In some cases, the map shows a whole bunch of unhealthy, red-tinted, allotments butting against green-tinted, healthy ones. (There’s an optional map layer that allows you to overlay grouse habitat.) PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade says examples like this raise the question of how an area dedicated to crops or livestock could be considered “meeting all standards,” when the majority of native vegetation has been supplanted. Fish & Wildlife is currently considering listing as endangered. And they’re sitting in prime habitat for Greater sage grouse-a species that U.S. A group of allotments in eastern Montana, for instance, are categorized as healthy, but are also clearly being used to grow crops. Soil and vegetation disturbances from mining, agriculture, livestock or off-road vehicles are visible in the satellite images. So, if the BLM says a piece of land is doing just fine, or if the BLM claims the landscape is taking a beating, anyone can zoom in to look for themselves and get details like the number of cattle on how many acres.
In addition to looking at the macro-scale numbers of how much land has passed the BLM health test, the new map shows satellite images of each individual allotment-a way to “sky truth,” as PEER puts it, what the agency is reporting. Shaded areas indicate where rangeland has failed to meet BLM health standards between 19.
The map is seven years in the making, the result of Freedom of Information Act requests PEER and Western Watersheds Project put to the BLM. Washington, DC-based non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) released an interactive map that collates over 45,000 BLM records that diagnose 20,000 allotments. But this week, a new tool to understand livestock impact on public lands was thrown into the mix. Locals responded in part by announcing a “ Cowboy Express” ride from Bodega Bay, California to Washington, DC to protest federal overreach and to demand that local District Manager Doug Furtado be ousted.ĭisagreements like the one in Battle Mountain are hardly novel in Western politics. Conditions were too dry to sustain the number of cattle that were grazing there, the BLM contended. When the Bureau of Land Management ordered the removal of cattle from public rangeland this summer near Battle Mountain, Nevada, the state was in its third year of severe drought. Like Tweet Email Print Subscribe Donate Now
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