Lawsuit seeks Grand Staircase grazing plan

An Idaho-based conservation group is suing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to force creation of a grazing plan to improve rangeland conditions at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The agency promised a plan for 88 grazing allotments — currently permitted for 11,000 cow-calf pairs — shortly after President Bill Clinton created the 1.9 million-acre southern Utah monument in 1996. Range surveys after that showed 21 allotments failed to meet BLM standards and needed improved grazing practices, but agency officials this year said the process never fully unfolded because it was so controversial with ranchers and area officials. "We should expect better than this out of the BLM [everywhere], let alone where we’re dealing with a national monument," said Jonathan Ratner, a Wyoming-based representative for Western Watersheds Project. Now Western Watersheds and an ecologist formerly employed by the group are suing to demand a plan to improve the range on those 21 allotments along with a proposal to maintain the rest. The lawsuit, filed July 6 in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks timing restrictions and rotating rest periods on grazing in the affected grazing leases...more