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12 CapitalPress.com to claims by What’s Upstream that farmers are unregulated polluters who let cows wade in rivers. “This indication from Ray Starling is important. It gives us optimism some of these things will be dealt with,” Baron said. Between 2011 and 2016, the Environmental Protec- tion Agency financially sup- ported What’s Upstream, which was organized by the Swinomish Indian Tribe and several environmental groups. They hoped to in- fluence Washington state lawmakers to vote for strict- er limits on farming near waterways. The campaign included a website, radio ads and a letter-writing campaign, but billboards in Olympia and Bellingham attract- ed the attention of feder- al lawmakers. The EPA withdrew its support soon after Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., called the billboards “disturbing” and “malicious.” The tribe, funded by an EPA grant passed through the Northwest Indian Fish- eries Commission, had a budget of some $655,000 for the campaign. The EPA’s inspector general has yet to release a congressionally requested audit into how the money was used. Some federal lawmakers accused the EPA of break- ing a federal law prohib- iting the grant from being used to lobby policymakers. The Washington Public Dis- closure Commission recent- ly ruled What’s Upstream didn’t need to report its po- litical activities. Although the campaign advocated mandatory 100-foot buffers, it did not cite a specific bill and did not need to register as a lobbying effort, accord- ing to the PDC. The PDC was responding to a complaint from Save Family Farming that named a tribe official, Seattle lob- bying firm Strategies 360 and then-EPA Northwest Administrator Dennis Mc- Lerran. The Trump adminis- tration has not yet appointed a new region administrator. Baron said Save Fam- ily Farming will ask Mc- Lerran’s successor to get back federal money spent on What’s Upstream and ensure the tribe doesn’t re- sume the campaign. “Given the severe dis- appointment with the state taking this issue seriously, it’s gratifying the federal government with the new administration is consider- ing this a pretty serious is- sue,” Baron said. Starling said the White House supports trade. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Part- nership, which many farm groups supported. “The president is committed to negotiating agreements that secure open and equitable access to foreign markets,” Starling said. Starling did not talk about immigration policy, but said farm labor will be another top priority. “We are getting to a point of push comes to shove when it comes to access to a reliable workforce. That is something we definitely have to work on for agricul- ture,” he said. Starling said farmers and ranchers have been the vic- tims of “one regulatory pro- posal after another.” “We have to halt the regulatory onslaught,” he said. “The administration will never lose sight of the fact that the number one farm preservation tool we have is farm profitability, not buzzwords, not catch phrases, or a federal grant program.” BATTLE from Page 1 If the litigation proves successful in scaling back the monument’s size, it would also effectively thwart potential re- strictions on cattle grazing. Although inclusion in the monument doesn’t automati- cally prohibit grazing — as it does most commercial logging — critics say ranchers will in- evitably face increased scrutiny and curtailments. “Even though the language of the proclamation says graz- ing can continue, they just reg- ulate you out of business,” said Karen Budd-Falen, an attorney specializing in public land dis- putes. Under the original Cas- cade-Siskiyou National Mon- ument proclamation issued by President Bill Clinton, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had to analyze whether grazing interferes with “protecting the objects of biological interest.” If necessary, the agency was ordered to retire allotments. In 2008, the study found “negative interactions between livestock and individual biolog- ical objects of interest,” mean- ing that grazing was “not com- patible” with their protection in some locations. This determination con- vinced Mike Dauenhauer and several other ranchers to sell their grazing rights to environ- mental groups for an undis- closed amount. ‘Writing on the wall’ “The bottom line was we saw the writing on the wall. The end was near,” Dauenhau- er said. “We fi gured anything was better than nothing, and the BLM was going to give us nothing.” Dauenhauer said he’s skep- tical of the study’s objectivity and believes the outcome was largely predetermined. In his view, the biological di- versity of the area was retained through more than 100 years of grazing by cattle, which have an impact on the land similar to that of deer and elk. “I think the cows are part of the biological diversity. I don’t think they hurt it in any respect as long as they’re managed cor- rectly,” Dauenhauer said. When the monument was fi rst established, Bradshaw felt as though he’d largely dodged a bullet — fewer than 30 acres of his BLM grazing allotment were included. Now, roughly half of Brad- shaw’s 10,000-acre BLM al- lotment is encompassed by the monument. If grazing is eventually re- stricted on that allotment, he could still graze cattle on pri- vate land and a national forest allotment. Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press Jake Groves, operations director for the Murphy Co., examines a forest stand near the Cascade-Sis- kiyou National Monument. Public forestland on which the company depends for timber were recently included in the monument’s expansion. However, losing the BLM acreage would disrupt the con- tinual availability of forage through the seasons, potentially rendering his cattle operation economically unsustainable. “We won’t be able to use our rotational grazing system,” Bradshaw said. “We would lose half our grazing season.” onto Murphy’s property, as well as the public outcry in reaction to logging near the monument. Visitors often don’t realize that private inholdings are with- in its boundaries, he said. “It changes the social li- cense. The fi rst time people see logging trucks rolling through the monument, questions get asked,” Groves said. “I don’t have unlimited hours in the day to explain our actions.” Proponents of the mon- ument say it’s economically benefi cial, bringing in hunters, fi shermen, snow-shoers, hikers and others. “There’s a huge amount of tourism-related revenue coming into this area,” said Dickey of the Friends of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. The monument is also valu- able for university scientists and students who research its bountiful animal and plant life, he said. “It’s really great to be able to use the monument as a background for teaching envi- ronmental education.” Timber impacts For the Murphy Co., which owns forestland and plywood mills, the impacts of the monu- ment’s growth are two-fold. Up to half the company’s timber volume comes from federal land during some sea- sons, so the expansion equates to a loss of raw material in the long term, said Jake Groves, its operations director. “It’s wood out of the wood basket,” Groves said. “It’s just been a constant erosion of the available land base, from our perspective.” Mills are geographically limited in sourcing timber, as some logs are too distant to transport economically, he said. Logs from the Southern Or- egon region are peeled at the fi rm’s facility in White City, Ore., for raw veneer, which is used in plywood and engi- neered wood at its other plants. In all, the company employs nearly 800 people and invests in state-of-the art technology to process logs effi ciently, but none of that equipment can operate without wood, Groves said. “This stuff can’t make ve- neer out of air.” Aside from the timber sup- ply, the monument expansion affects Murphy’s private forests in the region, he said. Of the nearly 50,000 acres owned by the company in Southern Oregon, roughly 4,000 acres are surrounded by the monument or are adjacent to it. Groves is concerned about overstocked federal forests fu- eling wildfi res that will spread Lawsuits fi led For the Murphy Co., though, the economic threat is big enough to justify fi ling a lawsuit that asks a federal judge to declare the expansion unlaw- ful. Other cases have been fi led by the American Forest Re- sources Council, which rep- resents timber interests, and the Association of O&C Counties, which represents counties that depend on revenue from federal timber sales. The three complaints rely on the same basic theory: A majority of the new monument acreage consists of so-called O&C Lands, which the federal government has dedicated to sustained timber production. By effectively banning most logging on those O&C Lands, the monument expansion was unlawful, the lawsuits claim. Several environmental groups have intervened as de- fendants in the lawsuit fi led by Murphy Lumber, arguing their interests “may not be adequate- ly represented by the existing parties to the litigation.” As reasons for their inter- vention, the environmentalists cite “the federal government’s frequent reluctance to ade- quately protect the O&C lands” and the governmental transi- tion to a “president and federal agency leadership who did not participate in the review and expansion.” Environmentalists are also seeking intervenor status in the case fi led by the Association of O&C Counties. Based on history, it’s not likely the Trump administra- tion would overrule the envi- ronmental intervenors to reach a settlement scaling back the monument’s size, said Karen Budd-Falen, the natural re- sources attorney. “They can do that, but it doesn’t happen very much,” she said. “It’s really rare.” The U.S. Interior Depart- ment, which oversees the BLM and the national monument, is now headed by Ryan Zinke, a former Montana congressman who supports multiple use of public lands, Budd-Falen said. However, it’s still too early to tell how much sway the In- terior Department will have in these cases, compared to the infl uence of the U.S. Justice Department, she said. “I just don’t know how the new administration will handle it,” Budd-Falen said. Obama’s impact The Cascade-Siskiyou Na- tional Monument is one of several designations made by the Obama administration that have stirred controversy, said Ethan Lane, executive direc- tor of the Public Lands Coun- cil, which advocates for cattle grazing. “It certainly has been on our radar,” he said. Altogether, the Obama ad- ministration used the Antiqui- ties Act to establish or expand more than 30 national mon- uments totaling 550 million acres of land and water, Lane said. The massive scope of Obama’s designations has prompted calls for Trump to shrink monument boundaries, he said. Theoretically, Trump could decrease the size of these mon- uments as swiftly as Obama increased them, Lane said. “There’s no red tape or analysis or box-checking required.” However, the overly liberal use of the Antiquities Act — which allows a president to declare national monuments on public land and restrict its uses — has also compelled demands to reform the statute, he said. “It’s been turned from a tool for protection into a large land-planning tool, and that’s just not what was intended,” said Lane. For example, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has in- troduced a bill that would re- quire Congress to approve a na- tional monument designation, in addition to the governor and legislature of the state it’s in. That language, or similar provisions, could also be rolled into a broader package of legis- lation, Lane said. “There are a lot of resource issues that need attention.” Environmental groups that support the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument see some of the hardships claimed by the ranching and timber industries as overstated. The Soda Mountain Wilder- ness Council used private funds to purchase grazing leases in several allotments from willing ranchers, said Dave Willis, the organization’s chairman. Ranchers who refused the buyouts have continued graz- ing cattle on some allotments — such as Dixie and Buck Mountain — that failed to meet several grazing standards set by