On Thu, 9 Feb 1995, Laura Saavedra wrote: (this is actually David Buckley)
> the letter she emphasized three points: 1) the land is a state trust land
> and, as such, is not considered in the same way as "public land." These
> lands are managed to provide economic support to trusts (such as schools)
> and are considered more like private land; 2) there is a Pygmy Rabbit
> recovery plan in draft with the Dept. of Fish & Wildlife. There is still
> time to provide comment on this plan; and 3) if there is to be permanent

> little confused about the role of trust land in this state; if the land is
> in trust, isn't it in trust to the people of Washington and future
> generations (i.e., isn't the "public" a trustee, too?)? If it's considered
> to be more like private land, what's the difference? Anyone know the legal
> implications? Second, apparently the draft WDFW recovery plan is stating
> that grazing has "beneficial effects" on Pygmy Rabbit populations. Last

The 'school lands' she is referring to date back to a rather old law,
name of which escapes me now, but it sets aside one section of each
township to provide income to support schools. DNR owns an awful lot of
land in this category. If I have time later, I'll have my GIS add it up
and report it back to y'all. But this land is meant to provide money,
which is why they graze it. Much of this trust land farther east is
cultivated, with leasing $ being paid to support education. It's still
public land, it's just used for different purposes.

As far as cows and Pygmy rabbits go, there is NO direct evidence that
grazing helps Pygmy rabbits, and very little evidence that it hurts
them. The only direct damage is the rare instance when a cow collapses a
burrow, possibly (sort of like the odds of winning the lottery) killing a
rabbit inside. The damage from cows is in compaction of soils along
their paths and near waterholes or other congregating areas. Steve
Herman has told me that the draft recovery plan for Pygmy Rabbits
includes creating a new watering hole for cows and adding alot of pipe to
Sagebrush Flats. This is ridiculous, as the existing watering area is
already a monoculture of cheatgrass due to cows. The real threat to
Sagebrush Flats is the introduction of cheatgrass into its bunchgrass
mosaic. The Dept. of Wildlife bases their rabbit/cow symbiosis
hypothesis on the logic that cows pick grasses over shrubs, causing an
increase in shrub cover. Pygmy Rabbits like dense shrubs and 90% or more
of their diet is Artemisia shrubs. *BUT* Pygmy Rabbits have existed in
eastern Washington for probably 5000 years, while cows have only been
there since 1834. For 5000 years, Pygmy Rabbits lived with *NO*
ungulates at all. Post-glacial extinctions left most of eastern
Washington with no deer, elk, bison, nothing. How is it in the past 161
years they suddenly became dependent upon cows? The bottom line here is
that the rancher is friendly with certain people in strategic places, who
shall for now remain nameless. Megan Gahr recently finished her MS
thesis on this rabbit population, and she could find no statistical
correlation between rabbit numbers and whether sites were grazed or not.
So Wash. Dept of Wildlife is basing their plan on conjecture, on the old
idea that management is best, and not really trying to manage the
shrub-steppe ecosystem.

If you would like to do something to keep Sagebrush Flats pristine, write
to:

Nongame Department
Washington Dept. of Fisheries and Wildlife
600 Capitol Way N
Mailstop 43135
Olympia, WA 98501-1091
(360) 753-2084

and tell them something like this:

1.) There is no direct evidence that cows help or hinder Pygmy Rabbits,
but the fact that their native ecosystem evolved without ungulates for
over 5000 years suggests that they can get along fine without cows.

2.) The state could easily set aside Sagebrush Flats not by *buying* it
(we already own it), but by making up the pittance the rancher pays in
grazing fees elsewhere. It would be useful to find out exactly how much
money DNR makes from the grazing - that could be the price of an extinct
population of Pygmy Rabbits. How about WDFW leasing the land from DNR
and just not run any cows on it?

3.) Of an original (rough estimate here) 3 million ha of shrub-steppe
in eastern Washington, only 800,000 remain, most of this rocky stuff too
hard to plow. The total acreage of deep-soil sites in shrub-steppe isn't
currently known, but I bet it's less than 10% of the total 800K. Only
100K ha are set aside in wildlife areas, 31K of which are the ALE site
(Hanford). Only 28% of historic shrub-steppe habitats still exist, only
3% exist as wildlife areas. Over half of this land is now farmland.

We have all missed the deadline to comment on the draft EIS, but if we
act quickly we can voice a strong opinion. BTW, I have been planning on
going out there in late April to do some birding, maybe a pack of
Tweeters could go check it out.

____________________________
Mike Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu
http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html