Up in Smoke

by Katie Fite

Extraordinary spring rains brought fantastic wildflower displays, and
fleeting Cascadian dampness and greenery across much of the interior
West. Unfortunately, a tinderbox of weeds in livestock-damaged wild
lands followed.

By mid July, a 200,000 acre wildfire had swept across crested wheatgrass
seedings (nearly 100,000 of these acres!), seedings with some sagebrush,
cheatgrass weedlands, and remnant pockets of sagebrush in the Jarbidge.

BLM has long touted the virtues of the soil-depleting Asian crested
wheatgrass in limiting fires. Planted since the 1940s as livestock
forage, often after purposeful removal of sagebrush, the soil-depleting
Asian crested wheatgrass is largely unpalatable to livestock, so any
remaining native plants bear the brunt of grazing pressure and are
replaced by weeds. It is this unnatural abundance of continuous weed
growth (coupled with the large, coarse crested wheatgrass) that caused
the Jarbidge fire to flash across landscapes, and grow to gigantic
proportions.

Meanwhile, our mailbox overflows with agency "hazardous fuels"
proposals. Many recklessly authorize "prescribed burns" to reduce
hazardous fuels. Most of these projects are located in remote areas, far
from any human habitation or interface. Nearly every one promises
"restoration" (soon they will slip in salvation and redemption, too). A
better description would be "vegetation manipulation", as the end result
is often far removed from mending the basic function, structure and
composition of a natural system.

None of these "restoration" projects promises to remove livestock, and
rest lands, for more than a year or two. Yet, livestock are a primary
cause of hazardous fuels problems across middle and lower elevations of
the West. Not only does livestock grazing disturbance promote increase
and spread of cheatgrass and weeds, it also leads to increased density
of trees in forests through soil disturbance and loss of competitive
understory grasses and forbs.

The grim reality is that the disturbance to soils and plants caused by
profligate fuels treatments on grazed sagebrush and pinyon-juniper lands
across the West -- often actually increase cheatgrass presence, and the
risk of future fires. Cheatgrass is rapidly adapting to grow at higher
and higher elevations.

Under the Healthy Forests Initiative, which applies to BLM lands as well
as Forest Service, projects as large as 4500 acres (7 square miles) may
be conducted with scarcely no environmental analysis in Wildland Urban
Interfaces, and any other area that has been found to have "moderately
or highly altered fire regimes" -- which is everywhere in the grazed
West! Millions, likely billions, of tax dollars are being spent on
Hazardous Fuels projects in the middle of nowhere.

Consulting firms are being hired to go out and conduct "hazardous fuels"
assessments on whole mountain ranges -- where every bit of woody
vegetation is placed in a fuels category, and the fire regime is found
to be out of balance, and deemed "hazardous" and all acres in need of
treatment.

Here are some of these projects:

-   Idaho BLM's "Strategy" for the Owyhee Field Office's 288,000 acre
    Juniper Mountain Landscape Restoration project in the heart of the
    Owyhee Canyonlands, claims it will "restore" the sagebrush-steppe,
    mountain shrub, mountain mahogany, old growth juniper and aspen
    communities" while at the very same time **"maintain a sustainable
    forage base for livestock" over 288,000 acres.** Treatment would
    entail widespread use of prescribed fire. BLM, intent on replacing
    trees with livestock forage, is ignoring the recent expansion of
    cheatgrass into burned areas at higher elevations in the Owyhees,
    including the rugged juniper country near Current Creek inside the
    North Fork Owyhee Wilderness Study area ------ and the ominous
    explosion of medusahead in livestock and/or fire-damaged lands
    across many areas.

-   Last winter, *Nevada Sage,* a BLM newsletter, bragged about a
    near-one million dollar project conducted on 7500 acres near Spruce
    Mountain. Here, intact and non-weedy Wyoming big sagebrush high
    density pygmy rabbit habitat was greatly fragmented by plowing, or
    Dixie harrowing. BLM stated: "Crested wheatgrass is the primary
    species planted ... in addition to providing more forage, the
    seedings also serve as a fuels reduction project in that they create
    giant firebreaks". Calling the seedings "firebreaks" was the hook
    that gained BLM access to federal fire funds to grow cow grass. WWP
    recently Appealed Elko's denial of a FOIA request aimed at
    dissecting project funding details. Unsatisfied with its destruction
    of pygmy rabbit habitats, Elko now has its eyes set on
    deforestation/removal of hazardous fuels on 16,000 acres of pinyon
    juniper on Spruce Mountain touching its new crested wheat
    "firebreak". **RICK - the dead cow photo I sent you before!!!!!**

-   New terms are being coined to sell projects. In Roberts Mountain
    area of Battle Mountain, BLM is conducting an "experiment" using
    "fire and fire surrogates". Mystified as to what, besides possibly a
    chemical defoliant,a "fire surrogate" might be, I Googled the term
    -- only to find this was a new agency euphemism for cutting or
    thinning. Recall when the Forest Service stopped calling clearcuts
    clearcuts, and switched to "regeneration treatments???

