the scrambling done by the Forest Service to compete NEPA analysis on its 4,300 permits that expire at the end of 1995.

The Livestock Grazing Act addresses this problem in a way that maintains the integrity of NEPA while improving or removing duplicate and burdensome paperwork requirements. By providing that issuance of grazing permits or leases that are consistent with resource plans need not undergo a second round of NEPA review, the Livestock Grazing Act will get agency personnel out of the office and back onto the ground.

These are only a few of the problems created by the Rangeland Reform that will be solved by the Livestock Grazing Act. The bill seeks to accommodate the concerns and needs of both the livestock permittee and the general public that has entrusted us with stewardship over their lands. While there may be parts of the bill that we may not totally agree with, the bill is fair. More importantly, the bill puts an end to the piecemeal and sometimes conflicting additions to grazing policy by comprehensively updating Federal lands grazing policy in a unified manner.

But the ultimate yardstick for measuring the merits of the bill is whether it will continue to result in improvement of our Federal rangeland. It is clear from the few examples that I have cited that rangeland reform will not work on the ground. The Livestock Grazing Act will continue to forge the partnership between agency and permittee by providing the framework necessary for permittees to continue operating in a viable manner while, at the same time, fostering the continuing improvement of range conditions to benefit all.

We wish to thank the chairman of the subcommittee for holding hearings on this bill, and we also wish to thank the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill for the time and energy spent in drafting a bill that provides a commonsense grazing policy and benefits every

one.

Thank you.

Senator CRAIG. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Senator, do you have any questions?

Senator BURNS. I have just got one question.

Walt, I know your circumstance up there at Fort Peck. And this—we have talked primarily BLM and with a little bit of Forest Service.

Should other agencies be brought into this legislation, or have we pretty much covered the bases?

Mr. COLLINS. I think, at the present time, we have probably covered the bases.

But for the record, we operate on Charlton-Russell Wildlife Refuge in Northeast Montana. And that is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And it is a real experience having those people to work with.

We would like-presently, on the wildlife refuge, we are paying $6.50 an AUM for the same identical land that is just across the fence. On BLM, we are paying $1.68, or whatever that number happens to be. And we feel that that is quite unfair.

The stocking rate on that refuge up there is reutilizing approximately 122 percent of the forage. It is getting to the point we are having to force our cattle to stay on there.

There is no deer or antelope. The only thing that is there is birds. And there are getting to be some grouse come back.

But you must realize that the forage is thick and that deep. And so, it makes wonderful nesting habitat.

And in the future, Senator, I would sure like to see something, if we can do something about the problem with refuge in northeast Montana.

Senator BURNS. The question that I have was that Mr. Madsen alluded to this, that he supports this bill, but that he sees some places where it could be fixed.

If you could fix one thing in this bill, what would it be, Jack? Mr. MADSEN. Well, this morning, after hearing the conversation of the Forest Service and the BLM, to me, that is the only problem. And the drawback is the problem that is being faced with those folks. I have a hard time discovering what their big beef is.

I think this is where the fix needs to come between those folks and the people that has been sponsoring the bill. That is all I have. Senator THOMAS [presiding]. Thank you.

Mr. Lowry, I think you said this, but I want to make sure that I understood. You found some areas in the bill that you think could be strengthened as opposed to implementing that as regulation than this, where are you?

Mr. LOWRY. Senator, I think the position that the Owyhee Cattlemen are going to take is they want to work with the committee on this piece of legislation and try to implement those changes we think needs to be strengthened.

And they are going to wait and see what comes out of the bill. Senator THOMAS. You know there is a time imperative.

Mr. LOWRY. Right. Right.

Senator THOMAS. We have a few months to work on this.

Mr. LOWRY. Yes. Yes.

Senator THOMAS. And you know that failing in this, that the alternative is already there.

Mr. Lowry. Absolutely, Senator. And I guess our feeling is that rather than having something that we thought could be detrimental enacted into law, we would rather take on the Secretary.

And we believe his proposals are far enough out of line and in violation of due process rights of violating the Separation of Powers doctrine and all the various things that he can be taken on and can be beaten.

