By kirk robinson

In a Jan. 17 op-ed column in The Tribune, Utah Commissioner of Agriculture and Food Leonard Blackham makes some rather astounding claims. For example, he alleges in "The enviro litigation industry" that certain environmental organizations are using litigation to stifle beneficial livestock grazing reforms on public lands for their own financial gain.

This is misleading at best. It is true that when an environmental organization (or a livestock grazing permittee, for that matter) wins a lawsuit against a federal agency, the Equal Access to Justice Act entitles it to collect attorney fees from the federal government absent a showing by the government that its position was substantially justified.

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However, conservation groups can only sue a federal agency after all agency appeals have been exhausted. And if we lose, we get nothing; while if we win, it’s because of the merits of our case. Thus, we have no incentive to pursue frivolous claims.

Furthermore, when an award is made, it is for legal fees, not a prize for winning. And finally, none of the groups that Blackham refers to have received compensation under the EAJA for lawsuits against federal agency practices in Utah.

Evidently, the commissioner thinks it would be better if public interest groups could not use litigation as a tool for protecting America’s natural heritage. We disagree. Public lands and waters, and the wildlife they sustain, belong to all of us, not just grazing permit holders. Our goal is to ensure that federal land managers act as effective stewards of the public trust, not to put ranchers out of business.

Ecology teaches that natural amenities are parts of an interconnected, interdependent whole upon which we too depend for essential services, such as water storage and filtration. Damage to one part inevitably results in damage to other parts. Does this not merit concern?

In this connection, Blackham also claims that "done properly, grazing can increase wildlife and improve water quality," offering the example of Deseret Land and Livestock as proof. However, we have seen no studies showing that grazing, as practiced on DLL, has caused those lands to meet the standards required for public lands. Lacking such studies, we should not simply assume that the DLL model will solve all problems when applied elsewhere.

Whatever may be the case with DLL, there is a general lack of adequate science-based monitoring to determine the impact to public lands from livestock grazing. Indeed, recently the Bureau of Land Management decided not to include grazing disturbance as part of a project to map ecological trends throughout the West.

Commissioner Blackham also accuses us of failing to "participate with agencies and other stakeholders to explore, study and formulate policy to protect the lands when given the chance." This is not true. Some of us have attended dozens of Rich County Coordinated Resource Management meetings over the years without being taken seriously as stakeholders.

We have offered to participate in designing and implementing the Three Creeks Project in Rich County. The idea is to combine four ranching operations under a grazing regime similar to the one employed on DLL. We have recommended that the plan include sound, science-based monitoring as well as large ungrazed plots to serve as controls and to help mitigate impacts to habitat in grazed areas. We also recommend that critical wildlife movement corridors be protected from grazing disturbance.

We are waiting to see if we will be given a place at the table.

Kirk Robinson is executive director of the Western Wildlife Conservancy in Salt Lake City. His co-authors are John Carter, manager of Kiesha’s Preserve in Paris, Idaho; Jim Catlin, executive director of Wild Utah Project in Salt Lake City; and Jonathan Ratner, Utah and Wyoming director, Western Watersheds Project in Pinedale, Wyo.