Ranching Subsidies ProPublica Article

[Handlebar]

I dont follow?

Some allotments have more than one permittee,

 

[Bonasababy]

It's important to remember that BLM inherited lots of heavily degraded land that was used and abused and abandoned by multiple extractive industries, including insanely high stocking rates of sheep, horses and cows, before it was BLM.

Many of those acres, especially the worst stuff, crossed thresholds for natural recovery long ago, often before it was even BLM. Once the threshold is crossed, removing livestock won't make things better, it requires intensive restoration that is often cost prohibitive or unfeasible due to ground conditions like slope and soil type.

There is plenty of irresponsible grazing that occurs currently, but I think people tend to see the worst as a grazing problem, but take little note when they are in a well managed allotment and maybe even assume it is ungrazed.

Washington BLM is a bit unique compared to the rest of BLM, but i suspect things are pretty similar in other areas. If we had the intact vegetation communities that were present 200 years ago, I believe most modern day stocking rates would barely be noticeable on much of the landscape (you're always going to have highly impacted areas around troughs, corrals, etc). But when the bunchgrass was beat out 150 years ago, it doesn't matter how many cows you put on it it's going to look like shit.

I do agree that the actual ground level managers in BLM are hamstrung in being able to address non compliance and trespass issues due to the top down throttling of anything that might draw a congressional inquiry. That's a longstanding issue but it is at its worst right now.

Nope. This was Oregon. Clearcutting steep slopes right up to a stream. Then they burned it. Guess where things ran after the burn.

 

[kwyeewyk]

Nope. This was Oregon. Clearcutting steep slopes right up to a stream. Then they burned it. Guess where things ran after the burn.

I was thinking about grazing management. Sounds like a poorly planned project.

I'm by no means saying BLM is a perfect land manager, but to really understand what is going on with a piece of ground, especially when evaluating grazing, you need to know what the history of disturbance is and it's easy to make incorrect assumptions about how it got there without thoroughly investigating the disturbance history.