Senator THOMAS. You have some kind of unique arrangement here where you are in section 3 grazing.

Mr. LOWRY. Yes.

Senator THOMAS. And so absent fences, or so on, you have private land, Federal land all together in an allotment.

Mr. LOWRY. Yes, sir.

Senator THOMAS. Mr. Hansen, do you have some unique problems with that, subleasing or how do you feel about those kinds of things?

Mr. HANSEN. The industry has always been opposed to anyone that does an illegal sublease. In our situation, we are obviously in

the business to be in the business. I do not want to sublease and walk away, give it to somebody else and leave.

We are supportive of the bill. We think it could be a little stronger if we could clean up the subleasing language in it. I think the intent is right to go after an illegal sublessor.

I feel that it got diverted there a little in the wrong direction -when applying a surcharge on the pasture agreements, but correcting that would only strengthen our support of the bill.

Senator THOMAS. Okay.

Mr. LOWRY. In the checkerboard situation, it gets very tough. When we sold out of the sheep business because of the numerous problems that Mr. Little articulated earlier, I did not have the money to go out and buy all the cattle necessary to stock our ranges, so we had to go in to pasturing agreements to utilize our private land.

And under the surcharge, you know, we are going to be penalized for trying to use our private property, which is a common problem in the checkerboard. The BLM dictates to our private land all the time.

Senator THOMAS. It is a management difficulty, there is no question. Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate very much you being here.

Mr. LOWRY. Thank you.

Senator THOMAS. The next panel please come forward.

I think we will have Linn Kincannon, Idaho Conservation League; Professor Joseph Feller, Arizona State University; Ms. Elsie Dupree, Nevada Wildlife Federation; Mr. Richard Kroger, The Wildlife Society, North Dakota Chapter; Dr. Dexter Perkins, University of North Dakota representing the Sierra Club, I believe. Welcome to all of you.

Ms. Kincannon, could you begin, please?

Ms. KINCANNON. Yes, I would be happy to, Senator.

Senator THOMAS. We are going to turn the light on this time. We missed it last time.

Ms. KINCANNON. Oh, darn.

Senator THOMAS. There is a double standard here, you know. You have got to understand that.

Ms. KINCANNON. You know, I was going to say something about that, but I do not have time.

[Laughter.]

STATEMENT OF LINN KINCANNON, PUBLIC LANDS ASSOCIATE, IDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE

Ms. KINCANNON. I am Linn Kincannon from Ketchum, Idaho. I went to Idaho 20 years ago and stayed because I fell in love with the beauty and wild country of Idaho and the West. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today in two capacities.

First, I am public lands associate for the Idaho Conservation League, Idaho's oldest and largest grassroots conservation group dedicated to protecting Idaho's clean water and public land. ICL has been deeply involved in livestock grazing issues, key legislation, litigation and also through discussions with ranchers and with Federal land managers.

I am also the mother of two kids and I am here to say that I am hoping that we will protect our wonderful public lands so that we have something worthwhile to leave to those kids.

They enjoy hiking and camping with me out there and I want them to be able to do that when they grow up as well. As parents and citizens, we are responsible for protecting those public lands. There has been quite a bit of discussion here today about how those lands are in better condition than they have been in for 100 years.

Certainly, in Idaho on some of the uplands, that is the case. They are in better condition than they used to be. But it is not true for the riparian areas and some of the other areas that are far from water. Those are the areas that I am most concerned about.

I think that the livestock-the information referred to Livestock Grazing Act will not address the problems that we see out there in the problem areas and they would not get better under this act.

The act will perpetuate and condone bad grazing management practices that still exist in the west today, not everywhere, but in a lot of places that I look at.

And I think that we have an obligation to work together to make things better, not worse, as I believe this act will do.

I came 2,000 miles to show you some on-the-ground photos of examples of how bad things are in some of the spots that I have seen and how much worse I think this act will make them.

*

I would like to start with two photographs of BLM's San Felipe allotment near Challis, Idaho. The grazing permit on this allotment is held by two of the wealthiest men in the United States or the world, David Packard and William Hewlett.

