Catron commissioners testify at U.S. House panel hearing
Submitted to El Defensor Chieftain
Catron County Commission Chairman Ed Wehrheim (District 2) and Commissioner Rufus Choate (District 1) appeared before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health field hearing in Grants on Dec. 15. The commissioners were among nine witnesses providing testimony on "Management and Access Challenges Across Southwestern Forests."
U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce presided over the hearing held at New Mexico State University.
Following is the full text of their prepared comments:
Catron County has a subdivision called the Last Frontier, a place with no pavement, no stop signs and, until recently, no phone service. Like elsewhere in the county, people in the Last Frontier dig their own wells, have four-wheel drive vehicles because the dirt roads can be impassible whenever there is rain or snow, and many maintain supplies to last weeks or even month, just in case. People in the Last Frontier know their cell phones won't work in most places they go in the county, that their internet access will be slow for the foreseeable future because there will never be cable or DSL in their lifetimes, and that if they want services like a fire department or emergency medical, they have to join together with their neighbors to form their own.
People in the Last Frontier Subdivision are not particularly unique in Catron County. In some ways, the whole county is a last frontier.
Catron County is large, rural, and sparsely populated with only 3,500 residents. It has only four main paved roads. There is just one traffic light, and one incorporated village, Reserve (the county seat), with a population of 600 or so souls. The next largest towns, Quemado and Glenwood, are half the size of Reserve, if that. Don't blink your eyes while driving through the other towns.
To serve an area the size of the state of Connecticut, the county has a five-member Sheriff's Department and six State Police officers. There are only three grocery stores in 7,000 square miles, there is one bank, and one medical clinic -- in Reserve, which for some county residents is more than a two-hour drive, so a large percentage of the county population drives elsewhere to see a doctor. A dental clinic is being built and soon the whole county will share one dentist, if they care to drive those miles. There is no veterinarian, no retirement home, no spa, no copying service, no movie theater, no Starbucks.
The TV show "Northern Exposure" might have been about Alaska, but it could have been about Catron County, except that in Catron County, it's real.
Roughly 75 percent of Catron County is comprised of publicly owned lands, and 63 percent of that is managed by the U.S. Forest Service. With such a large ratio of public to privately owned lands, and with such a small, rural population, the county's economic health is naturally highly dependent on access to the natural resources of those public lands.
Historically, much of the area that became Catron County was hunting grounds for Native Americans from lower altitudes. Along the Tularosa River and San Francisco River valleys, however, there was a large population of permanent Native residents. There was plenty of game and water, and living was good, if one can tell anything from anthropologists' population estimates and the number of pottery shards that litter the ground around almost any high spot near the rivers.
Later, miners and sheepherders entered the picture, with gold being found in them thar hills and forage for the sheep plentiful. Cattle growers from Texas and Oklahoma drifted west with their herds, displacing the shepherds (not without conflict) and homesteaders followed, making claims on both land and water. The trailhead for the Magdalena Livestock Driveway is in Catron County, and the many one-room schoolhouses, old adobe churches and line-camp cabins which still can be found around the county attest to a healthy, robust population.
Today, many of the citizens of Catron County are true westerners in the frontier style, capable of dealing with predators, with dry holes or scanty well production, with the harshest weather, dealing with drought, wind, brutal cold and searing heat, raising their cattle or their sheep or other livestock on public land allotments, or eking out a living in the forest as outfitters, guides, or lumbermen and woodcutters.
These are a tough and resourceful people, perhaps -- to some -- the last of a dying breed. But unlike their predecessors who had to deal with the same weather and other natural conditions, today the decks are stacked against those whose livelihoods are resource dependent, their hands tied by governmental policy and process that makes no sense with respect to the reality of this place, and which excludes those who live here.
Because the county's base economy is derived from natural resources, with livestock production on federal lands being the largest private business in the county and the timber industry, until approximately 10 years ago, a close second, and because the U.S. Forest Service manages the largest percentage of land in Catron County, the county's economic health is heavily dependant upon the quality of USFS management and the degree of access to forest resources available to the county. Ranching, lumber and forest products industry require healthy forage and trees and access to them, and without that, they cannot survive.
