When public lands are moved into a wilderness or wilderness study designation, grazing rights are severely impacted and limited.
Not so up here in Oregon. Recreate, hunt, and fish tons of wilderness and wilderness study areas up here, and seasonal stock use is just part of the landscape. Without near constant maintenance by stockmen, probably half of the water developments would become non-functional and wildlife would suffer.
There's about a 95 mile long stretch of the Deschutes River up here that's managed by the BLM, ODF&W, and the Warm Springs tribe. They decided to toss out grazing, and now have fires almost annually that burn right to the river banks. Stock used to keep the fuel loads down to a reasonable level and fires were near non existent. Now fine fuels can be measured in tons per acre.
The areas I am familiar with, some still have some grazing. Most all had grazing significantly decreased. A number are getting decreased regularly and severely limiting water access at the same time, effectively making it near impossible to graze.
Sounds good. I haven't seen a piece of multi-use, nonwilderness, public land in the west that couldn't benefit hugely from a decrease in livestock grazing. If there is one thing that range management people agree on with near unanimity, it's that those lands are severely overgrazed.
Frankly, I see no shortage of grazing in designated wilderness, and plenty of water too development too.
