National forests will restrict domestic livestock to protect native species

FACT: The Gila Wilderness area is home to the world’s largest population of rare Mexican spotted owls. @MartinHeinrich @SenatorLujan: We must protect these critical habitats and designate the #WildGilaRiver as #WildAndScenic pic.twitter.com/qqyrJZ2vQB

— Wild Gila River (@wildgilariver) August 19, 2021

In blue state New Mexico the Santa Fe and Carson National Forests have prohibited domestic sheep and goats on public lands to protect native bighorn sheep. 

Because of pollution from cattle grazing American Rivers named the Gila the nation’s most endangered river in 2019. Antimicrobials in manure kill fungal communities necessary for healthy forests while desertification driven by agricultural practices, overgrazing, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and urban sprawl has turned much of the United States into scorched earth. 

Draining fragile aquifers and quietly lobbying for more water from the Gila River is the House of Saud who owns land in Arizona where it raises alfalfa to ship to Saudi Arabia.

But just north of the US border with Mexico long-time environmental activist, Ted Turner has teamed up with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the State of New Mexico to foster a pair of endangered Mexican gray wolves and their pups on his 243 square mile ranch near the Gila National Forest. Nearby, jaguars have been reintroduced.

Last year the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump Organization's Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and its local representatives saying the agencies are allowing cattle in restricted areas along the Gila River and its tributaries in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. Investigators from the Center discovered cattle on the Gila National Forest in excluded riparian zones in violation of a 1998 legal settlement. Today in the Gila the Mexican gray wolf population in New Mexico and Arizona has increased by at least 24 percent according to the Center's Michael Robinson. 

The U.S. Forest Service will impose more stringent measures under a legal settlement to keep grazing cattle away from waterways in two national forests to better protect endangered wildlife. The Center for Biological Diversity reached the settlement with the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calling for the agencies to better protect riparian areas against stray cattle within New Mexico's Gila National Forest and Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Protected riparian wildlife now include southwestern willow flycatchers, yellow-billed cuckoos, Gila chub, Chiricahua leopard frogs, loach minnow and spikedace fish, as well as narrow-headed and northern Mexican garter snakes, the center said. [Santa Fe New Mexican]