Unfortunately, since at least the late 1980s, management practices that have been heavily influenced by ecological organizations have led to today's unhealthy forests, woodlands and associated grasslands, and a degradation of the natural resource base. Our county's economy is suffering due to these management practices and by restricted access to federal natural resources. Drought notwithstanding, watersheds are not functioning optimally. Forage is reduced. Trees are dying. The unhealthy forests can no longer support the historic and traditional lifestyles of our population.
In the interests of protecting individual species and large diameter trees at the expense of the forest as a whole, forest health has been damaged. The ultimate tragedy, catastrophic wildfire which would destroy everything -- forest, resources, wildlife including endangered species, watershed and the human population dependent upon it all -- has become an almost certainty, rather than a possibility.
Those who depend on the natural resources of our forests can be depended on not to destroy those resources. After all, they will still be here in the next 10 and 20 years, and their children and grandchildren will be here in the next century. Yet these same people are not considered as part of the solution.
Forage conditions cannot be improved without addressing forest health.
Wildfire danger cannot be reduced without addressing forest health.
Forest health cannot be addressed without involvement of local human resources and local solutions.
Let there be no mistake: Being a last frontier is not about dwelling in the past. Frontiers are about forging ahead into a new and not yet known future. Catron County, one of the last frontiers, has solutions for forest health.
With such a high percentage of non-privately owned land in Catron County, ranchers are dependent upon grazing allotments from the BLM and USFS. Unfortunately, allottees, particularly on USFS lands, have no say in management.
Elk compete with cattle for forage, but the rancher has no voice with game management. Decisions about riparian areas are made without rancher input. Juniper and piñon encroachment reduces forage but ranchers are not consulted about forest and woodlands management. The wolf reintroduction program threatens livestock, and ranchers must be content with being compensated for depredation rather than have a say in management of the program.
Wildfire may make all the above moot, but ranchers have no say about hazardous fuels reduction either.
Over the past years, ranchers have been forced to cut the number of cattle per allotment and absorb unrealistic added costs to their family-owned ranch businesses even though there may be preferable alternative solutions that those very ranchers could supply.
Catron County's major base industry is livestock production. There are many factors that have a bearing on livestock production, such as markets and drought. But probably the federal actions, driven by lawsuits by the Center for Biological Diversity and affiliate litigious organizations and networks that are well financed, have played the greatest havoc on Catron County's economy. The costs to the county include loss of over 25,000 head of cattle in the last decade and a loss of $10 million per year in livestock production gross economic output since 1997.
The ripple effect throughout the county reaches businesses and ultimately the county tax base -- to services and facilities and programs to schools. Catron County has lost about $600,000 for government and schools. Many court ordered livestock cuts are lacking in good science and/or procedures and follow-through.
A very basic and simple solution would be to involve the grazing allottee in analysis, planning and management decisions -- not as captive tenants, at the mercy of outside groups with outside agendas, but as true land stewardship partners. With improved coordination between county and land management agencies, and using the newly formed Catron County Commission Healthy Livestock and Rangeland Committee to work with land management agencies on common ground solution, real results with lasting, positive effect on forest, woodlands and grasslands could ensue.
Additionally, through congressional support of the Catron County initiated Range Analysis Bill (HR3102HI), as authored by Rep. Pearce, range analysis and planning could proceed on a scientific basis, bypassing rhetoric and private agendas.
Government land management agencies can keep cutting cattle numbers on allotments, but that approach, which does not address the over-riding need to treat understory (the layer of vegetation between ground cover and the canopy) and overstory (the canopy, or treetops) has already been demonstrated by current conditions to do nothing to improve forage conditions. Hungry elk will eat what cattle do not. Grass will not grow in dense shade of overly thick stands of stunted trees. Watersheds will not provide moisture for grass when precipitation cannot reach the ground through dense foliage or when overly thick trees suck up and retain what precipitation does reach the ground, or when soil is seared by hot wildfires, preventing moisture to be absorbed at all and flooding out the loam that supports that forage growth.
Declining forage is not a symptom of too many cattle, it is a symptom of declining forest health. Proper forest management will result in increased forage for both livestock and wildlife a win-win situation.
