Cattle grazing may spur lawsuit
Groups weighing legal action over habitat loss
Two federal agencies have decided to maintain a grazing program that some of their own scientists say is flawed and not suitable in the critical habitat areas for certain endangered species.
The decision was revealed in February in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Request by the Tucson-based Center of Biological Diversity and the Maricopa Audubon Society.
The groups have urged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service to exclude cattle from areas that are critical habitat for western yellow-billed cuckoo, northern Mexican garter snakes, Chiricahua leopard frogs and Sonora chub, all species protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Cattle degrade and damage these ecosystems, the groups say, especially in the Coronado National Forest, an area of southern Arizona that is particularly hot and dry. Surveys of 114 miles of streamside habitat, conducted by the center in the Coronado, found that cattle grazing had significantly damaged almost three-quarters of critical habitat for western yellow-billed cuckoos. Another survey found a significant amount of the critical habitat for leopard frogs had also been degraded.
“The Forest Service has the multiple-use philosophy, so when the multiple uses conflict, like cow grazing and protection of riparian areas … riparian values are discarded,” said Robin Silver, a co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Controversies over grazing in Arizona’s riparian areas have simmered for years, as environmental groups, concerned by the damage cattle cause to habitat for endangered species, spar with federal agencies, which have struggled to mix industry and conservation.
Earlier this year, the center sued the Bureau of Land Management over similar grazing concerns in the Agua Fria National Monument, a riparian area about 70 miles north of Phoenix with sensitive listed species.
Such legal imbroglios have left ranchers, who lease allotments on federal land, stuck in the middle. As the owners of the cattle that get into the areas, they are frequently the ones that conservation groups point to as secondary sources of blame for the damage.
The emergence of the new information sheds light on the internal conclusions of the USFWS staff, whose assessments of grazing in the Coronado National Forest mirror many of the effects noted by the center. In a fall evaluation on grazing in the forest, one USFWS biologist plainly stated how cattle affect riparian areas.
“We cannot control climate change, but we can control livestock impacts from grazing, trampling, erosion, and soil compaction,” wrote Susan Sferra, a species expert for western yellow-billed cuckoo at the time.
“We all discussed that the range grazing measures are inadequate to measure needs for sensitive/listed wildlife,” she continued in an internal email.
Further review of internal documents shows that agency biologists have recommended that cattle be removed from critical habitat for some of these species as far back as 2008. That year, the Wildlife Service and the Forest Service compiled a report to evaluate habitat for the Chiricahua leopard frog.
It was recommended that “no grazing or livestock management activities will occur in occupied habitat or where the frog is reasonably likely to occur, including aquatic sites and potential dispersal corridors where the frog is reasonably likely to occur.”
More recently, in the 2018 supplemental summary of concerns for western yellow-billed cuckoos, Sferra, the species expert, wrote, “We recommend no spring capping (development), no development of water tanks that are likely to cause a decline in riparian habitat, no grazing in riparian habitat (including ephemeral drainages with hackberry, oak, ash, sycamore, Arizona cypress, walnut, soapberry, etc.) where cuckoos breed at any time.”
Still, agency leaders green-lighted a program that uses a rangeland utilization technique that allows cattle access into riparian areas, even those with critical habitat. When asked why they would approve a program that enables an activity their own biologists said doesn’t work, agency representatives replied with “no comment.”
The Forest Service also declined to comment when asked about the program, but experts say the concept of range utilization is simple in theory.
“What it is, is the amount of forage or above-ground plant material that is consumed or trampled by livestock compared to the total production for the year,” said George Ruyle, a professor and extension specialist in rangeland management at the University of Arizona.
In short, if any area is overgrazed, cattle should be removed or excluded, conservation groups and biologists say, because it harms areas where endangered species rely on wetland environments. Another problem with this tactic, said one of the groups, is that in addition to being unsuitable near riparian areas, the areas under consideration aren’t being monitored.
“At this point, however, how they monitor is irrelevant because the streams are so hammered,” said Silver. “It really doesn’t matter what monitoring system they’re using. It just doesn’t work … You need to have exclosures like all the other forests have.”
Groups find evidence of habitat loss
Section seven of the Endangered Species Act requires federal agencies to ensure that proposed actions by land users do not jeopardize federally listed species or “adversely modify” their critical habitat, a process known as consultation. Grazing can do both, says Chris Bugbee, a biologist with the center who has led many of the survey efforts.
Legal obligations to both protect endangered species’ habitat and a rancher’s ability to run cattle have presented challenges for the two federal agencies. Conservation groups say the agencies have abdicated their responsibility to protect critical habitat, the designated areas with specific environmental conditions for species threatened by habitat loss.
“The laws say that in order to provide for survival, much less recovery, you have to use the best science. Best science basically says that in our desert, in ephemeral and perennial streams … cattle grazing is not conducive or compatible with riparian health,” said Silver. “It just doesn’t work.”