BLM to improve rangeland health, he said in an email. Forest management isn’t entirely banned within the monument, as the proclamation allows timber harvest that’s part of an “authorized science-based ecological restoration project,” Willis said, citing the monu- ment proclamation. Much of the O&C Lands within the expanded boundary are classifi ed as “late-succes- sional” and “riparian” reserves, or have reforestation problems, he said. “The ecological bene- fi ts of protecting these relative- ly very few acres exceed their commercial timber volume value.” Monitoring data will be shared with ranchers GRAZING from Page 1 Jim Pena on March 10 and copied it to USFS Chief Tom Tidwell stating the way the al- lotments were monitored and the issuance of the letters vio- lated USFS policy. Non-com- pliance letters are a fi rst step in the loss of grazing rights, he said. “There appears to be a re- luctance to resolve this issue in an appropriate manner by both (USFS Tonasket) Rang- er Matt Reidy and (Okan- ogan-Wenatchee National Forest) Supervisor Mike Wil- liams,” Newhouse wrote to Pena. In a March 24 response, Pena wrote that he fully sup- ports grazing allotments, that issues of concern arose from monitoring and that non-com- pliance letters did not mean any decisions had been made regarding permits. “The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest does not intend to shorten, limit or in any other way reduce permitted grazing during the 2017 fi eld season,” Pena wrote. USFS personnel will work “closely and collaboratively to resolve issues” during Annual Operating Instruction meetings with ranchers this spring, Pena wrote. Monitoring data will be shared with ranchers and joint monitoring will take place this season, he wrote. But that does not “address many of the issues the con- 3 British Columbia Wash. 3 Area in detail WASH. Osoyoos Lake Oroville 97 Tonasket Ranger District, Okanogan National Forest River EPA from Page 1 ‘We saw the writing on the wall. The end was near’ OKANOGAN NATIONAL FOREST N OKANOGAN Tonasket FERRY 21 97 5 miles Twisp 20 Okanogan EPA supported What’s Upstream between 2011 and 2016 March 31, 2017 Omak 155 20 Okanogan COLVILLE CONFEDERATED TRIBES Alan Kenaga/Capital Press gressman and ranchers have raised over the monitoring pro- cess having been conducted in a manner that appears inconsis- tent with USFS policy and pro- cedures,” said Will Boyington, a Newhouse spokesman. “It’s nothing more than horse manure and white wash,” DeTro said of Pena’s letter. One registered letter of non-compliance for overgraz- ing went to a permittee who had no cows on the allotment, DeTro said. In another case two monitoring sites were not on the rancher’s allotment, he said. At the least those instances con- stitute “gross negligence,” he said. Permittees were not notifi ed or invited to participate in mon- itoring despite a clear policy requiring it, Newhouse wrote in his March 10 letter to Pena. None of the permittees were warned of potential issues be- fore receiving non-compliance letters three months later and none of them received any doc- umentation, Newhouse wrote. That also violates USFS pol- icies, warrants a full review and the non-compliance letters should be voided or amended, he wrote. Reidy, the Tonasket ranger, said policies were not violated because permittees were told during AOI meetings in 2016 that monitoring would occur. Notifi cation requirements de- pend on the circumstances, he said. “We will improve things for 2017. We will call them (permittees) a week before the monitoring so they have an op- portunity to join us. In 2016, we didn’t do that in all instances,” Reidy said. “I’m absolutely committed to improving our relationships, coordination and communication.” Newhouse wrote to Pena that most of the permittees “are third- and fourth-generation families who have operated the allotments for decades,” have had good relations with the USFS and never received non-compliance letters. The Washington Farm Bu- reau and Cattle Producers of Washington also sent letters to the USFS objecting to the non-compliance letters. The unprecedented num- ber of letters has “deeply in- sulted these (rancher) families and broken trust between the agency and the public,” said Nicole Kuchenbuch, a rancher and president of the Okanogan County Farm Bureau. Lengthy meetings between ranchers and Reidy resulted in the ranger being unwilling to be held accountable and refusing to answer questions, Kuchen- buch said. “We had two meetings with a small group of permittees and ranching advocates and had some really, really good discus- sions,” Reidy said, adding that he rescinded one letter because he had made an honest mistake. In the rest of the cases, he said, letters of compliance will be issued once monitoring shows collective solutions have worked. Last season, a USFS range technician threatened to bring in federal marshals and have a rancher arrested if he didn’t have his cattle off an allotment on time, said DeTro, who called USFS actions like the “Gesta- po.” “Never before have we been treated with such unwarrant- ed disrespect from the Forest Service. ... We are asking them to rescind the letters and make a good faith effort to rebuild rapport in our community,” Kuchenbuch said. Kuchenbuch, Newhouse, DeTro and the Washington Farm Bureau made the point that USFS ignored repeated requests for proof that ranch- ers had overgrazed, grazed in unauthorized areas or damaged streambanks. One family was sent an of- fi cial Freedom of Information Act case number and a bill for $175 even though it did not submit a FOIA request but sim- ply wanted access to its fi le, Newhouse wrote to Pena. Ne- whouse requested ranchers be allowed full access to their fi les without cost. The large increase in non-compliance letters was be- cause more grazing violations occurred because parts of the allotments had been burned in 2015 wildfi res, Reidy said. It’s taken time to compile data supporting the non-com- pliance letters but the infor- mation is being shared in this year’s AOIs, mailed or picked up by ranchers at the district ranger offi ce, he said.