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The Trump administration plans to test a single-dose birth-control vaccine that could help control growing wild horse and burro herds. At issue is a research project that would be conducted by the Bureau of Land Management and the Agriculture Department to test the one-dose oocyte growth factor vaccine on about 16 mares that have already been removed from overcrowded federal rangelands.  BLM says the vaccine holds the promise of rendering mares infertile for three years or longer. Currently, the most common birth-control vaccine for wild horse populations is porcine zona pellucida, or PZP, which lasts for only about a year and requires multiple doses. BLM late Friday issued a final environmental assessment and decision record signed by BLM Nevada Director Jon Raby advancing the plan. The decision is open for administrative protests for 30 days. BLM estimates there are more than 88,000 wild horses and burros trampling federal herd management areas — more than three times the number of animals the rangelands can sustain without damaging vegetation, soils and other resources. The final EA and decision record follow President Trump's fiscal 2021 budget request last month that referred to wild horses and burros as an "existential threat" to the health of federal rangelands. It asks Congress for an additional $15 million to take steps to increase roundups and fund research for more effective methods of sterilization and birth-control techniques If successful, the one-dose vaccine by itself would not be enough to reduce herds to appropriate management levels. But it would help to control populations once they have reached sustainable levels. The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's National Wildlife Research Center, which will partner with BLM on the one-dose study, has tested a different version of the proposed vaccine. It required multiple doses but lasted two years. If the latest one-dose vaccine proves effective, BLM will still need to go through a "separate decision-making process" and site-specific analysis before using it on wild horses on the range, the final EA says. The plan to test 16 mares — currently being held at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City, Nev., as part of an inmate program to train the wild horses for adoption — includes a provision to study the behavior of the treated mares for three years against a "control" group of 16 untreated mares. Other ideas
Meanwhile, there is no shortage of calls for action. One of the latest comes from Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R), who is proposing that Congress allow the Interior Department to take dramatic steps to reduce wild horse and burro herds on federal rangelands. Lee wants to allow the Interior secretary to exempt the use of helicopters and other motorized vehicles in animal roundups from National Environmental Policy Act requirements. He also wants to waive NEPA mandates regarding sterilization of the animals, as long as the procedure is performed by a "licensed professional." Lee's proposal is included in an amendment to a broader energy package led by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The full Senate is expected to vote on the package this week. Lee's amendment, which is not expected to be approved, would allow the NEPA waiver after the secretary determines "that an overpopulation of wild free-roaming horses or burros exists on a given area of public land, and that action is necessary to remove excess horses or burros." Source; E&E News The Trump administration has struck another blow to common-sense management of public lands in the West. Virtually all the spectacular country neighboring the Escalante River in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah will be reopened to cattle grazing, thanks to a new plan for managing the monument released by the Interior Department last month. The move manages to be both anti-rancher and anti-environment.
Over the past few decades, similar deals around the West have sought to resolve conflicts between conservationists and ranchers running livestock on public lands by cooperation rather than confrontation and litigation. In Nevada’s Great Basin National Park, for instance, ranchers who held public land grazing permits when the land became part of the park in 1986 agreed to relinquish their permits in return for being compensated by the Conservation Fund, a nonprofit conservation group. These arrangements have attracted support from across the political spectrum. In 2001, George W. Bush’s libertarian interior secretary, Gale Norton, celebrated this approach as a “marketplace-oriented resolution for public land conflicts” — a win-win. The labyrinthine canyon lands of the Escalante River, a magnet for adventuresome recreationists, show why the idea is such a good one. In the late 1990s, ranchers holding the grazing permits there decided they had had enough. One wanted to retire, one wanted to run his stock in less difficult terrain and a third wanted to move his operation to another state. These willing sellers negotiated an agreement with the nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust to relinquish their grazing privileges for cash. The Utah State Division of Wildlife Resources then endorsed the idea of retiring the area from livestock grazing, Utah’s Republican governor, Michael Leavitt, signed off on it, and the Interior Department agreed, finding that it would restore a fragile and treasured gem to ecological health. The effect on the local grazing economy was infinitesimal; over 96 percent of the original national monument remained open to grazing at the same level as before. (The area retired from grazing remained within the monument’s boundaries after President Trump drastically shrank it in 2017.)
This means ranchers — particularly those struggling to scratch out a living on hardscrabble desert lands where conservation buyers are often the only willing buyers of grazing privileges — will suffer alongside the environment. The Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act (H.R.5737), legislation introduced in Congress by Adam Smith, a Democrat of Washington, and several co-sponsors would fix the problem, by protecting negotiated buyouts and permit retirements from the executive branch’s political whims. Unfortunately, it faces an uphill battle. The national trade association of enterprises running livestock on public land, the Public Lands Council — seeking to preserve its membership and influence — fiercely resists retiring even a single acre of public land from grazing. Perhaps the recklessness of the Interior Department’s latest decision will spur more members of Congress to support this sensible legislation that benefits ranchers while restoring public lands to health. Source: NY Times Opinion, "A free-market solution to protect a spectacular landscape was working", by John Leshy. Leshy was the general counsel at the Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration. He's also an emeritus professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and the author of the forthcoming book “Our Common Ground,” a history of America’s public lands. He has been on the board of the Grand Canyon Trust since 2002. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA) introduced the Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act, (H.R.5737) to reduce conflicts on federal public lands and increase flexibility for federal grazing permittees.  Livestock grazing on federal public lands conflicts with other multiple uses that can have impacts on wildlife habitat, wild horse HMA's and recreational opportunities. In many cases, simply removing livestock is the best solution to reduce or resolve these conflicts. However, current law and regulations either do not allow for the retirement of grazing permits or make the process unnecessarily difficult and uncertain. The voluntary retirement of grazing permits authorized by the Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act (VGPRA) is the most cost-effective and equitable way to address this issue. It would provide grazing permit holders the option to voluntarily waive their permits to graze on federal lands in exchange for market value compensation paid by private parties. The federal agency would then be directed to retire the associated grazing allotment from further grazing activity.
As expected, the proposed law is opposed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Public Lands Council, both industry groups, which contend that it would fly in the face of two previous acts of Congress enshrining grazing as part of a multi-pronged approach to public lands use.
“I don’t think that federal land management policy should be taken away from those line officers and range conservationists at the BLM and Forest Service in favor of third-party entities with their own agenda,” Tanner Beymer, associate director of government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said. Currently, environmental groups are allowed to purchase grazing permits from ranchers, but they cannot retire them without congressional authorization. |
TOPICS+ Horse Slaughter
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