Consequently, the center, along with the Maricopa Audubon Society, submitted a 60-day notice of intent on Feb. 28 to sue both the USFWS and the Forest Service. In the notice, they cited numerous ESA violations that they say have led to illegally damaged critical habitat, all as a result of allowing cattle into the areas.
When consulting with the USFWS last spring, the Forest Service said overgrazing is not a problem for western yellowbilled cuckoo critical habitat. The agency even requested that USFWS remove the term “overgrazing” from the critical habitat determination.
In response, the USFWS said, “grazing operations that are properly managed, such as USFS lands under management under the Coronado National Forest Land Management Plan and Allotment Management Plans, may be in compliance with grazing standards but may still result in reduced riparian habitat quality and quantity over time for western yellow-billed cuckoos.”
When updating their plan to allow grazing in the forest, representatives in 2018 said, “permitted activities — such as livestock grazing, outfitter guiding, and ecotourism guiding — do not compromise healthy populations of native species, nor do they adversely impact habitat components.”
But the center, in its notice, included dozens of photos of critical habitat where cattle have been allowed to run rampant, muddying waters, fouling ponds, browsing young trees and compacting soil. The documentation includes photos, GPS coordinates, date and time stamps, and detailed explanations of what was observed.
The materials “represent new information that indicate to the contrary that cow grazing is diminishing designated riparian Yellow-billed Cuckoo Critical Habitat,” states the 60-day notice.
To correct the violations, the groups are requesting that the agencies restart the consultation process. As a part of the ESA, an action agency, in this case the Forest Service, and the USFWS must consult with one another to map out recovery plans for a listed species.
If those plans are ineffective or if new information changes the way the plans are carried out, then reinitiating consultation is warranted. In this case, conservation groups say it is required given that more recent information shows a greater degree, previously not considered, of cattle damage to critical habitat in riparian areas where the four listed species live.
Based on the information found through their FOIA request, the Center for Biological Diversity and Maricopa Audubon Society say that the grazing utilization and rest-rotation scheme used by the Forest Service is unsuitable for riparian critical habitat.
“It takes careful management to manage grazing in riparian areas and riparian area grazing management is both very site specific and it’s nuanced,” said Ruyle. “So if you have a big pasture with a riparian area running down the middle of it, you’re going to overgraze that riparian area if you just leave cows out there for a certain period of time.”
‘Grazing can be beneficial’
While ranchers often receive the brunt of the blame for cattle damage, the issue can be more nuanced. For one thing, as the conservation groups have indicated, it’s the federal agencies’ responsibility to ensure that critical habitat remains protected.
In some instances, ranchers have actually provided a benefit to endangered species. Sonia Gasho and her family have ranched in Pearce, 80 miles east of Tucson, for 16 years. Her 13,500-acre operation spans private, state and federal lands, where uplands, lowlands, and riparian areas much like the ones that these species rely on create a patchwork of wildlife habitat and fertile farmland.
Her allotment in the Coronado National Forest includes 5,400 acres with critical habitat for the Chiricahua leopard frog. According to Gasho, living with and among a threatened species requires a delicate dance that is both choregraphed and planned.
Shortly after Gasho purchased the ranch, critical habitat was proposed in the area that she leases. The federal agencies worked with her and the Arizona Game and Fish Department to use her stock ponds for tadpole introduction. These partnerships have been key to ensuring that her cattle and the critical habitat function alongside one another.
“I think if you have a plan and can look at what species you’re working with, no, I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive and with the frog, oftentimes, grazing can be beneficial,” she added. “Most of the critical habitat, not just in the Dragoon, but other mountain ranges, are manmade ponds or tanks.”
Like Gasho, Jeff Homack ranches across a range of land types. A part of his land includes an allotment in the Coronado National Forest. Having ranched in the foothills of the Pinaleño Mountains since 1970, his family is all too familiar with the delicate balance that comes along with ranching alongside wildlife.
Homack says he’s never run into issues and that he’s always followed the Forest Service rules and regulations. He credits the ranching community in southeast Arizona for doing most of the work that’s needed to live among nature, ensuring water sources are maintained, cleaning out troughs and building fence lines.
“We are conservators. We want to make sure that we don’t overgraze, and we don’t have too many cattle,” said Homack. “We’re very aware that there’s environmental concerns, we respect that. We’re also aware that we are probably one of the best stewards of the lands, regarding the wildlife.”
4 species help tell the story
Four endangered species, in particular, have served as catalysts for tension among ranchers, conservation groups and federal agencies. These species need healthy riparian areas to thrive and for recovery to be successful. Their reliance on riparian areas means they’ve become the face of the struggle that exists between ranching and conservation.
Western yellow-billed cuckoo
For the western yellow-billed cuckoo, conservation groups say the USFWS relied on old data from 2017 to determine the impacts of grazing on critical habitat. They say grazing, combined with unprecedented drought, has altered the habitat area previously considered, which is now nearly unsuitable for the bird.
In 2021, following a record-breaking monsoon, Sferra, the USFWS species expert for cuckoos, wrote, “given the rarity of a monsoon as wet as this year, management to protect recent woody regeneration from livestock may be especially beneficial to cuckoos and other riparian and xeroriparian dependent species . ... The tree and shrub regeneration in drainage bottoms has a greater probability of survival to maturity if livestock are prevented from accessing new growth.”
