Cattle grazing damages Arizona’s riverbank habitats, conservationists say
Joe Duhownik
PHOENIX (CN) — Conservationists claim the federal government has failed to keep cattle from grazing in delicate riparian habitats in a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service Thursday, more than six months after it first notified the government of lasting environmental damage along western Arizona’s Big Sandy River due to excess cattle grazing.
To comply with the Endangered Species Act, agencies must work in tandem to produce biological opinions finding little to no impact on threatened or endangered species or their habitats before opening specific allotments up to cattle grazing.
The three allotments the center addressed in the lawsuit — the Artillery Range, the Greenwood Community and Greenwood Peak — were first opened to grazing in 1995 after the agencies found no risk of species or habitat destruction.
But that decision predates the recent listing of two local species as threatened and one as endangered, and therefore didn’t address the impacts of grazing on those species. In 2023, the Center for Biological Diversity documented critical habitat loss along the Big Sandy River for the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher, the threatened western yellow-billed cuckoo and the threatened northern Mexican garter snake.
Southwest advocate for the center Chris Bugbee says he’s observed the effects of cattle grazing on six of the seven river miles surveyed, including the degradation of streamside plants, the flattening of riverbanks caused by hooves and cattle feces contaminating the river itself. He says a small amount of the damage can be attributed to wild burros, whose population the bureau has already taken steps to reduce.
According to the center, it alerted both agencies to its findings in December, but neither responded. This is one of dozens of lawsuits the center has filed against these and other environmental agencies to protect endangered species, many of which contend that cattle grazing is one of the biggest contributors to critical habitat degradation in the Southwest.
“Throughout the Southwest, the Bureau of Land Management’s chronic failure to control illegal livestock grazing turns streams and streamside habitats into trampled cesspools, pushing endangered species closer to extinction,” Bugbee said in a press release. “The Big Sandy River is just the latest example in a pattern of neglect. This lawsuit aims to force federal agencies to do their jobs, fix the problem and save this ecosystem.”
The wetlands around the Big Sandy River, which flows south from the western flanks of the Santa Maria and Arrastra mountains, joining the Santa Maria River in southern Mohave County to form the Bill Williams River, are some of Arizona’s many riparian areas paramount to health of the environment at large. The Arizona Riparian Council found in 2004 that although riparian areas make up less than 1% of state land, they’re depended on by nearly 75% of the state’s more than 800 species.
The center accuses the agencies of violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to reinitiate consultation on the effects grazing has on local threatened and endangered species. It also says the bureau failed to consult Fish and Wildlife when it renewed 10-year grazing permits on the three allotments in 2021, 2022 and 2024.
Finally, the center says that even if the agencies have begun consultation and just not given notice to the center, they have violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing the cattle to graze on the allotments while said consultation occurs.
Neither agency immediately responded to a request for comment.