-   Battle Mountain also plans a giant landscape-level alteration of
    70,000 acres including pinyon pine nut producing sites in the
    absolute middle of nowhere -- the Antelope Range west of Eureka. The
    goal is to essentially, fireproof a whole section of a rugged
    mountain range. Why? The funds are there to be spent, and they have
    generated a bureaucracy happy to spend them. Plus, it's part of the
    worldview that man can tame nature. Do we really want something akin
    to sterile pine plantations, safe, indeed, from "catastrophic" fire,
    but of little, or no, intrinsic wildness, on public lands?

\* This week, in the 100 degree heat, I received a Full Force and Effect
decision (a special type of BLM Decision that prevents any Stay of an
Appeal) from Ely and Elko BLM for an immediate wild horse gather across
1.7 million acres and several Horse Management Areas. The Buck and Bald
Horse Gather EA states: "due to continuing drought, limited water and
forage is available to wild horses. In addition to the drought, the
lightning-ignited Chrome Fire burned 5,164 acres in July 2004 further
limits forage". BLM plans to gather 80 to 100 percent of the horse
population, remove 780 head, and then release some horses implanted with
contraceptives back into the HMAs. WWP eagerly awaits the day when BLM
removes 80 to 100 percent of the cattle from 1.7 million acres, and
implants contraceptives in a few cows turned back out to graze. because
it had a 5000 acre wild fire a year ago! This same week, I had called
Elko BLM and asked if they were planning on issuing any more TNR -- or
"extra" grazing AUMs to livestock permittees. Elko had already issued
some TNR use, and the BLM Manager said there could be more issued,
because: "There's a lot of grass out there". But only for cows. No
matter what anyone thinks about wild horses on public lands -- it is
animal cruelty to run horses with helicopters in 100 degree heat.

An undisclosed reason behind the Horse Gather is BLM plans for several
Healthy Forests pinyon-juniper killing projects (prescribed fire,
herbicide) across the horse areas. BLM is ensuring that any grass that
grows back after these treatments is used by privately owned livestock,
and not wild horses.

Instead of dealing with the fundamental problem at the root of many
hazardous fuels situations and altered fire cycles across the West-
livestock grazing -- BLM is concocting proposals that exacerbate
ecological problems, and that may ultimately heighten fire risk.

I've made many trips this summer to participate in agency fuels tours,
and look at projects. The best use of fire funds that I've come across
is a state of Idaho project that employs an Interagency Fire Liaison in
the Pocatello area to work with private landowners, local governments,
and agencies. The liaison visits with private landowners, and provides
information and assistance in reducing fire risks. A better approach
than attempting -- in vain -- to fire-proof entire wild landscapes!

On public lands, careful thinning of trees or sagebrush in narrow
fuelbreaks in some sites may be warranted. BLM fuelbreak projects,
however, typically consist of mowing sagebrush, or planting exotic
vegetation, and then letting grazing infest treated sites with weeds.

There is an urgent need to protect sagebrush lands that have not yet
been invaded by cheatgrass and other weeds \-\-\-- by removing livestock
grazing from these lands. Is there hope for the lower elevation lands
that are already a weed nightmare? Recovery of native bunchgrass, shrub
and microbiotic crust so they can withstand weed invasion is critical.
Despicably, the Boise District BLM recently destroyed the research value
of a rehabbed site that was providing critical insights into the role of
livestock in fostering cheatgrass and weed invasion post-fire. A low
elevation Wyoming big sagebrush site near Kuna Butte, including
slickspot peppergrass habitat, was rehabbed over a decade ago. It was
seeded with a bluebunch wheatgrass cultivar, and left ungrazed. Research
projects, aimed at understanding the importance of microbiotic crusts
and native plants in breaking the ecological doom of the cheatgrass-fire
cycle on the Snake River Plain were being conducted by agency
scientists. I recall attending a Microbiotic Crust Symposium field trip
of specialists from across the country to this site

WWP just learned of events at Kuna Butte, in documents obtained through
a FOIA request. A millionaire cattleman requested to graze the site.
With no public notification or input, the BLM Snake River Birds of Prey
Manager allowed him to turn cattle out. An agency biologist later wrote:
"Prior to fall, 2002, it \[Kuna Butte site\] served as an excellent
location for research. Old and highly successful fire rehabs. on the
Butte were frequently visited by scientists and field trip participants.
The value of this area has since declined due to the heavy livestock use
of Dec-Feb 2002-2003".

As the acrid smell of juniper and sagebrush smoke from agency prescribed
fires fills the air on a clear spring day, remember -- it is your tax
dollars at work -- assuring that woody vegetation is burned, in the
words of the BLM's Juniper Mountain Landscape Strategy "to maintain a
sustainable forage base for livestock".

Katie Fite is WWP's Biodiversity Director

She lives in Boise, Idaho