Public Lands Council meeting

UNCONVENTIONAL

Public Lands Council gets it done despite challenges presented for annual meeting

by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur

They say the third time’s a charm. And in a year like 2020, it seems increasingly necessary to resort to Plan C.

Such was the case when the Public Lands Council (PLC) ended up hosting its 52nd annual meeting online on Wednesday, Sept. 23 and Thursday, Sept. 24. PLC had initially hoped to hold its annual meeting in Seaside, Ore., showcasing the home state of outgoing PLC President Bob Skinner. Those plans shifted after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, with PLC leadership opting to “Roll the Dice” on an Annual Meeting at the Nugget Casino Resort in Sparks, Nev. But COVID-19 gathering restrictions (and a desire to ensure the health and safety of PLC membership) foreclosed the possibility of holding such a large event at the Nugget, and in mid-August PLC Executive Director Kaitylnn Glover announced that the meeting would be held virtually via the Zoom platform, with a limited number of PLC Officers and Directors convening in-person in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The meeting—which drew in more than 200 online participants—was Glover’s first as PLC Executive Director, having taken over that role this past January after former Executive Director Ethan Lane was promoted to Vice President of Government Affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Glover previously worked for Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and joins PLC with a wealth of experience tackling agricultural, public lands and natural resources issues for the Senator.

Prior to the annual meeting, the PLC Board of Directors convened in Salt Lake City on Monday, Sept. 21 and Tuesday, Sept. 22 to lay the groundwork for the event, poring over the Council’s finances and deliberating on proposals for PLC Endowment Trust funds, among other decisions. California was well-represented in these matters by Mike Byrne, who participated in the deliberations virtually from his ranch headquarters in Tulelake.

The Annual Meeting began in earnest on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 23, with Glover providing a wide-ranging update on PLC’s policy efforts. Glover provided details on the second round of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP 2), which had been announced by USDA only five days earlier, and overviewed PLC’s legislative efforts to provide relief to ranchers hard-hit by the market impacts resulting from the pandemic.

Of course, as with so many annual meetings, PLC’s ongoing efforts to provide regulatory reform of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA) were discussed in detail, with Glover highlighting the Endangered Species Act Amendments of 2020 (S. 4589), introduced by her former boss, Senator Barrasso. The bill proposes several changes to the ESA, such as factoring in landowners’ voluntary species conservation efforts when making listing determinations or crafting recovery plans and establishing a priority system for listing petitions and other regulatory actions. In short, the bill aims to streamline the ESA regulatory process and acknowledge the significant contributions of ranchers and other landowners to species recovery.

Amid a catastrophic wildfire season throughout the West—and particularly in California—fires were a major focus of the policy update. PLC leadership overviewed a number of Stewardship Agreements entered into between states and the federal government this year, including an agreement between the U.S. Forest Service and the State

PLC CONVENTION

of California in which each has committed to conducting 500,000 acres of fuels treatments (for a total of 1 million acres treated per year) by 2025. Glover also noted that this is the year in which the “fire-borrowing” fix takes effect (meaning the U.S. Forest Service will no longer have to ‘borrow’ forest management funds for fire suppression activities) and provided updates on federal wildfire legislation such as the Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act (S. 4431) recently introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

In order to combat future catastrophic wildfires, Glover said, PLC’s priorities in the near future will include improving forage utilization on federal lands and focusing on efforts to open up vacant Forest Service allotments to grazing.

Finally, Glover and Skinner highlighted a recent Memorandum of Understanding between PLC, Ducks Unlimited and the Safari Club International which outlines the groups’ commitment to cultivate healthier ecosystems, wildlife populations and local economies through active management such as hunting, fishing and livestock grazing.

PLC’s Forest Service Committee, chaired by CCA Immediate Past President Dave Daley, Oroville, kicked off first thing Wednesday afternoon. Daley briefly shared with participants his heartbreaking account of the Bear Fire, which had burned through his allotment on the Plumas National Forest just two weeks earlier. The Bear Fire destroyed much of the landscape the Daley family has stewarded for generations dating back to well before the creation of the U.S. Forest Service and devastating the 400 head of cattle he had turned out on the allotment earlier this year.

