This was written by a 5 term Idaho state representative. His wife won his seat when he retired in '16. He's talking about Idaho in particular but it applies to BLM land all over the west. He echoes some of the same sentiments often expressed here on the Fire.


Reader Comment: Feds Now Want Cows - Cows, Mind You! - on Public Lands
STEPHEN HARTGEN

To twist a phrase, the cud of government is munched exceeding slow, but just once in a while, we see definite improvement in how our federal land managers actually listen to and adapt to local concerns.

That’s been evident in recent years (Yep, it takes years sometimes.) in how the Bureau of Land Management is responding in new ways to local ranchers and multiple-use interests. Here are some examples:

One, changes in top management under the new administration signals a new approach. Transfers, retirements, new state directors and better “reach out” efforts to local communities are coming into place.

Fading, if not gone, are the old attitudes that we (the feds) own this land and you (the people) will use it only as we direct. I once witnessed a BLM factotum say the staff opposed an energy project because it would have intruded on land they liked to hunt. (The project, China Mountain Wind, collapsed in 2012 when BLM wouldn’t allow a permit.) So much for multiple use then under the previous administration.

Two, working with the state, the agency has implemented fire protection districts across the ranges and is now providing used, but good, equipment to give these fire protection associations the tools to jump on fires before they become conflagrations. (IC 38-104).

Recently, the Southern Idaho BLM gifted used fire engines and trucks to be pre-positioned on ranches for first-line use by the ranchers themselves (Times-News, Oct. 6, 2019). It’s a common sense move which we should all appreciate.

This recent summer, fires in Southern Idaho consumed less than 300,000 acres of rangeland, way below the peak fires of decades past, like the Murphy Fire of 2007, which burned over 600,000 acres, an area not much smaller than the entire state of Rhode Island.

Three, the agency actually — wait for it – has begun to recognize – wait for it – the value of grazing to keep fire-prone Western lands in better control and reduce fire’s intensity.

Whoddathunkit! The BLM will actually let cows — cows, mind you, cows! – eat down range grasses and thereby reduce range fuel loads. Wow!

“Less grass-less fire” is a principle known to ranchers for decades, but it’s been lost in the recent strident eco-environmentalism of save-the-planet interest groups and Al Gore politicians who see the West as one huge national park. Federal land mangers knew this too, but the “anti-grazing” forces in DC lobbies and the Obama agency corridors overwhelmed this common sense, as some former local feds will tell you privately.

One good measure of the change is the primal-scream bellowing now being heard from eco-groups which oppose even light uses on public lands; recent changes to allow more controlled grazing have brought wild eco-hysteria of “we’re on the eve of destruction.” (August, 2019) That’s how they solicit your money.

It’s a needed balance that’s being re-struck. No one’s giving ranchers a free pass. No one’s letting cattle graze on inappropriate locations. No one’s allowing grazers to collude (love that word, now in common use) to despoil public lands. There’s a recognition that grazers too are conservationists, among the best. They have to be; it’s their livelihood. More importantly, it’s the land they love, their heritage. God’s country.

Sure, we all need to assure habitat for wildlife, recreation, energy development, as well as grazing. That’s called multiple use.

It’s a welcome change indeed to see the BLM respond in this way. Let’s build on that. One swallow, we are told, does not a summer make. True enough, but it’s still a swallow.

I'd love to see the area someday Rock. I'm a cattle raiser, but I'm dense on that type of grazing.

Some ranchers are as ignorant as they come, thinking the rangeland should be theirs and theirs only, but Western Watersheds is the bane of the west.
Their lawsuits have done more to ruin multiple use than about anything else.

If things are changing in WDC, maybe someone will start thinking about how stupid and destructive the Wild Horse and Burro Act has turned out to be. It was passed on emotion with no common sense.

Of course, over grazing can actually increase fire danger..........


Still, glad people are looking at the range with logic.

Grazing down the early cheat grass growth can prevent those explosions.

Yeah, too bad about the cheat grass.


That Idaho is a lot more fragile than a person thinks.


Dad said that when they would drive tanks around Boise you could always track them the next year.

Everywhere a tank drove, the sage and grass died and cheat took its place.

