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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Graze limit draws fire


Fence posts lay broken next to a dirt road that leads south on the charred landscape of south central Idaho on the east flank of the Murphy Complex of fires late last week. Associated Press
 (File Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
John Miller Associated Press

BOISE – Gov. Butch Otter and U.S. Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo on Monday took up the cause of ranchers on the Idaho-Nevada border who blame federal grazing restrictions for allowing grass to grow tall on public land, a development they say exacerbated the 1,030-square-mile Murphy Complex wildfires.

That puts Otter and Craig, both ranchers, and Crapo, a lawyer, at odds with environmental groups that have fought in the courts to reduce livestock grazing in the region to help species such as the sage grouse.

The Murphy fires were 98 percent contained Monday, said fire information officer Bill Watt in Castleford, Idaho. Managers began releasing some of the 1,100 firefighters who were assigned to the blaze, which was touched off by lightning on July 16.

Two years ago, a federal judge ruled that half of the 1.7 million-acre Jarbidge resource area where the Murphy Complex has burned was no longer open to livestock grazing because the U.S. Bureau of Land Management didn’t adequately determine the impact to sage grouse habitat in 28 livestock grazing allotments used by 11 ranchers. The ruling came after a lawsuit filed by the Hailey-based Western Watersheds Project, an environmental group.

Now, the three Idaho Republicans say the resulting grazing reductions led to heavy fuels – something that wouldn’t have happened if the judge hadn’t intervened.

“I can’t remember the last time we called out the fire department to put out a manure fire,” Otter said. “But we have called out the fire department with grass fires.”

No serious injuries have been reported, but much grazing area has burned and an unknown number of cattle have died.

Otter, Crapo and Craig, who spoke at a news conference at Boise Airport after flying over the fire in an Idaho Air National Guard Blackhawk helicopter, also criticized BLM fire managers for not acting quickly enough to put out the blaze when it was still small. They said ranchers told them Monday that bulldozers were ready to start digging fire lines July 16 – but federal rules prevented the equipment from being deployed more quickly.

“Do you have to have an anthropologist in front (documenting) arrowheads?” Craig said. “They have locked themselves up (with rules). That’s what the BLM has done.”

BLM state director Tom Dyer could not be reached for comment.

Rick Vander Voet, a field manager with the BLM in Jarbidge, Nev., said last week that BLM offices are assessing grazing allotments to determine the effects of the grazing restrictions. The assessments are expected to be finished in the next two years, Vander Voet said.

Katie Fite, of the Western Watersheds Project, said Idaho’s governor and two U.S. senators were making political hay out of the massive fire in order to promote an agenda of aggressive grazing rules that ranchers have demanded for years without regard to species such as the sage grouse, whose habitat has been affected by livestock encroachment.

Climate change, drought, high temperatures and BLM programs of planting of grasses favored by cattle – but more flammable than native vegetation – all played a role in the fires, Fite said.

“They (Otter, Craig and Crapo) are going to blow this up for lawless grazing,” she said. “They’re trying to create antagonism between ‘nasty environmentalists’ who keep us constrained by ‘nasty environmental laws.’ The reaction to this is calling for pretty much unregulated grazing.”