GREEN RIVER - Two huge grazing allotments in central and southwestern Wyoming have been identified by a coalition of conservationists as among the "top ten" most overgrazed public lands in the West.

The Granite Mountain Common Allotment in central Wyoming and the Cumberland/Uinta Allotment in southwest Wyoming were listed in third and eighth place respectively, officials involved in the poll said.

RangeNet, a special project of the Western Watersheds Project, released the "American West's Most Overgrazed Public Lands 2003" list this week.

The list aims to draw attention to overgrazed areas of the west, said RangeBiome's Larry Walker who oversaw the poll.

Walker is former range conservationist with the Bureau of Land Management who retired in 1997 after 31 years of service with the agency.

"This was our first shot at it and we saw what the folks with the 10 most endangered forests and 10 most endangered rivers did and how they picked up quite a bit of coverage … so we thought we'd dip our toes in the water," Walker said in a phone interview.

"The folks that came in with the nominations and the folks that voted for them … when I look at the results, I can't question it and I think they did a pretty good job."

He said the list was released in part to coincide with the public meetings being held across the country on the BLM's proposed, national-level Grazing Rule Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

The DEIS analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the agency's proposed grazing rule, which is aimed at improving grazing management and helping public lands ranching continue. The agency held a public meeting Tuesday night in Cheyenne on the proposed rules.

Walker said from Sept. 15 through Dec. 15, the general public was invited to cast their votes for the public lands they believed are the most overgrazed in the West.

RangeNet members nominated allotments for the list, which was narrowed down to 17 possible allotments in 10 Western states for the poll.

He said several hundred people participated in the poll, which was conducted on the RangeNet Web site.

The 434,000-acre Cumberland/Uinta grazing allotment includes public and private lands located in Lincoln and Uinta counties in Wyoming and Rich County in Utah. BLM officials have struggled for nearly four decades to improve range and habitat conditions on the huge allotment.

The poll said the allotment is in poor condition and includes stripped landscapes, impoverished habitat, extensive bare soil, massive sheet and gully erosion, severely degraded riparian areas, compromised water quality and decadent and dying shrubs and aspen trees.

The Granite Mountain Common Allotment is located in central Wyoming approximately five miles north of Jeffrey City. Its roughly 78,000 acres span the region from Tin Cup Mountain to Agate Flat to Beaver Rim.

The poll said the allotment has been the subject of concern about drought and overgrazing in recent years and more than 80 percent of the forage in the allotment is allocated to livestock.

The allotment's riparian wetlands are in a perilous condition because of the erosion of humus and humic material, and water quality has been impacted, the poll said.

Officials with the Wyoming Society for Range Management could not be reached for comment about the list Tuesday.

Other overgrazed allotments ranked in the poll include:

The Diamond Bar Allotment in New Mexico's Gila National Forest, first place; the Rock Creek/Mudholes Allotment in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, second; the Montana Allotment in Arizona's Coronado National Forest Nogales Ranger District, fourth; the Pleasantview Allotment in near Pocatello, Id. and the Sycamore Valley Allotment in California's East Bay Regional Park District, tied for fifth; Kens Lake/Behind the Rocks State Trust Lands in Utah, seventh; the Antelope Basin Allotment near Madison, Mont., ninth; and California's Ord Mountain Allotment, tenth.

The list can be viewed at RangeNet's Web site (www.rangenet.org).