In the late 1970's the BLM commissioned Dana Yensen of the University of Idaho to write a report on vegetation change in the Birds of Prey Area. "A Grazing History of Southern Idaho with Emphasis on the Birds of Prey Study Area" (Boise District BLM, 1980) makes fascinating reading. Yensen exhaustively read early accounts of vegetation, studied early sketches and paintings, pored over historical photographs, and in some cases was able to go to sites in those photographs and take identical pictures eighty years later.
  Yensen concentrated on some of Idaho's driest rangeland, in the Birds of Prey Area, but her findings are relevant to all of Idaho's high desert. She found that the presettlement landscape basically consisted of sagebrush, with winterfat in the drier areas. Basin wild rye occasionally towered over the shrubs. Forbs and bunchgrasses were abundant in the understory. Early settlers felt that the range was so rich that it could support large numbers of livestock in perpetuity.
  This changed quickly. The Oregon Trail was an early casualty of overgrazing, with some 180,000 head of livestock passing over the trail in peak years. Emigrants were forced to camp far from the route so their stock could graze.
  Away from the emigrant trails, horses--not cattle or sheep--were the main domestic livestock. They were usually in demand for agriculture and transportation, and excess horses could be driven long distances to remote markets. Unfortunately, horses (wild and domesticated) are among the most destructive animals on the range.
  The next round of domestic livestock was sheep, which became the dominant livestock when the railroads came to southern Idaho in the 1880's. Sheep require tending for defense against predators, but they don't need nearly as much water as cattle. They can range farther from streams and over rougher terrain. At the turn of the century, Owyhee County supported millions of sheep Animal Use Months (AUM's). (Each AUM stands for five sheep feeding for one month.)
  Sheep markets and numbers have drastically declined since those days. Today, most sheep range is in better condition than cattle range, simply because sheep numbers are down. Many Idaho livestockmen want to convert their BLM allotments from sheep to cattle.
  Cattle came last as major domestic grazers. Their great weight and appetites made them excellent range destroyers, as they could compact the soil even as they removed its protective vegetative covering--leading to instant erosion. However, cattle's traditional range is restricted by their bovine nature and their thirst for water. They tend to congregate along streams, damaging riparian areas by eating vegetation and breaking down stream banks. The first removes shade and warms the water, the second silts in the stream bed.
  How severe were the effects of overgrazing across southern Idaho? Studies have shown that rangeland grazed only by wildlife produces from 400 to 800 pounds of dry forage per acre. Today, the average rangeland grazed by domestic livestock produces less than 100 pounds per acre. The toll has been enormous in eroded soil, degraded streams, reduced wildlife populations, and loss of ecosystem diversity.

Range Management

Range researchers and managers have evolved several techniques for dealing with excessive cattle use. The first and simplest is salting. Cattle crave salt. If you put a salt block a mile from a creek, cattle will amble over to the salt, feeding along the way and in the area, lick the salt and get thirsty, return to the creek for a drink, and then, craving salt, work their way back to the salt. The trick is that you must move the salt block frequently--something ranchers don't like to do.
  The second is to have an accurate count of the number of cows on the range. This is accomplished through tagging cattle--usually in the ear. Most of the last few decades' scant improvement in Idaho rangelands can be attributed to this step. Even so, the acreages involved are so great and the number of BLM employees so small, that trespass grazing is a common occurrence.
  The third is to delay turnout of cattle in the spring. Starting grazing on April 15 instead of March 15 can give grasses a tremendous head start. The BLM is now doing more of this.
  Fourth is to have cattle on the range when grass seeds have matured and dropped. Such "deferred grazing" allows trampling the seed into the soil, so it has a better chance of germinating next year. (Of course, elk or deer or buffalo could do the same thing.)
  The fifth is to fence the range, to allow a combination of spring grazing and summer trampling. One year an area is grazed in spring and rested in summer; the next year, the opposite. Most years the area is grazed in the fall, also. Another approach is to divide an area into four pastures. One is left ungrazed each year. This is "rest rotation" grazing. The principle is to emulate a herd of bison or elk that hits an area hard but doesn't return for a few more years.
  This and other "grazing systems" are of questionable value on already-depleted rangelands. They hit palatable plants hard, but usually leave less desireable plants untouched--helping the nasties outcompete the goodies. They play havoc with recreationists: you may hike an area in its ungrazed year, and return with all your friends the next, only to find it heavily grazed.
  Fencing is being used more and more to protect riparian areas. A well-maintained fence can allow the stream and its banks to recover in a surprisingly short time. A classic example is the Clover Creek hike. One issue in wilderness management is, since grazing continues, should new fences be built in a wilderness to protect streams? Most environmental groups such as the Committee for Idaho's High Desert have taken a hard line, and resisted such fences.
  A sixth technique for reducing cattle impacts is to provide water supplies in otherwise dry areas. The rationale is this: certain areas near water sources are severely overgrazed. If new water sources are established in hitherto undergrazed areas, cattle use can be spread over a wider area, and the overgrazed areas can recover. This sounds like a good idea, but the theory is better than the practice. All too often, these water developments lead to overgrazing in previously ungrazed or undergrazed areas, while the original overgrazed areas aren't appreciably improved.
  A seventh technique is to manipulate an area's vegetation to produce more forage. Like creating water sources, this can help spread out use and alleviate grazing pressure. Again, the practice is worse than the theory. The Dust Bowl crisis and that era's conservation ethic combined to create a monster called crested wheatgrass.
  This grass from Asia was and is hailed as a miracle grass--a perennial bunchgrass which is palatable to cattle, resists grazing pressure, establishes roots that hold the soil, doesn't burn much, and produces abundant, vigorous seed.
  The problem is that millions of acres in Idaho have been seeded to pure stands of crested wheatgrass. (This is most prominent along the Bruneau-Three Creek Road.) This is fine for cattle, which have little fear of predators (or man), eat a pure grass diet, and don't need much cover. Wildlife, however, from small rodents to birds to large mammals, finds large stands of pure grass unattractive, and avoid them. (And frankly, crested wheatgrass is ugly and unnatural looking.)
  Forbs and shrubs are increasingly being included in BLM crested wheatgrass seedings. This is an important step forward.
  Along with seeding, "brush control" is another way of manipulating vegetation. The idea is that large sagebrush plants outcompete desireable grasses for scarce water. If you use chemicals, machinery, or fire to kill the sagebrush, you release the grasses and improve grazing. Chemical means are definitely the worst of the group, since the chemicals also kill most of the area's forbs. This is a stupid approach, since fires have drastically reduced Idaho's brushy areas. Further, brush areas are more valuable to wildlife than grass areas.
  The fifth, sixth, and seventh techniques--fencing, water projects, and vegetation manipulation--are referred to as "range improvements". From 50 to 75 percent of all grazing fees are plowed back into them!
  The author has his own ideas about grazing management. He favors no increases in grazing on ungrazed or undergrazed rangelands: those areas in good or excellent condition (the very areas that ranchers cherish). Instead, all efforts should be expended on improving conditions on presently overgrazed lands: those areas in poor condition. They should be seeded with superstrains of native grasses, forbs, and brush. It wouldn't take much agency commitment to produce such strains: the money currently devoted to research on exotic species (like crested wheatgrass) could be redirected to native species.

