The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is considering permitting a cattle ranching company to install more than a mile of permanent fencing in the Worthington Mountain Wilderness in Nevada, despite the Wilderness Act’s prohibition on permanent structures that fail to meet the minimum requirements for administrating Wilderness.
This remote Wilderness is within the Great Basin Desert, with its namesake mountain rising 4,000 feet above the valley. Mountain lions, bobcats, deer, desert bighorn sheep, kit foxes, coyotes, and other native wildlife inhabit its canyons, cliffs, and ancient forests.
BLM’s Outcome Based Grazing John Uhalde & Co. Term Permit Renewal EA is deeply flawed and problematic for Wilderness on many levels, with the agency’s prioritization of livestock grazing over the wild character of the Worthington Mountain Wilderness striking at the heart of it.
The EA misinterprets the law in its claim that the Wilderness Act requires livestock grazing in Wilderness at any cost, including authorizing a prohibited use like this permanent fence. Additionally, the EA’s analysis is confusing and lacks detail as to just how many cattle and sheep are grazing in the project area.
In our comments, we also noted that the BLM has chosen the more damaging alternative in selecting the longer of two fence options it considered. While there should be no permanent fence in the Wilderness, the agency chose 1.2 miles of fencing over 0.36 miles, even while acknowledging its preferred alternative “would have a slightly greater impact on undeveloped aspect of wilderness character … because it involves more miles of fence line within wilderness.”
Other problems include potential motorized and mechanized use to build the fence, and that it violates the Act’s requirement for solitude and “unconfined” recreation in Wilderness—with the EA stating the fence is, “a form of confinement that will require the visitor to either navigate around the fence or climb over or crawl through or under it,” and it’s a “reminder of modern expanding settlement therefore impacting solitude.”
Rather than building unlawful fencing to facilitate grazing an inappropriate number of cows in this ecologically-sensitive desert Wilderness, the BLM should uphold its statutory responsibility to protect the Worthington Mountains Wilderness by reducing the number of cows allowed to graze there.
Photo: Bob Wick, BLM
