JEFF GEARINO Southwest Wyoming bureau | Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2003 12:00 am
GREEN RIVER - Federal officials have restored some grazing privileges to a Uinta County rancher under a settlement agreement announced last week, according to officials involved in the case.
As part of the settlement, the Evanston rancher has also agreed to modify portions of a 90-mile-long fence located on checkerboard lands within the huge Austin Triangle Allotment in southwest Wyoming. The fence modifications will allow for better antelope migration through the area.
Joseph Broadbent, the owner of the JR Broadbent Company of Evanston, had appealed the Bureau of Land Management's decision that revoked some of his grazing privileges.
Officials said the settlement agreement ends the administrative appeals process. They said there was no admission of guilt by the company as part of the agreement.
BLM officials, Broadbent's attorney and conservationists who intervened in the case said they are generally pleased with the settlement agreement.
"Typically, with any legal battle, people go into the settlement agreement because they feel they're going to get a better deal than they might have if they went to court," said BLM Kemmerer Field Office Manager Jeff Rawson.
"With the possibility of a long, drawn-out court proceedings and then appeals after that … with people expending time and wages on this … I think everybody feels fairly good about it," he said.
National Wildlife Federation attorney Tom Lustig called the agreement a "good compromise" that will effectively halt the construction of new fences in the allotment and modify existing fences.
"One of the most important things about this settlement agreement is that it stops that cancer from growing," he said. "The BLM didn't have clear legal authority at all to remedy the fencing problem on (Broadbent's) private land, but the agreement addresses the problem of what those fences were doing to antelope migration out there," he said.
"I thought it worked for everybody," Broadbent's attorney Richard Walden of Cheyenne said.
"I felt like, and I think the Wildlife Federation and the BLM felt … that everybody had given a little bit, and got mostly what they wanted and left happy," he said. "Everybody's interests got taken care of."
Revocation, intervention
A number of the Broadbent Company's grazing privileges were revoked or curtailed in early 2001 under a proposed decision issued by the BLM's Kemmerer Field Office.
The BLM charged that Broadbent repeatedly damaged rangelands and cultural resources on public lands and trespassed his livestock while "flagrantly" violating the terms of his grazing leases. The violations occurred on the huge Austin Triangle Allotment and on several other smaller allotments.
Conservationists also raised concerns at the time about the impacts of approximately 90 miles of antelope-proof fence that Broadbent constructed on his private lands within the checkerboard public lands. Some of those fence corners crossed into public lands, officials said.
Conservationists said the fence - which they said included a type known as "gaucho" barbed wire, which has large barbs on a high tensile wire four to six inches off the ground - was hindering pronghorn antelope migration across federal and the private lands.
The BLM's proposed decision ordered to the rancher to pay approximately $160,000 in restitution for damages to public lands and for the retrieval of scientific information from disturbed cultural sites within the allotments.
The agency issued a final decision upholding the measures against Broadbent in Jan. 2002.
The allotments are located on thousands of acres of public rangelands located in Sweetwater, Lincoln and Uinta counties in southwest Wyoming.
Broadbent appealed the final decision. Last May, the Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled against the BLM and said the rancher could turn his cattle out into the allotment until his appeal was heard. The administrative trial on his appeal was scheduled for this spring.
In July, the Wyoming and National Wildlife Federation was granted intervener status in the case because of its concerns about antelope migration.
Fence modifications
Broadbent has maintained that he has done nothing illegal in building the fence. Walden said a landowner has every right to construct a fence on his private property to keep his livestock contained.
Under the final decision, the company's grazing privileges were canceled entirely within the Austin Triangle Allotment. They were also reduced by 50 percent in the nearby Granger Lease Allotment and by 25 percent each in six smaller allotments.
Rawson said under the settlement agreement, some of the company's grazing privileges on the Austin Triangle Allotment were restored. He said the rancher agreed to a 20 percent reduction on the Granger Lease Allotment for four years and a 25 percent reduction on the other six allotments for four years.
He said the penalties that the company posted for the grazing trespasses were kept by the agency. Broadbent also agreed to pay for contract archeological work by a BLM-permitted company aimed at recovering information from the cultural sites damaged on public lands, Rawson said.
Also as part of the settlement, Broadbent agreed to fencing measures that included modifying some sections of the existing five-wire fence by making the bottom wire smooth and no closer than 16 inches to the ground.
The company also agreed to construct gaps in the corners of most of the existing fenced-in sections, and to construct some limited new fencing that conforms to BLM guidelines for fences on antelope ranges.
"The fencing plan by no means returns this allotment to the pre-fenced migration corridor it used to be … but there was a real risk that the fence would expand" Lustig said.
"It's basically not going to grow anymore and the critical point is the existing fence will be modified and what little bit of new fencing that goes in … will clearly be antelope friendly," he said.
Rawson said "it's our desire - as it is with Mr. Broadbent and his company and any other grazing permittee - that we put all this behind us and continue to work together out there … I think that's everybody's intent now. We can't go back, but we can move ahead from here."
Walden said he hoped the agreement will lead to "better cooperation between Broadbent and the BLM in the future."
Prior to the Austin Triangle case, the Broadbent company was involved in nine trespassing cases that were settled and closed since 1990, according to BLM records.