Do not take stock. Or else.
When we say the public lands ranching industry has government agencies in their pockets, whistleblowers give us a solid indication as to why.
On July 28th, 2023, Melissa Shawcroft was notified that she’d been suspended from her fieldwork as a Bureau of Land Management Rangeland Specialist. The suspension, signed by the Field Manager of the Royal Gorge Field Office, specified 14 days without pay. What the suspension didn’t specify — explicitly — was that she was being reprimanded for doing her job well.
The 30-year seasoned specialist has, until now, worked out of the San Luis Valley field office in Colorado. For those three decades, her job has entailed distributing and overseeing nearly 70 grazing allotments and 50 grazing permits. In the Rio Grande Natural Area, a critical aspect of her role is protecting the environment from destruction caused by livestock overgrazing.
She does a good job. In 2012, the BLM awarded her Outstanding Rangeland Management Specialist, an achievement demonstrating that the agency itself acknowledged her work.
Shawcroft has documented the degradation of the public land she manages for years, and her reports indicate an acceleration of livestock-cause destruction in the area.
Shawcroft and her PEER legal counsel, Jeff Ruch, assert that she’s being punished for taking her findings up the ladder within the Bureau only after her documentation went without agency action after she repeatedly reported her findings and recommended course of action to her immediate supervisor and team staff.
Since 2017, she has documented grazing trespasses in the San Luis Valley, including 36 different incidents since 2022. Her BLM superiors have yet to remove illegal cattle or take any action in their power to curtail the trespassing livestock and the ranchers who neglect to keep said livestock out of the area.
“As a result [of continued livestock trespassing], stretches of protected habitat for migratory birds, including threatened and endangered species, no longer meet minimal landscape health standards for water quality, vegetation, or wildlife suitability,” reports PEER.
“They come right out and tell me we don’t want another Bundy situation,” Shawcroft reported to the Denver Post.
Shawcroft was referencing the standoff in Nevada in 2014 when the Bundys — a family of public lands ranchers — and an armed militia threatened federal agents when they attempted to round up the Bundys’ cattle that were illegally grazing on public land. Over the course of two decades, the family had refused to pay grazing fees that totaled nearly one million dollars. In the end, the Bundy family was acquitted of their violent standoff, the federal agency acquiesced, and traumatized agency employees continued their work under a new understanding -- that they’d look the other way to avoid conflict with greedy public lands ranchers.
It’s not a stretch to see how Shawcroft related her situation to the Bundy effect.
“This entire matter revolves around one issue: the refusal by the BLM Rocky Mountain District to take enforcement action to stem grazing trespass to protect [the Rio Grande Natural Area] BLM is obligated to protect the functioning of the lands in its custody to maintain water, soil, and vegetative quality, as well as wildlife habitat. In addition, under the Endangered Species Act, the agency is obliged to prevent actions that put threatened and endangered species in jeopardy,” writes Ruch.
Ruch continues, “In short, it is Melissa’s often-expressed view that BLM’s non-enforcement posture on grazing trespass in the San Luis Valley runs contrary to BLM’s mission and legal obligations… Melissa repeatedly, by email and in person, let her supervisor, Mr. Berger know about illegal trespasses in the allotments managed by the Field Office. She further repeatedly brought up the decimation of the public land and the habitat of an endangered species by illegal trespass in each staff meeting she attended.”
In fact, this July 2023 suspension isn’t the first time Shawcroft has encountered reprimand for publicizing her findings and BLM’s lack of accountability. In 2020, she faced suspension after appealing to the then-acting director of the BLM, William Perry Pendley.
BLM employee suppression doesn’t start or stop with Melissa Shawcroft. It’s endemic to the management of public lands.
The Bundy disaster in 2016 made national news for its outward violence and lingering standoff, and certainly set another precedent for the priority given to rogue public lands ranchers over the responsibilities — and basic employment protections — of BLM employees and others who work for agencies within the Department of the Interior.
In 2018, the BLM fired another veteran rangeland manager for reporting illegal grazing in Ely, Nevada.
According to a PEER report, “Craig Hoover, a 21-year BLM veteran, reported numerous violations, including grazing trespass in areas outside of permits and in excess of permit limits, and stolen fencing materials. BLM’s Ely Field Office took no enforcement action but instead fired Mr. Hoover.”
It’s worth noting that in 2018, BLM conducted an emergency roundup of approximately 250 wild horses spread across a HMA (land designated as wild horse habitat, where they are supposed to be federally protected) more than 800,000 acres in the area due to “lack of water.” That same year, thousands of cattle and sheep legally grazed year-round on public land grazing allotments there.
In 2022, Spencer Roberts reported on The Intercept about the “sabotage” of Mexican Grey Wolf recovery efforts caused by the influential big-money ranching industry and the government agencies doing their bidding.
The investigative piece opened with the story of a female Mexican grey wolf who’d been captured by the USDA due to her alleged appetite for livestock in New Mexico. Wildlife services had justified her intentional killing with reports of numerous livestock kills in the area.
But when Robert Gosnell, the incoming state director of the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, was warned by Fish and Wildlife Services of shady dealings within the department, he consulted biologists and gray wolf specialists in the Mountain West region about the alleged depredation numbers. Upon his investigation, his direct superior told him to “back off.” Undeterred by the warning and committed to understanding the truth, Gosnell filed a complaint with the USDA Office of Inspector General. The action resulted in Gosnell being demerited and transferred away from New Mexico.
As of the publication of this article, Wildlife Services has introduced strengthened standards for confirming when livestock has been, without question, killed by wolves.
Additional cases of BLM employee suppression over the issue of public lands and degradation of ecosystems.
https://peer.org/scientific-fraud-infests-fish-and-wildlife-service-top-ranks/
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/whistleblower-puts-nevada-blms-chummy-industry-relationships-in-the-spotlight
https://peer.org/peermail-migratory-bird-whistleblower-case-goes-to-judge/