Early Grazing

Millions of sheep in Owyhee County: that was far too many for the range. Why did this happen? The roots of the tragedy lie in America's attitudes towards its public domain.
  Originally, the government viewed its land as a source of revenue, with the General Land Office (GLO) functioning mainly as a survey and sales agency. A change came when, to encourage settlement, the Homestead Act of 1862 was passed. This allowed farmers to "prove up" on 160 acres by cultivating the land. Often an individual, his wife, and perhaps his children and hired hands would each prove up on 160 acres.
  As time went by, the government realized that the public domain would never pass into private hands 160 acres at a time. That size homestead was simply too small for the West's rangelands, so special stock-raising homesteads were allowed to reach 320 and finally 640 acres. In addition, almost any land could be purchased at low prices. However, the government still couldn't dispose of its public domain rangelands.
  But the government wouldn't manage them, either. National Forests were created across the West from 1895 to 1905, and were further enlarged through the teens and twenties. A major reason for creating these was watershed protection, not timber harvest. Depleted mountain grasses had led to increased runoff and erosion, and consequently to lowered water tables and flooding. Many Westerners supported the Forest Service.
  But grasslands continued to be an embarassment to the government. GLO lands were open range, where anyone who could find forage could utilize it. In the absence of regulation, abuse began early, and continued. There was a tremendous advantage to being the first person to trail sheep or cattle through an area. You not only got ungrazed vegetation, but you denied forage to your competition.
  The result was heavy pressure on rangelands in the springtime, when plants rely on stored energy to produce their vital first leaves. These first leaves produce energy the plant needs to grow; grazing on them severely retards plant growth. If a second band of livestock arrives before a plant has recovered, its vigor declines drastically, and it produces less seed, and has less ability to survive a fire.
  Since the GLO refused to manage public domain rangelands, the burden fell on local stockmen. Their efforts to organize were frequently sabotaged by transient stockmen who had just as much claim to the range as the locals. In some cases, effective cattlemen's or sheepmen's associations were formed that kept transients out--sometimes at gunpoint.
  Today's stockmen are often quick to parade their Idaho heritage, and their ancestors' years as ranchers. Then, when the question of Dust Bowl conditions on the rangelands is raised, blame is quickly assigned to the transients--not the upstanding ancestors. The author wonders...
  Another problem centered on man-caused fires. Fire usually doesn't hurt healthy sagebrush-grass rangelands; they come back next year in glorious grasses and forbs. A second consecutive year of fire hurts the range, however, and a third year is disastrous. Yet sheepherders, remembering that first post-fire year, routinely started fires. (Railroads also deserve some blame here: hotboxes on railcars could start a linear fire many miles long.)

