Judge rejects Idaho anti-grazing arguments

An environmentalist group has failed to persuade a federal judge that sheep grazing on about 220,000 publicly owned acres in Idaho violates environmental law.  Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush has rejected several arguments by the Western Watersheds Project that federal land managers insufficiently studied the impact of grazing on sage grouse habitat.  In 2013, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management decided to alter grazing on the Big Desert Sheep Allotment near Blackfoot, Idaho, by constructing roughly 17 miles of fencing and watering facilities to create a “forage reserve.”  The purpose of the forage reserve is to increase sagebrush cover while providing livestock feed for ranchers who must rest their allotments due to revegetation and wildfire recovery efforts elsewhere.  Western Watersheds Project filed a lawsuit last year claiming the plan violated the National Environmental Policy Act because BLM didn’t take a “hard look” at the environmental consequences and didn’t study enough alternatives to the project.