Cheat grows everywhere from Canada to Mexico. We have our share but NV has it even worse from what I've read. It can be held in check by proper grazing but one big problem is that when it's the best feed is too early to have cattle on BLM land. They need to allow cattle earlier to eat it before it dries off. Also, most grazing allotments don't allow enough cattle to eat it all. Of course that brings up the problem that if a rancher turned out enough cattle to eat all the cheat, where do you put them the rest of the season so they don't overgraze the rest.

High intensity, short duration.


Over grazing causes cheatgrass.


Yeah, cheat is a bugger.

I do agree....you cant manage cheat unless you hit it early and hard.


Same with trying to farm.

Downy Brome I think.

First time you get your socks full if it, you'll recognize it every time. The seeds have microscopic barbs that grab in fabric and hold. They're very hard to get out. If you wear shoes or low boots with a mesh type lining, they'll burrow in and have to be dug out with tweezers. They have sharp points that hurt the feet. They'll also get in an animal's mouth, ears, or between toes and burrow in. I've had to take animals to a vet more than once when they burrow in out of sight.

takes a lot of fence or a lot of herding to hit the cheat grass when it's green. hard enough and stay in the same place long enough to wipe it out. then there is 40 acres right next to it to re-seed it. one place the savory method might have been useful, but still so labor (and capital) intensive.

Did you guys know that Lump Jaw in cattle can be caused by cheat grass seeds?


Not for reasons you might think though. We always thought the lump was caused by an embedded seed.

Nope...the seed causes a small cut in the gums of the cow.....that cut is then infested with a common, normal mouth dwelling bacteria.


The lump is an bacterial infection....eventually becoming a bone infection.

Cheatgrass
Downey brome
June grass
Drooping brome
Bromus tectorum

All names for the same schit weed.

Be thankful it isn't Medusahead.

The wife and I can put out a mile of electric fence in a couple hours.

Fires have been a part of western range for millennia, some BLM land near here could use a good fire. Come spring/summer what small areas burn before they are suppressed look to be an improvement over areas nearby that don't.

I don't see people using anything like it in Northern AZ. dump the cows out and move them in a month or two. maybe too dry down here (too many acres/AUM) maybe just not private ground. most of the ranchers down here are pretty old and the kids are gone. they are paying to get work done. gets expensive.

Cheat, kudzu, Russian thistle, nutria, starlings, Florida's snakes...many of our serious problems are caused by introduced species, some accidental, some on purpose. I don't know an answer for it.

Thats really, really hard on the range.


If you dont own the land, you manage it how you are required by the terms of the lease.


I personally think the feds could manage their grazing lands a little better.

Log it, graze it or watch it burn...

I expect it's harder to hold the permittee to much, when the permit holder is a 5 term state legislator...they tend to have a fair amount of pull in the western states.

Cheat grass, knapweed, St;Johns wort, hound's tongue, cockle burrs, the list goes on. Livestock spreads a lot of it and fire helps control some so it's a tough call in a lot of situations. In a lot of areas in North Idaho, knapweed is so prevalent it looks like they want to grow it. The one thing certain is that everyone can't be happy with administration of BLM lands. GD

Yeah, I've lanced, flushed, and given antibiotics to more than a couple.

I seen some cattle out near Grand Staircase Escalante. Miles of rock, sand, chunks of fuggin ancient lava, a few sprigs of cactus.

I thought, gawd no wonder the beef tasted like deer tarsal when we travel out that way.

You'll welcome cheatgrass when you have Yellowstar thistle.

IMO, the most damage is done when low numbers of grazing animals are allowed to pick over an area and eat only the preferred plants. Those plants are repeatedly eaten down to the crown and it eventually kills them while the less desirable plants are allowed to flourish. Short duration grazing is one answer, but another viable option is high-intensity low-frequency. Trying to implement either on large tracts is problematic, though.

Maybe technology can make it work someday, but you still have the problem of getting water to the livestock once you've figured out how to confine the animals to the area you want grazed.

Damn...I haven't thought about this stuff in almost 30 years.

I guess I'd forgotten how good my memory is.