Since the Dust Bowl

At any rate, conditions came to a head in the 1930's. The Great Plains Dust Bowl was mirrored in southern Idaho, where years of range abuse combined with widespread poverty and drought to produce the ultimate grazing disaster. The New Deal mentality said that government could solve problems, and a new generation of soil and range specialists were unleashed on the West.
  Their first efforts demonstrated that "scientific" range management, coupled with federal investment, could restore depleted rangelands. Stockmen took notice, and they supported passage of the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act. At the same time Roosevelt, recognizing that much Western rangeland was not suitable for settlement, withdrew most public domain lands from entry. (In 1984 the Idaho BLM published an excellent booklet called "The Taylor Grazing Act: 50 Years of Progress". It is full of anecdotes about Idaho grazing history. Try to find a copy!)
  The Taylor Grazing Act established a Grazing Service with a mission of regulating public domain rangelands. In accord with the law, it restricted grazing rights to people with a "base property", and transients were banned. In accord with its rancher head's sympathies, local grazing advisory boards were given great authority.
  In proceedings shrouded in secrecy, grazing district and allotment boundaries were drawn up. Those boundaries have remained essentially unchanged since the Thirties.
  In addition, mysterious numbers called "preferences" were selected. These have some relation to: the number of animals that had grazed an area in good years; the number of animals that Grazing Service "graziers" believed the range could support; the number of animals stockmen wished they could run, eventually; and the number of animals actually grazing the devastated Dust Bowl era rangelands. These preferences still affect BLM management.
  In 1946, Congress merged the Grazing Service and the GLO to form a new agency: the Bureau of Land Management. The two traditional roles of the BLM are sometimes mocked by referring to it as the "Bureau of Livestock and Mining". The BLM corrected some of the worst grazing abuses, but it was hampered by a confused legal authority and the lack of a multiple-use philosophy.
  This changed in October 1976, when the Federal Land Policy and Management Act became law. This bill gave the BLM an Organic Act, such as the Forest Service had had since 1905. FLPMA (pronounced "Flipma") gave the BLM a clear multiple-use mandate. An agency which had been almost entirely devoted to grazing since 1934 faced a major challenge.
  Under Cecil Andrus's guidance as Secretary of the Interior, it responded very well. A new generation of recreation, wildlife, archaeology, and soil and vegetation specialists ("FLPMA babies") rejuvenated the agency. Although most managers were old-line range specialists, the newcomers' enthusiasm was responsible for some behind-the-scenes victories.
  Nevertheless, a reaction to FLPMA was brewing among ranchers. They resented BLM grazing plans, which forced short-term grazing cutbacks (while promising long-term gains). Some were upset that FLPMA seemed to put even more restrictions on land sales than before (including, for example, the Birds of Prey Area withdrawal). And they especially resented the BLM wilderness study process which FLPMA mandated. That study began just like the Forest Service's RARE II study did: with the publication of a map that showed huge chunks of Idaho BLM land as potential wilderness.
  The rancher reaction became known (and institutionalized) as the Sagebrush Rebellion. And in 1980, Ronald Reagan told the group, "I am a Sagebrush Rebel." Upon election, he appointed James Watt to Secretary of the Interior. A stronger contrast between Watt and Andrus could not be imagined--and the BLM was one of the most strongly affected agencies. At rancher insistence, Watt took the unprecedented step of firing Robert Buffington, Idaho's BLM State Director.
  When a State Director falls, Range Conservationists, Area Managers, and District Managers all take heed. BLM grazing plans and multiple-use plans, mandated by FLPMA and court decisions, were deeply flawed--and their implementation sidetracked by rancher resistance.
  BLM wilderness studies concentrated on areas with demonstrable natural beauty, ignoring areas with outstanding natural and recreational potential. Typical examples include most Owyhee Plateau roadless areas: the BLM recommends rim-to-rim wilderness, and includes almost no areas on the adjacent plateaus. These plateau areas are vitally important for the wildlife of the canyon country, and for recreation.
  How can the BLM recover from its total politicization? The best remedy is for you, the reader to become active. You don't have to join an environmental organization, although there are excellent ones such as the Committee for Idaho's High Desert (CIHD, pronounced "kid") working hard on Idaho desert issues.
  All you have to do is drive and walk and see the desert. And when you do, and when you do or don't like what see, call or write or visit the BLM (or your congressmen) and tell them how you feel. If as many recreationists give input to the BLM and Congress as do ranchers, there will be change.

Afterwords

Well, it's 1999, and the words above, written hopefully a dozen years ago, have really not come true.
  The author experienced the incredible pleasure of attending hearings on the Air Force's Owyhee Plateau bombing range expansion, and of seeing that many people opposing the action had been turned on to the desert through his book...yet the result was another defeat. Similarly, the Middle Snake River Plain has been swept with a series of catastrophic fires, almost eliminating shrubs from a million acres...
  Some day, the government will once again spend billions on its depleted rangelands. BLM managers will once again enjoy vast budgets and huge staffs. The author hopes and prays that the direction of this future range restoration effort will be toward native ecosystems, instead of more exotic grasses. And he hopes that enough pieces of native ecosystems remain to put together the whole again.