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Northern Great Plains Management Plan



Knight-Ridder Tribune
21 Sep 2001
Environmental News Network, Berkeley, Calif.

U.S. Forest Service Completes Environmental Impact  Assessment for Great
Plains


Sep. 21--A new management plan for the northern Great Plains is in the
works, and the final environmental impact statement has just been completed
by the U.S. Forest Service, which also takes responsibility for America's 17
national grasslands.

Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota chose to recommend parts of their
grasslands as wilderness areas. Wyoming, ignoring the recommendations of the
other states, failed to make recommendations for any grassland wilderness.


The Northern Great Plains Management Plan Revision 2001 will manage 2.9
million acres of public grass and prairie lands scattered across the four
Western states of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

Rather than having many national grasslands revising in a vacuum, the Forest
Service has chosen a new ecosystem approach, forming a collaborative
association of the 11 grassland districts involved in the plan revision.

Roughly 11 percent of northeastern Wyoming¹s 553,000-acre Thunder Basin
National Grassland meets the criteria for a wilderness recommendation. The
most likely areas for recommendation embody 1 to 3 percent of the entire
national grassland.

Thunder Basin was divided into homesteads in the 1800s and came back under
federal jurisdiction after the homesteads failed. Large tracts of land
acrosss the grassland were abandoned during the Great Depression and
Dustbowl of the 1930s.

Currently, Thunder Basin National Grassland is a mosaic of federal, state,
and private properties with large tracts of public lands remaining in a
roadless and undeveloped state.

Elk and deer range Thunder Basin, sharptail grouse and sage grouse make
their nests, and vast prairie dog towns still can be found. The grassland
shelters more endangered mammals too, such as the swift fox. And rare
birds -- the mountain plover and the ferruginous hawk -- wheel across its
skies.

Thunder Basin National Grassland is considered to be the most likely place
for a large-scale reintroduction of the critically endangered black-footed
ferret.

But Forest Service Revision Team leader, Bob Sprentall, says Thunder Basin
failed to win a wilderness recommendation because the Wyoming Congressional
delegation would not submit a wilderness recommendation for Congressional
designation. Wyoming elected Sens. Mike Enzi and Craig Thomas and
Congresswoman Barbara Cubin, all Republicans.

A June meeting of Wyoming grasslands stakeholders organized by Enzi in
Washington, D.C., addressed the future of the Thunder Basin National
Grassland. Enzi brought together members of the Thunder Basin Grasslands
Prairie Ecosystem Association -- a ranchers group -- and officials from the
Wyoming Public Lands Office, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Forest
Service, and the Department of Interior to work out any possible conflicts
between private and public concerns over grasslands management.

The landowner association favors a multispecies, ecosystem approach to
conservation rather than a species-specific approach. The Forest Service has
agreed to consider the association's proposal. Once an agreement is reached,
the association will undertake conservation measures on its private land.

Under a draft agreement, association members would voluntarily make a
long-term commitment to keep 150,000 acres of private lands in ongoing
grasslands management. At the same time, they would participate in the
development of an ecosystem management plan that would cover private lands
as well as intermixed and adjacent federal, state, and other lands.

The need for swift action on the study of the ecosystem is underscored by
the changing conditions of the grasslands, including confirmation of
sylvatic plague among prairie dog colonies in the area, the association
said.

Jeff Kessler of the conservation group Laramie Biodiversity Associates
claims that the grazing and extractive industries pressured the federal
officials conducting the revision process. "On the grasslands, industry acts
with even greater hegemony than they do in the [national] forests," he said.

Comments will be taken by the National Forest service for six months. Mail
them to:

Comments Thunder Basin National Grassland 125 N. Main Chadron, NE 39337

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