In spite of the overwhelming wealth of these particular ranchers, the riparian areas on this allotment are in terrible condition.

In 1991, the BLM did an evaluation of the allotment and they found that the riparian areas-they said nearly all of the riparian areas are in a degraded condition and that that poor condition is due to past and current livestock use.

Photo 1 shows the devastation and lost potential of a creek named Boulevard Creek on the San Felipe allotment. The photo was taken in 1993.

We were standing outside of an enclosure. You can see the fence line there. Cattle cannot get inside the fence, so the vegetation has a chance to flourish and fully express itself.

Outside, you can see what happens when there is overgrazing. In photo 2, this is a creek in Broken Wagon pasture of the San Felipe allotment.

The down cutting and the erosion on this stream is obvious, but what is particularly distressing to me is that there are no young willows or woody vegetation or shrubs that are necessary to start healing this particular stream.

They are not there because they are continually grazed off by cattle. In contrast, photos 3 and 4 were taken in Utah, far away from Idaho, but they show similar problems from livestock grazing.

*All photos have been retained in subcommittee files.

The first one is in Road Canyon on the Comb Wash allotment in southeast Utah in the canyon lands. Cattle graze this canyon every year up to the time the picture was taken.

Several disciplines attribute the sad state of this stream to the damage caused by cattle constantly removing young vegetation.

Photo 4 was taken only few miles away in a place called Grand Gulch. Historic Photos show that it used to look just like Road Canyon, but after 20 years without grazing you can see how the vegetation has flourished.

I show you these photos not to say that we should not have livestock grazing anywhere, but as a benchmark to say that this is what we could expect to see on our public lands streams and we need to set standards and guidelines that permittees will work for to achieve something that looks more like this.

The Livestock Grazing Act by saying that in permits, you well not allow terms and conditions to address this kind of thing, means that livestock operators would not be required to leave sufficient grasses and stream bank stability and woody vegetation to take care of these other public important resources.

And it seems reasonable to me to ask them to do that. I do not think that S. 852 will address the bill-will address this issue in the way I would like to see it done.

I can see why livestock operators like this bill. Gentlemen, I wish you would try to see what problems we see with it.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Kincannon follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF LINN KINCANNON, PUBLIC LANDS ASSOCIATE, IDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am Linn Kincannon from Ketchum, Idaho. I came to Idaho 20 years ago and stayed because I fell in love with the beauty and grandeur of Idaho and the West. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today in two capacities.

First, I am the Public Lands Associate for the Idaho Conservation League, Idaho's oldest and largest grassroots conservation group dedicated to preserving and protecting Idaho's lands and water quality. The Idaho Conservation League is deeply involved in livestock grazing issues on BLM and Forest Service lands, including liti gation, legislation, and candid discussions and negotiations with ranchers and federal land managers, seeking ways to improve the condition of public lands. ICL is not working to end public land ranching. We are working to bring about changes that are desperately needed.

Second, I am the mother of two great kids who love the outdoors and hike and camp with me on our wonderful public lands. As parents and citizens we are responsible for protecting our public lands so there is something left for our kids. We owe our children and future generations the chance to see a snake, hear a wolf, catch a salmon, marvel at an eagle, watch an elk, and be startled by spotting a cougar. Our kids deserve shady spots along a creek and clean water to drink and swim in. I came here today because the Livestock Grazing Act denies these opportunities to our children. The Act will perpetuate and condone all the bad grazing management which still exists in the West. Livestock grazing has already damaged too much of our public lands and robbed our kids of natural assets that should be part of their heritage. We have an obligation to work together to make things better, not worse as this bill would do.

I came 2,000 miles to show you some on-the-ground examples of how bad things are now and how much worse S. 852 will make them.

I'd like to start with two photographs of BLM's San Felipe grazing allotment near Challis, Idaho (attached to my testimony as photos 1 & 2). The permit for San Felipe is held by two of the wealthiest men in the world: David Packard and William Hewlett. In spite of the overwhelming wealth of these particular ranchers, the streamside areas on this 94,668 acre allotment (81,000 acres managed by BLM) are in terrible condition. BLM evaluated the San Felipe's riparian areas in 1991 and