Grazing pilot project put aside

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife has shelved its pilot grazing project in southeast Washington after a judge ruled the agency had acted arbitrarily in moving ahead with the program over the objections of its own biologists.

How the ruling affects a controversial cattle-grazing project in the Whisky Dick and Quilomene Wildlife areas of eastern Kittitas County in May and June, though, hasn’t been decided.

“If the state chooses to ignore the decision because it technically applies to the 2009 authorization for Pintler Creek on the Asotin Wildlife Area and nowhere else, they do so at their own legal risk,” said Jon Marvel, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, the Idaho-based conservation group that had sued the Wildlife Department over its pilot grazing project.

Western Watersheds has also sued the department over its part in the management process to graze portions of the Whisky Dick and Quilomene Wildlife areas and other nearby state and private lands on neighboring pastures in eastern Kittitas County.

Western Watersheds attorney Kristin Ruether said the ruling on Friday “addresses the heart of whether it’s appropriate to do commercial grazing on state wildlife areas. It may be a turning point. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Superior Court rulings are not binding on other courts, Ruether said. “But they can certainly be persuasive, especially when the facts might be so similar.”

Jack Field of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association said he was surprised by the ruling.

“I honestly don’t know how that will impact the (Whisky Dick and Quilomene plans),” he said.

Wildlife Department Director Phil Anderson said he thought the issues related to the pilot grazing and Kittitas County projects were “apples and oranges.”

But he said Judge Paula Casey’s ruling had essentially set a new standard for grazing on state wildlife lands that the department would have to consider.

“I think we do need to be mindful of this standard the judge brought into determining whether grazing is appropriate or not — from (the previous standard of) doing no harm to the quality of habitat for wildlife to having to have a benefit for wildlife,” Anderson said.

Marvel said livestock grazing projects on state wildlife lands “are illegal as currently constituted,” a statement with which assistant attorney general Matthew Kernutt said he strongly disagreed.

“This ruling is not binding on other Superior Court judges,” Kernutt said, “and was not a ruling that all grazing on state wildlife lands is arbitrary and capricious.”

In her ruling, Casey dismissed claims that the Wildlife Department had violated state environmental law. But she lambasted the agency in what one observer called an “astounding 10-minute speech” for continuing the pilot process over criticisms and concerns by its own biologists.

Ruether said her brief to the court referred to “an avalanche of documents” showing grazing was harmful to wildlife, not beneficial.