Chiricahua leopard frog
In 2020, the center surveyed critical habitat for Chiricahua leopard frogs in 17 grazing allotments. The frogs were found in less than 10% of the ponds visited. An obvious factor said Bugbee, one of the lead surveyors for the center, is reduced quality of habitat due to grazing. Streamside vegetation was effectively absent throughout many areas, and waterways were so trampled and polluted that their function as critical habitat for the frogs was nullified.
In a 2009 internal report produced by the USFWS and the USFS, recommendations for avoiding degradation of frog critical habitat included removing grazing from areas where the frogs are present, halting maintenance of stock ponds when frogs are using them, and coordination with USFWS to develop site-specific plans that keep cattle out of areas where frogs are observed.
More recent documents, from 2021, suggest protecting and restoring breeding habitat. But based on the center’s surveys, none of these recommendations are being followed.
Northern Mexican garter snake USFWS biologists said that incidental take, which is anything that would harm or kill a species, for the northern Mexican garter snake will be measured by the available prey base, including Gila topminnow, Chiricahua leopard frog or Sonoran tiger salamander.
Those are not the only species the snakes eat, so basing the threat to the species solely on the species is misleading at best, say conservation groups. None of these species have protected critical habitat, so protecting the snakes by saying the species they rely on will be protected is ineffective, the groups continued.
“This scheme is effectively a shell game with no protection for designated riparian Critical Habitat essential for Recovery,” said the notice submitted by the center and Maricopa Audubon Society. “Secondly, NMGS are not imperiled due to a lack of food, but more importantly to structural habitat loss and invasive species.”
Sonora chub
The Sonora chub doesn’t have critical habitat, but grazing still negatively impacts the waters where they live, according to the USFWS. In its 2013 assessment for Sonora chub, the agency recognized that the fish were present in the California Gulch but failed to designate it as critical habitat. Instead of protecting this area, officials said the mere presence of the fish would ensure that consultation would ensue following the leasing of grazing allotments.
The Forest Service has applied its rangeland utilization metric in this area. If a certain area containing Sonora chub shows signs of excessive grazing, the cows would be removed. But conservation groups say years of surveys show that monitoring rarely happens, and even when evidence of cattle damage persist, the cows are rarely removed.
A lawsuit becomes more likely
Ranches like those operated by Gasho and Homack highlight bright spots, where ranchers have taken the lead, making a living in a way that is viable while also protecting threatened wildlife. But conservation organizations like the center argue that not all ranching operations are equal.
In this case, conservation groups say the fault lies mainly at the feet of the federal entities that manage the land. According to the Coronado National Forest website, “there are over 35,000 head of cattle permitted on almost 200 allotments.”
Bugbee said that cattle are supposed to be removed from an area once they’ve grazed beyond what the agency has determined is acceptable. The responsibility to ensure that the cattle grazing on the allotments don’t harm critical habitat is that of the federal land managers.
They have a duty to maintain the fences and keep cattle out of areas where the best available science says they shouldn’t be. Yet Bugbee says based on the hundreds of miles he has surveyed, that’s not happening.
“There are a lot of problems with their approach. When the agencies, or in many cases the permittees, measure utilization, it’s usually just one or two species of common plants that they’re looking at,” said Bugbee. “But in the Southwest, cattle diet is so varied that you’re really not capturing what’s being consumed out on the range by measuring just the utilization of a couple palatable plants. It doesn’t address wildlife needs.”
Many of those needs, according to the reams of photos, coordinates, and observations produced by groups like the center, are rapidly disappearing. Numerous biologists, ecologists and species experts have studied the impacts of cattle, specifically, in riparian areas, an ecosystem that some researchers say makes up less than 0.4% of Arizona.
“A lot of the endangered … aquatic species, they require perennial flow,” said Juliet Stromberg, a retired plant ecologist at Arizona State University, last fall. “And so if you’re putting in stressors that are reducing, converting a stream from perennial to intermittent, you’re going to be degrading habitat for a subset of the species.”
Her assessment is just one among dozens of other scientists who have observed clear colorations between the presence of cattle in riverine ecosystems and degradation. But Silver, the co-founder of the center, argues that the Forest Service is prioritizing industry over preservation.
Their 60-day notice of intent to sue the two federal agencies was filed on Feb 28. So far, neither of the agencies have responded or indicated that they’re willing to take corrective action to remedy the concerns mentioned in the notice, the groups say, meaning a lawsuit is almost assured.
“On April 28, we’ll file the lawsuit if they don’t come to the table beforehand,” said Silver. “And it’ll take about six months, and then we’ll have a court order, and then they can come up with a different scheme.”
Lindsey Botts is an environmental reporter for The Arizona Republic/azcentral. Follow his reporting on Twitter at @lkbotts and Lkbotts on Instagram. Tell him about stories at lindsey.botts@azcentral.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.