When Daley turned the conversation over to the regulators, Chuck Oliver, Deputy Forest Supervisor of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in Oregon, detailed obstacles hindering the agency’s ability to complete NEPA analysis on vacant allotments within the Forest Service system—including more than 200 vacant allotments in California alone—and stated that the Forest Service is carefully examining what emergency management might be permitted on vacant allotments to curb the threat of catastrophic wildfire. Gilbert Jackson of the U.S. Forest Service provided an update on the recent wild horse gather on the Modoc National Forest, during which 506 total horses were gathered from the Devil’s Garden Plateau Wild Horse Territory to address unsustainable environmental and economic impacts.

Asked to identify his major priorities as we transition into a new presidential administration (whether it be a second Trump Administration term or the first term of a Biden Administration), Daley identified the need to complete NEPA on vacant allotments and the necessity of broadening our coalition in addressing the increasing threat of wildfires.

PLC’s Wildlife Committee also met Wednesday afternoon, with an extensive discussion of federal wildlife issues from longtime friend of PLC, Karen Budd-Falen, now a Deputy Solicitor for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS). Budd-Falen provided an update on wolf delisting, stating that the final rule to delist wolves from the federal ESA is currently undergoing interagency review at the Office of Management and Budget and is essentially “ready to go” (unfortunately the rule will have little impact in California, where wolves are afforded state ESA protections). BuddFalen also detailed two recent CCA-supported USFWS proposals intended to reform how the agency designates critical habitat; one defines the term “habitat” for the first time, while the other clarifies when lands (including federal lands) may be excluded from critical habitat designations due to economic or other considerations.

Many of those same ESA reforms were discussed the following morning, when USFWS Director Aurelia Skipwith addressed attendees at Thursday’s General Session. Skipwith, a fixture at PLC Annual Meetings in recent years, was promoted to the Directorship at USFWS in December of 2019, and has long recognized the vital role that ranchers and other landowners play in habitat stewardship and the conservation of sensitive species.

Thursday’s General Session also saw litigation updates from Chris Carr, a partner at the law firm Baker Botts, and

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Caroline Lobdell, the Executive Director of the Western Resources Legal Center (WRLC). While Carr and Lobdell primarily discussed their ongoing efforts to defend recent NEPA and ESA reforms from challenges brought by environmental litigants, they also discussed current efforts on behalf of CCA. Lobdell and her colleagues at WRLC represented CCA as defendant-intervenors in a 2017 lawsuit filed by the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center (CSERC) that challenged the legality of cattle grazing on three allotments in the Stanislaus National Forest. After CCA prevailed in that lawsuit in 2019, CSERC appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals; Carr and his colleagues at Baker Botts represented CCA in the 9th Circuit appeal, in which oral arguments were heard October 14.

The PLC Annual Meeting concluded Thursday afternoon with the general business meeting. PLC officers announced that both the Western Resources Legal Center and the Idaho Cattlemen’s Association had been awarded PLC Endowment Trust grants. PLC President Bob Skinner noted that WRLC’s grant would help the organization continue to train “the next generation of natural resource lawyers and advocates, which ranchers are always in need of.”

As President, Skinner also had the honor of awarding the annual PLC President’s Award. This year, Skinner bestowed the award upon Nevada rancher John Falen, himself a past president of PLC. Skinner noted that Falen played “an influential part in establishing the Public Lands Endowment Trust, served as a member of the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Committee and worked hard to defend the rights of the ranching industry.” The 2020 Friend of PLC Award, meanwhile, went to Aaron Schlagel, a senior director at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association who has provided behind-the-scenes logistical support to PLC officers and employees in recent years.

Finally, PLC’s General Session culminated in the installation of a new officer team: Wyoming rancher Niels Hansen has been elevated to President and Colorado rancher Mark Roeber has been elevated to Vice President. Utah rancher Steve Osguthorpe was installed as Secretary (Osguthorpe greeted ranchers at the Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah, where his family runs sheep in the summer months, for the 50th Annual PLC Meeting in 2018). Idaho rancher and former PLC President Brenda Richards continues in her role as PLC Treasurer and Bob Skinner takes on the role of Immediate Past President.

While PLC’s Annual Meeting typically ends with a delightful banquet featuring beef, lamb, local libations and a high-profile keynote speaker (last year’s meeting in Great Falls, Montana featured Interior Secretary David Bernhardt), this year’s meeting ended with participants simply clicking a red “leave meeting” button on the Zoom platform.

With any luck, though, next year these 200-plus ranchers can once again coalesce around tables brimming with beef and lamb to celebrate another year of public lands policy victories.

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