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Input sought on grazing plan<br>

According to Forest Service Range Staff Officer Dave Brewer, grazing authorizations are not new for the area. The Anita and Cameron allotments have been under permit for 40 years and were recently transferred to Aza Farms & Sons while Babbitt Ranches has held the permit for the Moqui allotment since 1910. The Anita-Cameron area currently isn’t in use, while the Moqui allotment was recently stocked with about 400 yearlings after two years of non-use.

The biggest changes, he said, will be to the Anita-Cameron allotments, which are being combined to form one allotment and are being scaled back to seasonal grazing rather than year-round. The permits for both allotments will also set forth a minimum and maximum number of head allowed.

The new permits will also include a rest-rotation grazing strategy with a percentage of land excluded from grazing each year to promote regeneration of vegetation.

“We’re taking an adaptive management approach,” he said. “We want to bring range numbers in line with actual grazing capacity.”

The Anita and Cameron allotments allow grazing 1,305 head of cattle for the year. The Moqui allotment allows 560 yearlings for five and a half months during the summer. The revised plan calls for a range of between 600 to 1310 head on the Anita-Cameron allotment and for between 280 and 560 head on the Moqui llotment, to be determined annually based on range conditions.

By building the range into the permits, they will be able to manage herd populations on a year by year basis without taking additional action. To arrive at current numbers, planners drew on data collected since the 1950s. One factor figuring significantly has been the drought, Brewer said.

“We’re trying to correct resource problems caused by the drought,” he said. “Livestock and wildlife have a grazing conflict. That’s why we’re going to seasonal use (on Anita-Cameron). The rest periods will improve forage conditions.”

He expects that livestock won’t be on the Anita-Cameron allotment for at least a year, and when they are turned out, they will be in line with the lower numbers authorized on the new permit.

“There’s good grass but no (water) tank production,” he said. “It will be far below the top number and will probably be roughly 50 percent of the current term numbers.”

Forest Service officials anticipate that the environmental assessment, rather than a more extensive environmental impact study, will be sufficient.

“It probably won’t go to that,” he said. “We usually go the EIS route if there are threatened or endangered species or wetlands and riparian zones. This area has none of that.”

The plan also calls for rebuilding fences on the allotments, as well as rebuilding and relocating 21 miles of fencing along the border of the Navajo Nation. Brewer said the border fence with the reservation will have to be moved between a quarter to a half mile in spots.

Mail comments to Brewer at Kaibab National Forest, 800 South 6th St., Williams, Ariz., 86046-2899, or fax to 928-635-8208. They can also be delivered to the Williams office between 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday. Oral comments can be made, either in person or by telephone by calling 928-635-8221. Copies of the proposal are available at the Tusayan Ranger District office on the east side of State Route 64, just north of Tusayan.


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