Jim,

I have lanced several lump jaws, and removed the cheat from the abscess on horses and cattle. We had an old mare on which a cheat traveled from the back of her mouth, upward to behind her eye and below the ear. After lancing and removing the cheat, it took about a month to get her healed up. But most often the abscess was located on the lower jaw of the animal.

Cheat grass is an excellent feed source. We grazed it from March onward. We irrigated fields of pure cheat and watched it grow to 30 inches in height, then swathed and baled it for winter feed. The seed heads are very nutritious, and feeds much like oat hay. But that is where most of the lump jaw abscesses came from.

We saved mature cheat grass pastures and grazed them through the winter with great success.

Even our alfalfa fields were usually 50% cheat grass for the first cutting. The actual milking herd was fed corn silage and 2'nd or 3'rd cutting alfalfa. But all the young stock, horses, and dry cows lived on baled cheat grass or cheat grass blend.

Cattle do have a hard time subsisting on standing cheat grass in July and August, simply because the stalks become dry, brittle and hard to eat. It is uncomfortable for cattle to chew dried cheat grass in arid conditions. But as higher humidity levels arrive and soften the stalks in Sept and Oct the cattle do quite well on the dried cheat grass.

As to BLM management around here, in the '60s and '70s the local BLM allotments were all given to sheep grazing. The sheep spent March, April, and May grazing the BLM. After the sheep left, just enough cheat grass would mature to produce seed for next year.

Incidentally, the conditions were ideal for shooting whistle pigs as the grass was not high enough for them to hide in.

As the price of wool dropped below cost of production, and lamb crops could not support the cost of sheep ranches, the BLM allotments around here were converted to cattle. But the cattle are managed differently from the sheep allotments. Where the sheep grazed in early spring, the cattle around here are now turned out on BLM in the fall and through winter.

The problem with the way the cattle are grazed is that the fuel load is peaked in late July, and August and creates our biggest fire threat. Every lightning strike or man made spark has the potential to become a conflagration.

The cattle DO need to be out grazing in April and May.

Yes, that is a real advantage of sheep grazing. A couple dogs can hold a band of 1000 ewes and their 2000 lambs onto a tiny area until it is grazed to the ground and let them advance over the range as needed. Around here, tanker trucks carried water to the sheep bands as needed.

I am Canadian , don't know much about grazing land under those rules. Here, in Canada, rancher's with grazing permits on public land are watched pretty closely, you can't over graze the west slope timberlands, even in a dry year. Tons of grass, and it can be a fire hazard. In dry year, atv's motorcycles and displaced city people are a fire hazard, not the line rider and his stock dog. Most cows do not combust to begin a grass fire either.
City folks build house for a view, and all their contraptions are real fire hazards. Yup, city folks should stay in the city imo ( hate to say it but sheep are considered range maggots to a cattleman) I love to watch the stock dogs working though.

Your BLM leases have cattle on them in winter time??

My youngest brother graduated with MS in Range Management. After 4 years with BLM in Nevada, he quit in disgust when they would not let him do his work. It seemed there were always reports to write in quinltuplet anytime he wanted to get out and do actual (gasp) field surveys!

So he started his own company as consultant to the ranchers, doing the work he was trained to do, and been at it ever since- some 30 years now. . (Intermountain Range Consultant. - maybe Management?).


He spends a lot of time in court, sometimes winning, sometimes losing.

Elk season comes along, they all go hunting together.... so far, everyone has come back.

We purposely graze our cows on Spring cheat grass.....before it becomes a pita; and it knocks out the seed for the next year. At least that is the way it's worked for us.

The leases in Payette Co Id do, and I have been told by ranch folk that many Western Oregon leases are year round with rotation around the lease as the year passes.

Which district did he work?

75 million buffalo would keep that stuff ate down.

Unfortunately, some of those city people have discovered Tannerite. Last year, it's illegal use north of here burned off 95k acres in just 1 fire, much of it being elk winter range.

BLM from earlier this year.



(looking towards the CMR)


(overgrazing around the waterholes)

I was on some of the APR's leases this July. North east of Zortman a ways.


The grass out there was amazing.

Jim, it was probably the best grass year of my lifetime.


A bunch of that country has never really been used and abused like some private stuff around here.

