Mojave Cattle Ordered Removed

The federal government, in a surprising turnaround, ordered ranchers Friday to remove herds of cattle from thousands of acres of sensitive California desert.

Federal officials will begin monitoring ranches in the Mojave Desert on Monday to ensure that cattle are relocated from about 450,000 acres of land, a move officials said will help protect the environment and aid the survival of the threatened desert tortoise, which competes with cattle for food and habitat.

The decision by the Bureau of Land Management enacts a key provision of a landmark legal settlement reached in January by environmental groups and federal officials. The accord restricts or bans outright a spate of damaging activity on publicly owned desert lands, including cattle ranching. The ranchers had appealed a portion of the settlement requiring them to remove cattle from tortoise habitat during certain times of the year.

Friday’s order came a day after environmental groups threatened to head back to court in San Francisco to hold the Bush administration in contempt of court for refusing to implement key portions of the settlement. And it came two days after a group of ranchers declined to show up for negotiations with federal officials--although the ranchers had asked for the meetings.

Officials said they then surmised that the ranchers had no intention of cooperating with the terms of the January settlement.

The Bush administration--especially Interior Secretary Gale Norton--had angered environmental groups by appearing to give the livestock industry’s interests more weight than ecological concerns in recent weeks. But “the ranchers blew them off,” said Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist for the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. “Even Gale Norton can’t run interference for a group of people who refuse to show up for meetings to discuss reasonable options.”

That didn’t make Friday’s decision any less a bitter pill for the Bush administration. In a statement released Friday afternoon, Mark Pfeifle, a spokesman for Norton and the Interior Department, blamed the Clinton administration for orchestrating a bad deal in the desert.

Pfeifle said the Bush administration will undertake a more thorough review of land use in the California desert. He said the administration complied only because of the threat of being held in contempt if Friday’s deadline to implement the plan was not met.

“It is unfortunate that it had to come to this,” Pfeifle said. “This is not the long-term solution to this problem.”

The ranchers’ Wyoming attorney did not return phone calls Friday.

The Bush administration’s grudging approval of the decision was still too accommodating for some San Bernardino County officials. The environmental groups, said San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus, “are bent on putting these ranchers out of business.”

“And the administration in Washington is apparently willing to let them get away with it, despite their promise to come to a compromise the ranchers can live with,” Postmus said.

Postmus was among the San Bernardino County officials who angered environmental groups and prompted concern among BLM officials this summer with a series of moves intended to undermine the desert protection settlement.

In a situation reminiscent of the “Sagebrush Rebellion” movement against federal restrictions on Western public land, Postmus suggested that ranchers might resort to violence against federal officials to protect their herds. And, angry at federal efforts to relocate cattle, he revoked an agreement that had allowed the BLM free use of county dumps to deposit desert trash collected by volunteers.

Jay Tutchton, an attorney for Earthjustice, a Denver law firm representing the environmental groups, said the actions of Postmus and others in the high desert suggest that the dispute over the cattle may be far from over.

“The ranchers have forgotten that they are on public land,” he said.