Public Lands Council annual meeting

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Public Lands Council goes virtual for 53rd annual meeting

by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur

The Public Lands Council (PLC) planned the organization’s 53rd Annual Meeting for September 8-10 in the beautiful coastal town of Seaside, Ore., about a 90-minute drive northwest of Portland. The location had been chosen in part in honor of PLC Immediate Past President Bob Skinner; Skinner’s term expired in 2020, and while PLC typically honors its outgoing presidents with a home-state Annual Meeting at the conclusion of their service, Skinner had been denied that honor due to COVID-19 travel restrictions forcing 2020’s 52nd Annual Meeting to go virtual.

Unfortunately, Oregon’s rise in COVID-19 cases – driven by the highly-transmissible Delta variant – and meeting restrictions imposed by the state as a result of those rising infections caused PLC’s Seaside plans to be “washed ashore,” as PLC Executive Director Kaitlynn Glover put it in an email announcing the cancelation of the event.

Instead, PLC’s 53rd Annual Meeting also became its second Virtual Annual Meeting, rescheduled for September 28 and hosted via the Zoom video conferencing platform.

“While I was hoping this year would be my first inperson meeting, I am so pleased that despite the ongoing challenges, we are able to bring you high-quality policy gatherings in a virtual setting for the second year in a row,” wrote Glover, whose tenure at PLC began in January of 2020 just shortly before the pandemic took hold.

PLC’s virtual meeting kicked off with a welcome message from PLC President Niels Hansen, a thirdgeneration cow/calf producer from Rawlins, Wyo. Virtual attendees also heard from Idaho Governor (and current Chair of the Western Governor’s Association) Brad Little. Governor Little has incredible insights into the value of livestock grazing on public lands. Not only does he govern an agriculture-rich state in which the majority of land is held by the federal government, he is also a lifelong sheep and cattle producer whose grandfather was known as “the sheep king of Idaho.” "In Idaho, public lands are integral to our livelihoods and we recognize we need to do all we can to keep these lands healthy,” Little said during the Opening General Session. “This requires active management.”

Later in the morning, Glover and PLC Director of Operations Allie Nelson hosted a “PLC Engagement

Session” highlighting the organization’s outreach and communications to ranchers and to policymakers in Washington, D.C. Via PLC’s Daily Roundup, PLC highlights issues of importance to public lands ranchers in a short daily digest (CCA encourages public lands ranching permittees and others interested in public lands issues to subscribe at publiclandscouncil.org/capital-issues/).

While the Daily Roundup reaches an audience of hundreds of ranchers each day, much of the value in this communication is in its reach to legislators and staffers on Capitol Hill, who are reminded daily of the vital importance of public lands ranching to the nation’s economy and environment. A weekend version – the Weekend Roundup – and a monthly Capital Issues newsletter are geared exclusively to ranchers and contain more editorial flavor than the daily digest.

Glover also highlighted PLC’s social media engagement, in which the group highlights the importance of multipleuse management of our federal lands among other topics. In particular, Glover highlighted the writings of Dave Daley, Oroville, whose articles regarding the devastation of 2020’s Bear Fire on his allotment on the Plumas National Forest have been printed in publications like the Los Angeles Times and have been shared far and wide by PLC and CCA to federal policymakers.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of the virtual meeting was the “30x30 Panel” primarily focused on the Biden Administration’s “America the Beautiful” initiative, which proposes to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters by 2030 in an effort to combat climate change and promote biodiversity. PLC was joined by Nada Culver, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Chris French, Deputy Chief of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) for the discussion of the Biden Administration’s proposal.

But the Biden Administration wasn’t the first U.S. jurisdiction to propose a 30x30 initiative – that distinction belongs to California, where Governor Gavin Newsom in October of 2020 announced the state’s own effort to conserve 30 percent of its lands and waters before the turn of the decade. To provide insights about California’s own plan and how it may intersect with the priorities of the federal government, PLC invited Jennifer Norris, Deputy Secretary for Biodiversity and Habitat at the California Natural Resources Agency, to participate in the panel.

Livestock producers have been eager to find out what lands will ‘count’ as conserved for the federal government’s purposes, and while those determinations have not yet been officially made, Culver and French provided their perspectives on the issue.

“How exactly you would measure each of those 155 million acres we'll probably need to talk about,” said Culver, referring to the acreage BLM permits for livestock grazing. “But yes, I think it's got to be part of the [America the Beautiful] effort if we want to succeed.”

Asked whether grazing allotments on USFS lands would count toward the Administration’s conservation target, French said “yes – that’s what our input is. The majority of national forest system lands meet that conservation goal.” French acknowledged that there may be lands which are unsuitable, such as parking lots or mines, but “all other lands should be included within this conservation goal.”

While Norris didn’t clarify what lands would count toward California’s 30 percent conservation goal, she did note that California officials have had dialogues with federal officials regarding the two similar initiatives. Norris also had plenty of positive things to say about livestock producers. “There’s a lot of amazing conservation that goes on on working ranches,” Norris said, adding that “ranching practices help conserve California tiger salamander [and other] species that rely on vernal pools.”

CCA and PLC remain closely engaged in the California and federal initiatives and will work to ensure that both 30x30 and the America the Beautiful initiatives recognize the benefits that private and public rangelands provide in terms of open space, carbon sequestration, species habitat and other environmental benefits.

During the virtual meeting, PLC also announced recipients of $450,000 in grant funding it will be distributing to support research and educational programs intended to improve public lands ranching. The Western Resources Legal Center (WRLC) received a grant to “expand their program that educates attorneys on natural resource law and public lands advocacy.” WRLC has represented CCA and California cattle ranchers in numerous legal battles, including disputes over cattle grazing on the Devil’s Garden in the Modoc National Forest and ranch management in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Other grant recipients include: the Idaho Cattle Association, which will utilize the grant funds to study the impact of cattle grazing on sage grouse; Oregon State University, for research and education programs regarding fine fuels management in the Northern Great Basin; the Foundation for Ranch Management, which will produce an educational booklet on ranching to provide to urbanites moving to rural communities; the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, which is working to develop a common riparian monitoring system for all federal agencies; and University of Nevada-Reno, which will use the funds to study dormant season grazing.

While the virtual nature of the 2021 PLC Annual Meeting produced an efficient, informative meeting, public lands ranchers sorely missed the opportunity to gather around with friends for a second year in a row. With COVID-19 infections currently trending in the right direction throughout much of the country and numerous tools currently available to fight the pandemic, though, California’s public lands ranchers and the CCA staff look forward to an in-person meeting in 2022!