Damn Sam,

As I have said before, you are one fantastic Kodiak cowboy. Your pictures are not only easy on the eyes, but also smooth the wrinkles of the mind. Great stuff Sam, keep them coming.

W. Bill

Thanks man.

BLM, you can tell there were some cows around here but they moved out and the grass came back amazing later on.




Mix of deeded and BLM. Can't hardly even see the fence line.

Cant see the fence lines here either.


Too much snow.......

Jim, how much you guys end up with?

Maybe 4-5" here and it's halfway heavy.


It needs to go away. Not ready for this chit to stick around.



Bunch of hay barley to haul off the field but at least most of the cows are home.

10-12 inches.


The last snow had just melted off..........seriously. Just yesterday morning it left.


Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.......

I suddenly don't feel so bad.....


You got honked!

Great pics as usual Sam.

Jim that's a kick in the nads. I hope you get to see your fields again this year.

Public land grazing is huge around here. Its handled by the province, used to be through the forest service. Now that branch is within some govt outfit with a name a mile long. Basically most of BC is by far public land. The south half or so of the province has a lot of private land around the valley bottoms but its crown land as we call it in the hills pretty much exclusively.

Logging and grazing go hand in hand. You apply for a lease and your permit works with the logging plans so as the ranchers and loggers are out of each others way. A lot of it isn't grass land at all. But the first 2 to 5 years or so of a new cut block breeds lots of forbs; fireweed, other flowering stuff. And a bit of grass here and there. The cows are turned loose round about April I believe and they slowly eat their way up hill following the green up. They're not allowed above 1700 metres, about a mile high. They've got to be off crown land by November 1 most places, and by that time weather and food source has naturally forced them back down hill. A lot of the outfits I hunt around don't have a hell of a big deal come round up time especially if they've got an ajoining lease to their land. Almost a case of opening a gate type of deal. A lot don't have an ajoining lease and may have a lease quite a ways away and do a lot of trailering/trucking to make it work. Cows look happy and healthy on the ranges I frequent.

Overgrazed pastures here take years to recover.

BLM land, outside my perimeter fence, June this year:



June 2108:



The neighbor's cows on his BLM allotment, May of this year, moving them to the other side of his e-fence. As you can see, it's still pretty green:



Now, a July pic showing how much the grass has dried up. Mostly cheat, some medusahead or squirreltail. (My wife got me "Weeds of the West" for my BD this year, I hope to get a better ID on them this coming spring/summer) Gets really dry this late in the year. Not a drop of rain for over a month now. Neighbor pulls his cattle off by late June, July at the latest:



Wish the BLM would get in this area and start with removing some of the young juniper that is trying to take over. And have a controlled burn. But, I'm entirely pleased they are my neighbor, the critters like it too.

Geno

Why do you want the juniper gone?

Come visit here, we've got juniper................for firewood!

Geno

Notice in my pics there are a lot of young trees, less than 6-8 feet high. I hunted up the road about 50 miles from here in '98. Complete change in the look of the area since then. Imagine it's the same in my "backyard" as those small trees are less than 20yo. Big problem with juniper, and in some other areas juniper/piñon, taking over grassland/sage/steppe habitat.

Some light reading for you:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=juniper+encroachment&t=ffnt&ia=web

Lack of regular fire is a contributor. Good for our firewood supply here, but cuts back on grazing. Lot of the private ranches clear the stuff off as best they can. Leave some for shade for the cows of course.

Interesting thing around here, one can drive down the road and see junipers growing in nice straight rows..........along fence lines and under powerlines! The birds eat the berries and we know what happens next. I'll look for a demonstrative pic.

Geno

Then let the wild horses run free..

I asked because I got an education about sage brush a few years ago.


Always keen to kill the stuff......cut down on grazing you know and carrying capacity.


My friend at the NRCS showed me some studies that showed a fairly extensive sage infestation was not detrimental in any way to carrying capacity.


Improved biodiversity in fact.


Wasn't sure if the same applied to juniper or not. I guess not!

I am for one....sick to death of the sage grouse.


What a fugging quitter.......

