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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Guide Weather Subscribe Contact Us February 16, 2005 Groups hammering out grazing details By Robert Plain Ashland Daily Tidings A relatively small group with a wide array of interests attended a Bureau of Land Management meeting Tuesday night to discuss the proposed Resource Management Plan and Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. Howard Hunter, BLM's assistant manager for the monument, estimated there were only 36 people at the meeting, a far cry from the days when a meeting concerning the monument would draw closer to 300. However small in number though, the attendees represented the same broad swath of public interests that have traditionally made writing a management plan for the monument a difficult task. After a brief summary of the proposed plan by BLM staff, the assembled group convened to an adjacent room in the Bellview Grange to mingle and discuss the plan among small groups in what seemed more like an alcohol-free cocktail party than a public meeting. "This allows [the different stakeholders] to talk to each other and get to know each other on a more personal level," Hunter said after the meeting. "It makes it easier for us to work with one another." Hunter believes grazing and access issues will emerge as some of the most relevant issues to stem from the proposed management plan and those were some of the very same topics of conversation that were heard around the room. Grazing is not fully addressed in the PRMP/FEIS because the presidential proclamation that created the monument specifically calls for a separate study on the effects grazing has on the preservation of the biological diversity of the monument. "Should grazing be found incompatible with protecting the objects of biological interest, the Secretary [of the Interior] shall retire the grazing allotments pursuant to the process of applicable law," reads the proclamation that President Clinton wrote in forming the national monument in June 2000. Hunter says this separate study will be completed in 2006 at a cost of around $1 million. However, ranchers and conservationists both say they may never see the results of that study. The two groups, both of whom have a vested interest in the monument and have often been at odds on its use, are now cooperating on a federal buyout that would pay ranchers in exchange for relinquishing their rights to graze cattle inside the federally protected 52,940-acre swath of land on the California-Oregon border. "We are working together on a retirement program," said Robert Miller, who holds the rights to graze 150 head of cattle in the Soda Mountain area of the monument. "A buyout may be the cheapest way for the American public to get cows out of the monument." Miller, a fourth-generation rancher in the area, says to study the effects of cattle grazing will cost between $5 million and $10 million. "We see a buyout as the most feasible way out of what is perceived a social ill," he said, adding that he disagrees with the notion that cattle harm natural resources and areas of biological diversity. "We feel cattle are part of the biodiversity. People think they can preserve nature by locking up the natural resources." But despite his assertion, Miller said ranchers know the American public views their livelihood as being counterproductive to preserving areas of ecological sensitivity. "People think they are going to lose all this if the cows are here," he said. "If they want the cows out, all we ask is for the replacement value so we can take our livestock somewhere else. We're not asking for a handout. If they want us to relinquish our rights then all we want is a fair price." Pepper Trail, a Ph.D. in ornithology and the conservation chair with the Rogue Valley Audubon Society, confirmed that environmentalists and ranchers have both agreed "to the concept of a buyout." He said the only hurdle left is agreeing on what the grazing permits are worth and finding the capital to pay off the ranchers. "It's now up to the Oregon delegation to come up with the funds for it," he said. "It's all been going on behind closed doors but it's been pretty widely reported in the press." Staff writer Robert Plain can be reached at 482-3456 x 3040 or [email protected]. 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