What do you imagine when you think of a wild and scenic river? Do you think of a deep clear stream running among thick grasses with flowers bobbing, deer grazing and birds twittering in the trees? Or do you think of a flattened stream with cattle standing in the fetid water, the banks trampled, and the grass mowed to mud by cattle?
For a majority of streams and rivers on public lands in the West, grazing damage is the norm. When Congress passed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968, they did not bar cattle grazing from this new category of protected land and waters. But congress did advise federal agencies to protect the wild and scenic qualities of the rivers and the nearby lands and to protect the waters from pollution once a river was designated as Wild and Scenic.
Yet a new bill in the US Senate to protect miles of the Gila River in New Mexico and its tributaries under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act may not end up protecting this river and its wildlife at all. It may just be a feel-good political exercise that may make it difficult to stop damaging cattle grazing in these supposedly protected streams in the future.
Senator Martin Heinrich, who is advancing the bill, says its purpose is to protect 9 threatened and endangered animal species in the Gila region. But will the bill help protect these species? Maybe it will help push them closer to the brink of extinction.
What is the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act?
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was passed in a bipartisan fashion during the peak of the dam building years of the 1960s and 1970s. It was meant to be a counter point to the exuberance of the dam builders who had built dams like Hoover Dam, Cochiti Damn, and Glen Canyon Dam among hundreds of others across the country.
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act has little actual legal teeth in terms of restricting environmental damage. It does restrict dam building and the act discourages logging near designated rivers. It does encourage federal or state land managers to make management decisions consistent with the intent of the act, which is to foster clean free flowing scenic rivers.
Most of the miles of streams and rivers mapped for protection in the “M.H. Dutch Salmon Greater Gila Wild and Scenic River Act” bill flow within three wilderness areas. Except for cattle grazing, no industrial use or development is allowed in wilderness areas. These streams are already protected. However, a never used loophole in the Wilderness Act could allow dam building in extreme circumstances.
Is the Bill Self Defeating?
In his promotion material, Senator Heinrich says the bill would protect nine threatened and endangered species in the Gila. He says: “This Act will permanently protect the unique habitat of native species assemblages, including habitat of the Gila trout, loach minnow, spikedace, Gila chub, narrow-headed gartersnake, northern Mexican gartersnake, Chiricahua leopard frog, yellow-billed cuckoo, and southwestern willow-flycatcher.” Yet according to the Center for Biological Diversity, the main threat to these species is livestock grazing and the damage it does to vegetation, especially the vegetation growing along rivers and streams.
Most threatened and endangered species in the Southwest depend on healthy vegetation and forests that grow along streams, the most verdant areas of the dry Southwest. Cattle destroy riparian forests by trampling the streams which widens them so they evaporate. They devour willows and grasses and rare plants on the banks, opening the water to open sun, heating the water which kills fish. By denuding watersheds, cattle ultimately dry streams in a world of bare soils and fast runoffs. Cattle trample springs and destroy key habitat for plants and animals.
Thus, it is hard to understand how the Gila Wild and Scenic bill will do much good other than make people feel like they are doing something good. Is that good? I don’t think so. With the climate crisis and the extinction crisis, we should actually protect the land and waters, not just posture about it while trying not to offend anyone.
To fix the bill, Senator Heinrich could remove the language in the bill protecting livestock grazing and replace it with language that:
- Permanently closes all vacant allotments along the rivers and streams
- Offer all ranchers near the rivers a voluntary buyout offer
- Direct the US Forest Service to prioritize habitat protection over ranching based goals for the lands that touch the rivers.
I urge people to contact Senator Heinrich and urge him to do some hard work restoring habitat in the Gila.