Forage conditions cannot be improved without addressing forest health.
Wildfire danger cannot be reduced without addressing forest health.
Forest health cannot be addressed without involvement of local human resources and local solutions.
The status of forest health throughout the southwest is almost unimaginable to anyone who has not seen it. Mile after mile of brown pine needles and bare branches have replaced healthy, green forest. Some estimates say that 90 percent of our forests will be dead in the next few years due to drought, insect infestation and/or wildfire. In some areas, like Los Alamos or like Collins Park in Catron County, there is no more worry about dying trees, because all that is left is black stumps.
How could this come about when there are environmentalist groups dedicated to preserving our forests, acknowledged and accepted by government as having the right to influence policy, lobbying and litigating to protect every tree therein?
Current forest health conditions have come about through decades of policy based on accommodating special interest groups who have powered their way to influence in the policy making process through the court system, and who now refuse to participate unless they are given total veto power over proposed actions. If these groups don't obtain total veto, they don't participate in collaborative processes and lob appeals and litigation to thwart anyone else from achieving success.
An additional contributor to current deteriorated forest health conditions comes from the land management agencies themselves: Employees and agency heads who block, intentionally or otherwise, stonewall through obstruction and delay of on-the-ground projects that run contrary to their vision.
Catron County citizens are used to having a fall back position. For many of us, being resourceful and self-reliant is a more than a way of life, it is a matter of life and death. There is no fall back position when it comes to forest resources.
Catron County had the most prosperous timber mill in New Mexico up till 1992, when it was forced to close due to the threat of lawsuits by the Center for Biological Diversity and due to Forest Service decisions over the Mexican Spotted Owl. Opportunity costs to Reserve timber mill closure include loss of over 150 local jobs either directly or indirectly related to the timber mill, loss of $12 million a year in base industry to the county, New Mexico and Arizona; loss of $600,000 to $900,000 a year in forest receipts to county schools and roads; loss of $400,000 a year in KV funds from forest receipts that would go to forest restoration; loss of local programs and services.
The one active mine in Mogollon was closed down due to litigious actions. Fence Lake coal development finally was ended this year, due in part to Center for Biological Diversity litigation threats. Opportunity costs to the county include loss of an expected 150 jobs and loss of $1 million a year to county government and schools.
These economic losses have had significant and cumulative impacts on Catron County, on community stability, livelihoods, customs and cultures, leadership and on county and school programs, services and facilities. The county has experienced significant losses in school enrollment and school programs. There have been marked increases in social services and mental health caseloads, especially regarding family stability-related social problems. The unemployment rate has significantly increased; economic and social mobility for ethnic minorities came to a halt with the closure of the timber mill. Additionally, basic services, such as emergency/law enforcement, EMT, are stretched to provide their services.
The negative impact of public land management practices in Catron County are not theoretical. They are real, they are extremely serious, and they are unnecessary.
We have been engaged in a war of attrition that has inflicted serious damage on the timber, mining, industrial, farming and livestock industries infrastructures. Rural County governments and their constituents have borne the primary burden of this social and economic destruction. Our forests, woodlands and grasslands are also suffering from this impasse of management. Neither of these impacts can be defended by those claiming to be champions for the environment.
For a county so dependent upon forest-based resources, these dying and dead forests present a clear and present danger to life and livelihood, the consequences of which could last for generations. This is not simply about whether some spotted owls can breed and raise their young in privacy, or whether Mexican wolves can be reintroduced to the wilderness, or how tall the grass is growing in a test square, or how many 12-inch diameter trees are standing in the forest. This is about whether there will be a wilderness at all after next fire season, whether there will be any water for wildlife to drink, whether the spotted owl will have a tree left to sit in, whether the citizens of Catron County will have homes to live in and forests and grasslands to earn a living from.
We are here today to testify about management and access challenges on our forests and grasslands. We who live here face extreme risk from catastrophic wildfire to forest resources and local community. We have suffered from loss of livelihood from the past management policies, and we see that our forests and woodlands have not thrived under those policies.
Clearly, change is needed.
