The 2008 Joint Meeting of the Society for Range Management and the America Forage and Grassland Council. |
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 9:20 AM
Riparian Area Management: Changing 100 Years of Grazing Effects Across A Landscape
A. Scott Feldhausen, Salmon Field Office, Bureau of Land Management, 1206 South Challis Street, Salmon, ID 83467
Although limited livestock numbers were documented in the Salmon River valley in 1870, by 1890, with the increase in miners and cattlemen and the concentration of the Lemhi Shoshone on a reservation, impacts to native vegetation were being noticed. However, even with the introduction of the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934, it wasn’t until the 1960’s that much was done to address livestock grazing impacts on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In 1987, the Resource Management Plan guidance for the Salmon Field Office required improvement on only 5.5 miles of perennial streams, mostly through construction of exclosures. It also stipulated five years of monitoring before adjustments were made to any grazing permits. The listing of the Snake River spring/summer chinook salmon, sockeye salmon, steelhead trout and bull trout under the Endangered Species Act between 1991 and 1998, however, required the Field Office to rapidly improve riparian and aquatic habitat across the landscape. This need for rapid change forced a new way of doing business, internally, with the permittees, and with the public. The result is a landscape-level improvement in riparian resources, water quality and fisheries habitat across the 800,000 acre Lemhi River watershed. Now that riparian areas on public land are in an upward trend, restoration efforts have shifted to getting the fish to the habitat, again requiring a coordinated, landscape-level approach which blurs ownership boundaries and fosters cooperation.