Federal gooberment gonna fix it right up

Not the best pic, but the 3-4 trees in the foreground are all in a row. Can't see the fence as the barbwire is laying on the ground now.



Some fencelines it's a continuous line junipers.

Geno

Mebbe dey's 'sposed ta go 'stinct?

Geno

PS honestly, I'd love to have some around here. I'm guessing there was a decent population of them here awhile back. Still some over the hill in the Surprise Valley and a few other places nearby.

PPS if we're not going to have them here, DFG could at least start up a good population of pheasants for me to hunt!

There is so much mis-information out about the greater sage grouse its sickening.


The sage grouse debate is worse than the climate debate..........

Yes might have been a population....if you had the right type of sage brush.


Them grouses are picky as hell. Bout like trying to get a little blond headed white girl to eat her porridge.

Jim,

you're not going to start believing in them "studies" now, are you?

Scientists perform them things, or worser, academicians!

Sometimes both, working for the gooberment too!

Better watch it, or your reputation around here will plummet.

Geno

I never had much to lose!

OK, I laughed at that one, a good laugh, too.

Geno

PS, couple of kinds around here. Over on the other side of my seasonal creek, in the good dirt, I have some champion Big Sage! Not sure what the other varieties are, but one here on the property has grayer leaves and a different smell.

Yes. My NRCS Govt. type friend informed me that Big Sage was what I wanted ......or didnt want if that was the case.


Mountains may be attractive to some people......but nothing smells better the the high, dry prairie.

Ever been to the Mojave?

I think nothing smells better than the desert after a rain when the predominant smell is creosote bush.

But I'm weird....................see signature line.

Geno

PS, I loved the smell of the Palouse.................when they weren't spraying ag chems that is.

Freshly crushed sagebrush, juniper in the fireplace, paper shotgun shells just fired, the world is full of wonderful aromas..

No lyin' there.

Pine/fir trees on a warm day. The redwoods. Fall in the big woods back east. The coast of CA, OR, WA and SE AK. (Can't speak for the rest of AK as I never managed to get north of the Juneau area)

Losing eyesight and/or hearing would be horrible, but so would losing my sense of smell.

Geno

In Arizona where I have Property and hope to live full time soon.
The Local Rancher with the Grazing Rights has ether to clear cut the Cedar trees or loose his Grazing right.
He clear cut the Arizona State Trust land OK then he left the dead trees where they fell calling it an Bio-climate or something like that for the new grass to come back.
We have scrub Oak Cedars and Pinion Pine and some scattered Cactus at around 5000 to 5800 ft sea level.

We property owners called everyone we could about the Fire hazard of all the dead trees laying everywhere.
The Rancher has moved to another area in Arizona leaving all the dead trees.
And I have been told now that the Rancher is selling harvest permits for people to come in and clean up the dead trees.
Our Local Arizona State Trust over seer will only give out the Harvest Permit to the Rancher he says that it is to much trouble for him to give out permits to everyone that wants one.
It is kinda funny that the Rancher and State Trust guy went to school together.
The Rancher when he sells an Harvest permit also tacks on another Recreational permit fee for the people to enter State Trust Property's to Harvest the Cedars.
There has to be a Federal push to clean up the Junipers and Cedars because when I started investigating why our rancher was clear cutting the trees I found out that is is going on all across the Western part of the USA.
Cedars suck up all the water and pretty much kill the ground for anything else to grow and they are very invasive and spread quickly.
U where I have property it has been reported that we have approx. 300 to 400 trees per acre and we have been in a drought situation for many years.
I have cut out several dozen trees on my property to clear for building and roads. The Cedars are so thick in areas that you can not even drive a Quad threw some areas on my property.
Tat can not be to good for the Rest of nature to grow other plant life.
I keep the Pinion Pine like everyone else up in the area because there are not very many of them considering how many Cedars there are.
When I get up there at the right time I hope to be able to harvest the Pine Nuts but I have never been u at the right time so far to do so.

Don't EVER cut a juniper for a Christmas tree. I made that mistake once about 45 or 50 years ago. It was beautiful for a couple of days with just a slight hint of juniper odor. Then it started coming out of dormancy in the warm house. The smell was beyond livable. After a couple of days, it got so pungent that it was giving me a splitting headache. I had to throw it out.

