In the midst of an ongoing drought, Carbon County ranchers noticed that there were quite a few unallocated animal unit months or AUMs, the basic measuring block for grazing leases. Unhappy that they couldn’t get BLM and WG&F to release those unallocated AUMs, the Carbon County ranchers took their complaint to the Wyoming Stock Growers’ summer convention in Riverton. The organization approved a measure to draft a bill for consideration by the Legislature.
    Kennedy said the proposed bill would prohibit the Commission from entering into agreements with federal agencies and would adversely impact the Commission’s ability to manage fish and wildlife populations on Commission owned lands intermixed with federal lands.
    “Without a cooperative management agreement between the WGFC and the BLM for managing livestock use, the Commission would have to fence an estimated 505 miles of Commission property to regulate livestock that are grazed on adjacent federal lands from entering upon the Commission owned fee deeded lands,” said Kennedy.
    The estimated cost including contractual services, material and labor to fence the 505 miles is $6,277,145.
WSG view
    “In our view, if there are qualified applicants for the grazing leases, they ought to be able to acquire the permits, if they’re not being utilized,” said Jim Magagna, executive director of Wyoming Stock Growers. “If the area shouldn’t be grazed, then the appropriate way to address that is through the BLM land use planning process, not by a MOU (memorandum of understanding) that they agree not to make them available. What we’re seeking to do with this legislation is certainly not to say the concerns of wildlife should not to be met”
    The language of HB4 does not specifically mention Game & Fish. Instead, it says “No state agency shall hold a federal grazing permit, except an institution of higher learning may hold a federal grazing permit when the permit is held for the purpose of research or teaching.”
    Bill language further provides that if a state agency acquires property that has attached grazing permits, those leases must be relinquished within 90 days and the agency cannot enter into any agreement with federal agencies as to how those grazing permits must be managed.
Bad blood
    Larry Hicks, natural resource coordinator for the Little Snake River Conservation District in Baggs, has been watching this dispute unfold over the past few years – some aspects of which go back 20 years.
    “This is untimely legislation,” he said, plainly wishing there was some alternative to HB4.
    Hicks attributes the dispute to personnel turnover and a loss of institutional memory in G&F – not to any ill will. He noted that since the Wildlife Commission acquired the Red Rim, Daily and Grizzly properties, there have been four directors of Game & Fish and five or six biologists. In marked contrast, said Hicks, the Carbon County ranchers that surround those Game & Fish properties have remarkably acute memories of what was said 15, 20 years ago.
    Hicks said the HB4 bill, in his opinion, reflects a growing frustration among Wyoming ranchers, with incremental changes in grazing regulations. When AUMs are denied, based on an MOU between Game & Fish and the BLM, that’s hard to take, he said – especially when there are 6,000 unallocated AUMs.
    “I’ve seen tremendous improvements in relations between agriculture and the department, thanks to Terry Cleveland,” said Hicks. And these MOUs between the BLM and WG&F are working well at other game management areas around the state, he said.
    But not in Carbon County.

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