Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337
Washington, DC — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is carrying out an ambitious plan to map ecological trends throughout the Western U.S. but has directed scientists to exclude livestock grazing as a possible factor in changing landscapes, according to a scientific integrity complaint filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The complaint describes how one of the biggest scientific studies ever undertaken by BLM was fatally skewed from its inception by political pressure.
Funded with up to $40 million of stimulus funds, BLM is conducting Rapid Ecoregional Assessments in each of the six main regions (such as the Colorado Plateau and the Northern Great Plains) covering the vast sagebrush West. A key task was choosing the “change agents” (such as fire or invasive species) which would be studied. Yet when the scientific teams were assembled at an August 2010 workshop, BLM managers informed them that grazing would not be studied due to anxiety from “stakeholders,” fear of litigation and, most perplexing of all, lack of available data on grazing impacts.
Exclusion of grazing was met with protests from the scientists. Livestock grazing is permitted on two-thirds of all BLM lands, with 21,000 grazing allotments covering 157 million acres across the West. As one participating scientist said, as quoted in workshop minutes:
“We will be laughed out of the room if we don’t use grazing. If you have the other range of disturbances, you have to include grazing.”
In the face of this reaction, BLM initially deferred a decision but ultimately opted to –
Funded with up to $40 million of stimulus funds, BLM is conducting Rapid Ecoregional Assessments in each of the six main regions (such as the Colorado Plateau and the Northern Great Plains) covering the vast sagebrush West. A key task was choosing the “change agents” (such as fire or invasive species) which would be studied. Yet when the scientific teams were assembled at an August 2010 workshop, BLM managers informed them that grazing would not be studied due to anxiety from “stakeholders,” fear of litigation and, most perplexing of all, lack of available data on grazing impacts.
Exclusion of grazing was met with protests from the scientists. Livestock grazing is permitted on two-thirds of all BLM lands, with 21,000 grazing allotments covering 157 million acres across the West. As one participating scientist said, as quoted in workshop minutes:
“We will be laughed out of the room if we don’t use grazing. If you have the other range of disturbances, you have to include grazing.”
In the face of this reaction, BLM initially deferred a decision but ultimately opted to –
- Remove livestock grazing from all Ecoregional assessments, citing insufficient data. As a result, the assessments do not consider massive grazing impacts even though trivial disturbance factors such as rock hounding are included; and
- Limit consideration of grazing-related information only when combined in an undifferentiated lump with other native and introduced ungulates (such as deer, elk, wild horses and feral donkeys).
“This is one of the screwiest things I have ever heard of. BLM is taking the peculiar position that it can no longer distinguish the landscape imprint of antelope from that of herds of cattle,” remarked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting BLM has far more data on grazing than it does on other change agents, such as climate change or urban sprawl, that it chose to follow. “Grazing is one of the few ‘change agents’ within the agency’s mandate to manage, suggesting that BLM only wants analysis on what it cannot control.”
Earlier this year, the Interior Department, parent agency for BLM, adopted its first scientific integrity policies prohibiting political interference with, or manipulation of, scientific work. The PEER complaint charges that BLM officials improperly compromised the utility and validity of the Ecoregional assessments for reasons that lacked any technical merit and urges that responsible officials be disciplined.
“This is like the Weather Service saying it will no longer track storms because it lacks perfect information,” added Ruch, pointing out that an extensive formalized Land Health Assessment database, including range-wide assessments of livestock grazing across the sagebrush biome, has existed since at least 2008. “If grazing can be locked so blithely into a scientific broom closet, it speaks volumes about science-based decisionmaking in the Obama administration.”
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Read the PEER scientific integrity complaint
View the Workshop Minutes
See summary factsheet
Examine Interior scientific integrity review process
Find out more about the Ecoregional Assessments
Read the PEER scientific integrity complaint
View the Workshop Minutes
See summary factsheet
Examine Interior scientific integrity review process
Find out more about the Ecoregional Assessments
The use of public land for cattle grazing is a political hot potato and one that can easily burn the federal Bureau of Land Management. But the BLM can’t rightfully avoid dealing with the practice, no matter how unpleasant, because grazing can ruin riparian areas, dirty public waters and damage wildlife habitat.
And the agency’s mission is to balance multiple uses of public lands so that one doesn’t preclude the others.
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Grazing is one of the West’s traditional industries and one that conservative lawmakers in Utah staunchly defend. But science now provides better data on its impacts. The BLM should follow its own policy, which prohibits political interference with, or manipulation of, scientific work.
A court case and a misconduct complaint recently highlighted the BLM’s seeming affinity for ranchers at the expense of a healthy environment. If proven, that affinity should be replaced by a more objective assessment of all factors affecting public lands.
An administrative law judge will rule on a dispute pitting two environmental groups against the BLM’s grazing policies in the Duck Creek area near Bear Lake. The groups have been intensely studying the effects of cattle grazing on native grasses and willows that are essential habitat for the threatened sage grouse. They contend that the BLM renewed grazing leases without doing enough to protect the grouse habitat.
And they dispute a claim by ranchers, local officials and the BLM that the condition of the riparian areas has improved. Those areas entice cattle to trample stream banks and overgraze on plants needed by wildlife.
Meanwhile, in November the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a scientific misconduct complaint with the Department of Interior that says the BLM intentionally removed a study of grazing disturbance from the agency’s $40 million Rapid Ecoregional Assessments project to map ecological trends throughout the West.
Scientists were asked to choose the "change agents" such as fire or invasive species that would be part of the study. According to PEER, when the scientific teams were assembled, BLM managers told them that grazing would not be studied due to anxiety from "stakeholders," fear of litigation and lack of available data on grazing impacts.
One incredulous scientist was quoted in workshop minutes as saying, "We will be laughed out of the room if we don’t use grazing. If you have the other range of disturbances, you have to include grazing."
We agree. The impact of grazing is too great to be ignored.
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