The Gila Example
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
2012 Wilderness Designation and Livestock Grazing: The Gila Example RITF Report 83 Nick Ashcroft Extension Range Management Specialist Cooperative Extension Service John M. Fowler Chair/Director, Linebery Policy Center Agricultural Experiment Station Sylvia Beuhler, Student Dawn VanLeeuwen, Professor Wilderness Designation and Livestock Grazing: The Gila Example Nick Ashcroft, John M. Fowler, Sylvia Beuhler, and Dawn VanLeeuwen1 INTRODUCTION Wilderness negatively impacts local economic The concept of a “wilderness” can stir conditions....the Wilderness designation is conflicting emotions, from wonder at the significantly associated with lower per capita tranquility and untrammeled beauty to income, lower total payroll, and lower tax the terror of a wild, untamed environment receipts in counties” (pp. 1, 3). where Mother Nature acts via spectacular The uncertainty of economic impacts and uncontrolled events. There are many stretches from local economies down views between these two extremes, and each to individual ranch units’ profitability. view is based on the individual’s intrinsic Alternative viewpoints range from adverse value system. impacts due to increased restrictions and The potential impacts on local high opportunity costs because of the economies due to wilderness designation are wilderness designation to positive impacts equally uncertain. The Sonoran Institute due to enhanced property values and in 2006 concluded “that protecting a increased local tourism revenues. This portion of [Doña Ana County, NM’s] paper examines the actual changes—due public lands as Wilderness (and a related to wilderness designation—in livestock National Conservation Area) is likely to numbers on an animal unit month per acre have positive effects on future prosperity— (AUM/acre)2 basis in the Gila Wilderness, and that the more public lands afforded the oldest wilderness area in the United these protections the better for the area States. Federal land ranchers are directly economy” (p. 1). However, this contention affected by wilderness designation and the is countered by Steed et al. (2011), who accompanying regulations when a majority concluded that “Some Wilderness can have of their allotments comprise acres within positive economic impacts but our findings the wilderness boundaries. Management indicate that this is not the general rule.... 1 Respectively, Extension Range Specialist, Department of Extension Animal Sciences and Natural Resources; Chair/Director, Linebery Policy Center; student; and Professor, Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, all of New Mexico State University 2AUM = forage required to sustain a 1,000-pound cow with or without calf or equivalent for one month. Range Improvement Task Force • Report 83 1 agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service which (1) generally appears to have been (USFS), can have much leeway in their affected primarily by the forces of nature, interpretation and on-the-ground application with the imprint of man’s work substantially of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which can unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding result in sharply curtailed livestock numbers opportunities for solitude, or a primitive and for the range livestock industry. unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least This analysis was designed to discover five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient if the intent of the 1964 Wilderness Act size as to make practicable its preservation and corresponding House Reports was and use in an unimpaired condition; and met. Managing agencies were directed to (4) may also contain ecological, geological, facilitate livestock grazing in the wilderness or other features of scientific, educational, if grazing was already taking place prior to scenic, or historical value” (Wilderness Act, the creation of the wilderness and if resource 1964). damage or degradation was not occurring. Eidsvik (1989) stated that “For the Improvements could be maintained in the ‘developing’ world, we need to delete the same manner and degree as pre-wilderness. last phrase of this definition, ‘where man The Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness himself is a visitor who does not remain’” were the first administratively designated (p. 58). As a result, the emphasis is then wilderness areas in the United States (1924) shifted to the phrase “where the earth and its and provide the longest time series of community of life are untrammeled by man.” authorized use data from which to make Eidsvik (1989) further stated that “Whether a valid long-run comparison. Eighteen man remains or not is irrelevant as long as wilderness allotments and their AUMs/acre the time, space, and species’ relationships of authorized use were compared to are retained” (p. 58). He proposed a new 95 allotments of the Gila National Forest. definition of wilderness as “an area where The comparison was made on an AUM/acre natural processes dominate and people may basis because of changing size of the forest co-exist as long as their technology and their and changing boundaries of the allotments impacts do not endure” (p. 58). and ranger districts. The Wilderness Act of 1964 set aside 11 additional wilderness areas in the Southwest, including the Aldo Leopold WILDERNESS DEFINED Wilderness, which comprises 1.1 million The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines acres with an additional 580,000 acres wilderness as follows: “A wilderness, in classified as primitive area (Baker et al., contrast with those areas where man and 1988). In 1989, the first session of the his own works dominate the landscape, is 101st Congress introduced Senate Joint hereby recognized as an area where the earth Resolution 67 to commemorate the 25th and its community of life are untrammeled anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964. by man, where man himself is a visitor who The resolution specifically identified does not remain. An area of wilderness is the Gila Wilderness with the following further defined to mean in this Act an area language: “Whereas in 1924 the Gila of undeveloped Federal land retaining its Wilderness in New Mexico was the first primeval character and influence, without administratively designated wilderness permanent improvements or human in the nation, and became statutory habitation, which is protected and managed wilderness in 1964” (S.J.Res. 67, 1989). so as to preserve its natural conditions and 2 Range Improvement Task Force • Report 83 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Animal Units Yearlong (AUYs) for the GNF. GRAZING AND WILDERNESS The 1.6 million acres would constitute New Mexico is home to the Gila Wilder- 2,560 sections (section = 640 acres), yielding ness, the oldest wilderness in the country, an estimated long-run carrying capacity of which was established in the Gila National 23 AUYs per section. This figure is high Forest (GNF). The GNF was established according to today’s standards, but multi- in 1907, and in 1924 it became the first species grazing would result in removal of National Forest to administratively designate fine fuels, brush, and tree seedlings that wilderness status to a portion of its lands. In would prevent regularly occurring ground 1922, just prior to wilderness designation, fires from “crowning” into the forest canopy. the USDA (1922) described the Gila Forest as follows: Regulation According to earlier versions of federal The principal industries of the regulations (Grazing of Livestock, 2011), Gila National Forest are mining grazing in wilderness areas ordinarily will and stock raising...The forest area be controlled “under the general regulations (1,638,053 acres) can safely carry governing grazing of livestock on National about 56,055 head of cattle and horses Forests…. This includes the establishment and 19,415 head of sheep and goats. of normal range allotments and allotment This is approximately the number management plans (AMP). Furthermore, now grazed on the Forest by 172 wilderness designation should not prevent permittees; and it may be continued the maintenance of existing fences or other indefinitely without danger to the livestock management improvements, nor the forest growth and to watershed values construction and maintenance of new fences from overgrazing. (p. 15) or improvements which are consistent with Sound principles of range the AMP and/or necessary for protection of management, the result of many the range.” years of intensive study, are being The latest revision (July 1, 2012) to the put into effect on the National Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) related Forests. The carrying capacity of to Grazing of Livestock (36 C.F.R. 293.7) the different ranges is being closely strengthened the language with the clause, approximated; although the ranges “[grazing] shall be permitted to continue are fully utilized, they are not under the general regulations covering overgrazed. (p. 8) grazing of livestock on the National Forests A better distribution of and in accordance with special provisions stock is being secured through covering grazing use in units of National improved methods of salting, the Forest Wilderness which the Chief of the development of watering places, Forest Service may prescribe” (p. 453). The and the construction of drift fences. revision states further that the “Chief, Forest Hitherto inaccessible country Service, may permit...the maintenance, was opened up to grazing by the reconstruction, or relocation of those construction of stock trails and livestock management improvements and other improvements. (p. 8) structures which existed within a Wilderness when it was incorporated into the National