There's a long list.

They use the hell outta ground water. I've seen a place in Blanco County here that was consumed by juniper, ranch was DRY... the creeks quit running, wells went dry, grass was choked out. Bad ranch.

New owner hired dozers to take out the juniper, and it all came back. creeks and springs started running, grass was good...

Here's an article on junipers in Oregon and an experiment conducted.

https://www.opb.org/news/article/cutting-down-desert-junipers-save-precious-water/

Here in so. Idaho, the BLM has renovated a bunch of land by removing juniper and replanting sage. It's taken over some old burns.

Juniper cutting is a good thing in most areas of the west. The invasion of junipers has hurt range land. People here need to remove the junipers, and be careful not to destroy the bitterbrush in the process! Many places in southern oregon , blm let the contractors destroy bitterbrush along with the junipers! The result was deer not having food to hold them over the winter! But the way wet juniper smells like cat piss, nasty smelling stuff!

That’s my soap box that my wife is tired of. San Antonio is constantly talking about how they want to increase absorption to the aquifer but they passed an ordinance against cutting trees including juniper. Some of the stuff I’ve read is that a mature juniper can suck up to 30 gallons of water a day before you get in to Their increasing runoff due to lack of ground cover

No Jim, calves are shipped just the outlaw cattle are grazing free.

They Graze year round up on Arizona State Trust lands
The Cattle are sick skinny and look like walking dead.
no grass to talk about. All they have to eat is Scrub Oak. I do not think they eat the Cedars and Pinion Pine.

One of the Guys that I know up there told me when we were driving around that he Purchased one of the Local Ranchers Cows to eat and show support to the Rancher.

He told me that he could not eat it and he would not even feed it to his dogs it was so bad.
they ground it up and used it as fertilizer. He said he had never tasted anything so foul in his life and tough as rawhide.

That sounds like what the longhorns looked like before they started importing Herefords and other English breeds. I've never eaten longhorn but they sure look scrawny.

That sounds like what the longhorns looked like before they started importing Herefords and other English breeds. I've never eaten longhorn but they sure look scrawny. I know they'd live on pretty sparse ground if they had to.

We finish our Longhorn or Corriente roping cattle with barley and are excellent eating

My Son in Law bought five Longhorn cows and a Longhorn bull about six years ago. We raised three generations on the place, and just this month put the last cow and heifer calf Into the freezer.

They eat pretty well if kept on good short grass and clover all summer. We grass finish ours and butcher just as the irrigation water goes out of the ditch.

My only problem with longhorns is rebuilding fence behind them. They will stick a horn under a five wire fence and lift until they pull three T-posts in each direction, then get on their belly and crawl under. If you have enough solid wood posts so they can not pull them, they will pop staples and T-post ties.

Did I mention that Longhorns are extremely athletic and can jump six feet vertical if motivated?

Sneaky basturds.

Funny there RC.

I split my kindling ahead of time, let it sit in the woodshed for a few weeks and it still is pretty powerful when I bring in a boxload to use.

Next year I may just split a years worth and leave it out in the sun all summer.

Never thought about using one as a Christmas Tree though, that would be rough.

Geno

30 million would be a good start!

Kind of the original high stocking density/short duration rotational grazing scheme, eh?

Geno

yes, wildfires and Indian fires set where fuel allowed, no imported nuisance species then.

ah yes! Centaurea solstitialis! I have seen pure stands covering 1,000s of acres, in CA. Lots in WA, ID, and OR too.
nasty.

These poor animals look like Bones with a very Thin Leather stretched so tight around them they look worst that an anorexic girl wearing Spandex
Absolutely no meat to them at all . Heads hanging so low like they could not even hold them up any longer.
if someone had them in a corral they would put them down to save them from the Starvation they were going threw.

Longhorns can be quite vigorous. Just put them on some western Canadian or northern US mountain summer range. I like 'em..Just cowboy up, boys. Mexican fighting bulls can be even spicier. Cross 'em and replace those lazy English breeds.Sleep with one eye open in hunting camp....just a thought

We have quite a few winter BLM grazing allotments.