This is a very busy time for area ranchers, especially those who must constantly provide water and food supplements for their cattle in this very dry year. Despite being already pressed for time, 31 of them took the time to plead with the Fremont County Commissioners Tuesday afternoon to intercede for them with the Lander office of the Bureau of Land Management.
After the two-hour conversation was over, Commission Chairman Scott Luther was on his way to hand deliver a letter from the commissioners to the Lander Field Office of the BLM.

Grazing permittees in the Green Mountain Common Allotment area, which spreads from South Pass to well past Jeffrey City, have been given four to eight days to remove all their cattle from their BLM grazing allotments. "It's practically impossible to have our cattle off of there in time," said Emil Shepperson, manager of Sweetwater Grazing, LLC. "Our grazing association decided we should try legal action, but it's too big of a financial burden to try and for a stay through legal means." Dick Loper of the Wyoming State Grazing Board agreed. "It's very tough on calves to try and move them in 95-degree heat," Loper told the commissioners. "In my professional opinion as a range management technician, the Green Mountain Common is not in any danger.
They've actually had a lot of rain out there this year compared to the Lander Valley ... The BLM is giving (ranchers) an impossible task," demanding a four- to six-inch grass stubble be maintained in all areas... They can't meet these objectives." Loper then added that "It's not a question of whether the BLM has the authority -- they've abused the privilege" of maintaining and managing
the land for the people.

Gayle Armstrong rose to speak as a representative of "the west end of the Green Mountain Allotment," reading aloud the written comments she had submitted to the commissioners at the beginning of the meeting. "We have been imposed upon with impossible tasks for grazing in this allotment," Armstrong said. "We feel the attitude of the (BLM District Manager Jack Kelly) of 'save everything but the rancher' has forced us to respond to their rules and impossible tasks." She noted that Armstrong Ranch, Inc. had complied with request after request from the Lander BLM office -- after not being allowed onto their allotment until June 7, three weeks later than usual -- including hauling in water tanks for the livestock, and then having to move them two more times to satisfy further edicts. "We estimate the cost for this grazing season to be in the neighborhood of $35,000 to $40,000 for less than 300 head of cattle from June 7 through September 30," she said.

Rob Croft, president of the Fremont County Cattlemen's Association, stated that "To start using winter reserves now would be disastrous." He cited statistics on feeding hay, still scarce in the area, and claimed the "disaster" to ranchers "will also have a domino effect" on nearly every business in the area. "They (the BLM) push people back until they just can't do it anymore,"
he said. "We need help from the commission right now." Bill Hancock, a rancher who runs cattle in the Muskrat Open Area, railed
against "the way the BLM is mismanaging the wild horses ... they've had the grass ate right down to the ground" before any cattle were turned out onto that grazing area. "This isn't just cutting down on the livestock forage, but on the wild game's forage as well."

Several ranchers commented that they felt "unmanaged wild horses" were more to blame for the degraded conditions of public lands than their cattle were. Armstrong said she believed that, instead of gathering up 45 of a herd of some 100 wild horses from the Wager Meadows area, the BLM actually "relocated Sweetwater horses into our area and that's what they hauled off. We didn't recognize any of them, and we see them day after day." Commissioner Doug Thompson, who also ranches in the Jeffrey City area, stated that the BLM is ordering permittees off their grazing allotments "for punitive or vindictive reasons... They're not working with them." Irv Lozier told the commissioners that he had repeatedly written to the Lander BLM office and "they don't answer our letters. I can't believe it," he said. "This letter came today. We have to be off the allotment by Friday!"

Rancher Casey Shepperson said, "The BLM knew a lot longer then they gave these guys notice." He added that, despite the fact that many in the room had received letters from the BLM only that morning or Monday, that he'd "heard 2 1/2 weeks ago (via a phone call from the BLM) that they were planning to shut that allotment down." Commissioner Crosby Allen told the audience he was "extremely" concerned about the plight of ranchers in this hot, dry cycle. "We've watched mining go down, we've watched the timber industry go down, and now look who's sitting in front of us now," Allen said. "About the last economic producers we have left." He added that, "20 percent of our economy, of all the money circulating in this county," comes from agriculture... (They're going down), and it's all from the hands of one over-zealous bureaucrat and that's what upsets me here."

Thompson agreed, saying "It's our responsibility to intercede between the BLM and (the ranching community). Commissioner Lanny Applegate stated, "It's got to be changed at the Congressional level. This is the place to start," with the county
commissioners, but it needs to go to a higher level, he said. Loper said the commissioners should write to Jack Kelly in support of
giving ranchers more time. "You've got to be able to move with enough time to do it without killing calves or stressing cows," he said.

When Commissioner Tom Satterfield asked the gathering if they had indeed been through "intensive consultation" with the Lander BLM office, as stated in the bureau's letter. The response was laughter and snorts from the ranchers.

Irv Lozier stated that, "The consultation amounts to one thing: they tell us to come to a meeting and then tell us what they've decided and how it's going to be. And if we have another opinion, we get kicked off the land." Loper agreed. "I've called every (BLM) office in the state, and I can't find any situation in Wyoming comparable to attitude of the BLM in Lander," he said.

When all the discussion was concluded, the five Fremont County Commissioners unanimously agreed to draft a letter to the Lander BLM office and deliver it immediately, since time was fast running out for the permittees of the Green Mountain Common Allotment area who are being ordered to move their cattle immediately.