Western Watersheds Project Winter Webinar Series - Grazing in Wilderness

 

Western Watersheds Project

Panelists Dana Johnson Staff Attorney / Wilderness Watch Presentation Title: Grazing in Wilderness: The Legal Landscape and Implications on the Ground Presentation Description: Livestock are authorized to graze over a quarter of the 52 million acres of protected Wilderness in the lower 48 states. Due to grazing language in the 1964 Wilderness Act and its 1980s-era corollary, the Congressional Grazing Guidelines, grazing has been a presence in Wilderness for over half a century. We'll take a landscape-scale look at grazing in Wilderness, including the evolution of law and policy, effects on the National Wilderness Preservation System, and opportunities for change. Cyndi Tuell Arizona/New Mexico Director / Western Watersheds Project Presentation Title: Stories from the Southwest: Grazing Impacts on Wilderness from the Arizona Strip to the Gila National Forest Presentation Description: Livestock grazing impacts designated wilderness areas throughout Arizona on both Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service managed lands. Federal land managers are pushing for grazing infrastructure, increases in AUMs, and ignoring violations of the Wilderness Act, while only occasionally taking long-overdue actions to get the cows out of riparian habitats. Three specific examples, two in Arizona and one in New Mexico, will highlight the issues of continued livestock grazing in designated wilderness areas and the steps WWP is taking to push back. Gary Macfarlane Ecosystem Defense Director / Friends of the Clearwater Presentation Title: Wilderness Cowed (and Sheeped) in The Rockies Presentation Description: We will explore grazing impacts in the northern portion of the US Rockies from two case studies, one in the Gospel-Hump Wilderness and the other in the High Uintas Wilderness. The Gospel-Hump Wilderness is in wolf habitat and is very near recently confirmed grizzly sightings. The High Uintas, ecologically more like the Greater Yellowstone than its central Rockies location would suggest, has the most grazing in terms of forage utilization of any Wilderness, and that grazing threatens recovery of bighorn sheep in the area.