Today we have a rare window of opportunity for a win-win situation that must not be missed by lack of action or stonewalling or veto. We must act before the forest and grasslands die out, before it all burns up. We have an opportunity to improve forest health, to create jobs. We can preserve culture, lifestyles and tradition while going forward into a new frontier at the same time.
You have talked about forest health. You have made policy about it. We have to live it. And so we are saying to you that it is time to look at the whole picture, the reality of what is. Humans exist within nature as well as owls and minnows and wolves. We don't want to be ignored, we don't want to be guinea pigs for experimentation in forest management that we have no say in, and we don't want to be passive victims. We want to be the models for the future.
It is time to look closely at the undue influence of outside groups with outside agendas on forest management priorities. It is time to examine the non-response to formal requests by the Catron County Commission for direct assistance with forest health, economic development projects and the expediting of hazardous fuels reduction. It is time to deal with the lack of guaranteed supply of forest resources materials which are necessary to create economic opportunities in the county as well as to significantly improve forest health It is time to acknowledge the fact that the well-appreciated efforts of local and district federal agency staff working with Catron County are negated by upper level competing priorities and environmental politics, lack of action or commitment. It is time to do things differently, proactively and cooperatively.
Catron County has engaged in a project -- biomass power generation -- which, when completed, could demonstrate to the rest of the country that it is possible to combine economic health with forest health and to use natural resources wisely and renewably, and that it is also possible to do this with full participation of those who are most affected -- the local citizens -- through true collaborative effort of intergovernmental agencies on the federal, state and local level.
The problems of this county -- stunted economic growth and declining forest health -- can be solved by taking lemons and making lemonade. Biomass power generation would provide a market for the otherwise useless forest materials -- diseased trees, small diameter trees, stunted and malformed trees which cannot be used for lumber, slash (branches left after lumbering), dense brush and other biological materials which must be removed from our forests to improve their health and reduce hazardous fuels levels. Biomass power generation would provide jobs in the plant itself, in satellite industries, and in the woods, removing the biomass. Biomass power generation would also bring income into the county via sales of green energy.
With enlightened land management practices and reasonable forest access, forest health can be addressed in a way that improves the local economy and supports traditional lifestyles, preserving the culture and custom of this county while improving the natural resources.
To do this, however, Catron County needs commitment and priorities for action from Congress and public land agencies, which means taking a critical and realistic look at public lands management policy.
Among actions that we urge this Subcommittee to take, is clarification of Forest Service policy about non-governmental organizations' involvement (such as the Center for Biological Diversity, which has had overmuch influence in policy making as regards public lands in our county) in land management policies, and clarification, also, regarding such an organization's place in coordinated intergovernmental public land management planning
Additionally, Catron County urges commitment and priorities for action from Congress and public land management agencies regarding:
1. Guaranteed forest product supplies;
2. Direct assistance to the County Commission in developing solutions for problems that have developed due to past management and access policies;
3. Support and oversight of the Catron County Interagency Task Force for Expediting Hazardous Fuels Reduction, which must be a priority of the Forest Service too.
4. Support for the Adaptive Management Demonstration Project for Implementing Community-Based Watershed Restoration and Management Program -- a model of truly collaborative forest and watershed restoration, co-sponsored by the San Francisco Soil & Water Conservation District and the Catron County Commission in coordination with the regional universities and federal and state agencies.
We have arrived at this point by allowing land management policy to be dictated by special interest groups that have refused to participate in genuine collaboration and by federal land management obstruction and delay. The brunt of the current management policies have been borne by rural counties and communities, not by those who have made the decisions, nor by the beneficiaries of those decisions. Clearly, how things have been handled in the past is not working.
We now stand to lose all of the natural resources of our forests, including those so zealously guarded by special interest groups, unless immediate changes in management policy are made.
We need to change the way we deal with grazing issues and forest health.
Managing public land with an aim to restoring and maintaining healthy forests must be the priority mission, with due consideration for local needs and an emphasis on local solutions through ground-up, true collaborative effort. That collaborative effort must engage all human resources -- from local to congressional -- to expedite restoration and maintenance of forest, woodlands, grassland and watershed health.
Catron County is here today to say that at least in one place, a solution for forest and forage health is achievable. We have the vision and the drive to succeed, to forge into new frontiers. We are asking you to come with us.
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