The Bureau of Land Management
The BLM's Lack of Management in the SPRNCA
In the past few years, whenever the BLM has tried to reauthorize grazing in the SPRNCA, one of the main arguments presented against it has been that they aren’t capable of managing the allotments. People say they’ve historically proven that they won’t monitor the allotments in the SPRNCA.
Many have portrayed them as being largely missing in action. Robin Silver from the Center for Biological Diversity called them the “Bureau of Lackadaisical Mediocrity.”
In her 2018 public comment to the BLM, Elizabeth Makings, the Collections Manager at ASU’s Herbarium, pointed out that the BLM wasn’t properly monitoring the grazing they already had in the SPRNCA. She said that they were only checking on the allotments once every couple of years if that.
“One of the things I talked about was their lack of management and monitoring, even on the allotments that had already been there, the allotments that had been there for a long time, that weren’t retired when Congress passed this legislation,” said Makings. “The BLM is supposed to monitor those for conditions, and it was pathetic. They had gone out there maybe once or twice in ten years and done some plot surveys and said everything was fine. It was just embarrassing.”
This complaint was brought up again by Cyndi Tuell, the southwest programs director for Western Watersheds Project, when the BLM finalized its decision to reauthorize grazing on the four allotments in the SPRNCA a few weeks ago.
In their latest decision to reauthorize grazing in the SPRNCA which was released on April 7th, the BLM said that they would be reducing cattle on the allotments by 50% and monitoring monthly to see if conditions are improving or worsening. Tuell doubts this is actually going to happen. She thinks the BLM has been doing even less to monitor the area and control trespass cattle in the last couple of years.
“I don’t think they’re going to even do the monitoring that they say they’re going to do,” said Tuell. “They’re telling us that they’re going to be monitoring on a monthly basis for compliance with the permittees. And I definitely don’t think they’re going to be out there doing the monitoring to check whether conditions are improving or getting worse.”
Tuell was also critical of the fact that the BLM claims they’ll be monitoring based off of the current conditions which are already severely degraded by cattle.
In the past Tuell has pointed out that the BLM is incapable of monitoring these allotments and maintaining the SPRNCA’s boundary fences because they are severely understaffed. She pointed out that Feldhausen said in a recent public meeting that they’re so understaffed they can’t even get contracts completed for things like fence maintenance. She thinks this is more evidence that the BLM won’t be monitoring the allotments as promised in the most recent lease renewals.
“That’s across the board for federal agencies, understaffing,” said Tuell. “Covid took a lot of people out of the workforce and then there’s a lot of other reasons why people quit federal agencies over the last four to six years. It’s a mess.”
The BLM’s recent renewal of all four grazing leases in the SPRNCA brought back the accusations that the BLM is playing favorites with the local ranchers. Tuell feels like Scott Feldhausen, the gila district director for the BLM, is being overly fair to the four ranchers in the SPRNCA.
“He’s fair to them, he’s overly fair to them,” said Tuell. “He’s not an environmentalist at all. His job in the SPRNCA is to be an environmentalist. That’s literally his job to conserve, protect and enhance. He’s not a rancher, he’s not an advocate for ranchers in this spot, but that’s what I feel like he is doing.”
Tuell and Western Watershed Project are appealing the decision, saying that the BLM ignored the science when making this decision and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Tuell said that they have submitted thousands of pages of science to the BLM showing that cows are bad for this spot on the planet specifically, and the BLM has renewed them anyway.
“It’s almost like they feel like they have to authorize cows,” said Tuell.
She thinks that this is evidence of the BLM not going through the proper analysis and just rubber stamping the permits instead. She also found it suspicious that two of the allotments have changed hands since the legal proceedings against the BLM’s management began in 2018.
She pointed out that these allotments are expensive to obtain and maintain. They’re a big investment. So why did two new ranchers take over the allotments during what looked like an uncertain time for their future renewal?
Tuell thinks that this might indicate that the BLM was giving ranchers assurances about the future of grazing in the SPRNCA. She thinks that when the BLM did their most recent re-evaluation of grazing in the SPRNCA, they were working towards a predetermined outcome- that grazing would be authorized.
Lance Clawson took over the Lucky Hills allotment after the controversy over the 2019 RMP. He said that he spoke with the BLM before purchasing the ranch because it was a big investment.
“I talked with the BLM prior to closing on the ranch and got a pretty good comfort level,” said Clawson.
Bundy and Feldhausen's fear of "rancher-violence"
The BLM has received over 130 trespass cattle complaints from the Center for Biological Diversity since 2021. Robin Silver, a co-founder of the Center, said that the BLM is not using the tools at its disposal to keep cows out of the river.
The BLM has the legal authority to conduct round-ups in the river and impound trespass cattle. But they aren’t doin this here. Instead they claim to be taking a “good neighbor approach” and notifying ranchers when their cows are reported in the river.
Silver thinks the situation has gotten out of hand and it’s far past time that the BLM took more aggressive measures to remove trespass cattle from the river. He’s even proposed to the media that the Center would be willing to step in and conduct a third-party round up if the BLM won’t.
“There are basically six areas along the river where there are repeated complaints,” said Silver. “And if you were in charge, you would go to those six areas with your wranglers and round them up, see whose cows they are, and either return them or take them to auction, but just deal with it and fix the fences. But instead, you’re seeing repeated complaints in the same areas.”
So why hasn’t the BLM been conducting round-ups to remove trespass cattle from the river? At a stakeholder meeting in 2021, Scott Feldhausen was asked this question.
The meeting wasn’t recorded and the official minutes are brief. But multiple people in attendance have said that Feldhausen didn’t want to have any confrontations with the local ranchers. He told the group that he and his staff had previously been threatened by armed ranchers while working in another state after impounding trespass cattle.
The name Cliven Bundy gets brought up a lot when people recount Feldhausen’s statement during that meeting. In 2014, in Bunckerville, Nevada, Bundy and an armed militia took back his cattle by force after they had been impounded by the BLM for illegal grazing.
Silver says that this is the only valid excuse the BLM has used for not dealing with the trespass cattle in the river. He thinks rancher violence is the only thing that the BLM respects.
“The only valid excuse they have used was when Feldhausen said in public that he was afraid of rancher violence,” said Silver. “That’s real. These people are violent. They’re no different than the Bundys.”
On multiple occasions Silver claimed that this was Bundy all over again. But is there actually a credible threat of rancher violence in the SPRNCA?
When asked about Feldhausen’s statements, John Ladd, the chairman of the Hereford NRCD, said that there was no one on the river with strong anti-BLM sentiments like the Bundys. Other local ranchers said that they weren’t dumb enough to ride around threatening the BLM like that.
Cyndi Tuell, the southwest programs director for the Western Watershed Project, is also skeptical of Feldhausen’s statements on local rancher violence. She said that some of her other projects are in areas where there have been credible threats of rancher violence and this is not the same. She asked where’s the FBI investigation if there is a credible threat?
Tuell knew that at one point, Feldhausen’s fear of rancher violence had made it all the way up to the Department of the Interior. She said that internally, the BLM was also skeptical of Feldhausen’s fear of ranchers.
There doesn’t seem to be a credible threat of rancher violence around the SPRNCA right now. But it does seem evident that Feldhausen’s decision not to use the BLM’s resources to round up trespass cattle is being motivated by his fear.