Ely BLM Long and Ruby Valley Pinyon-Juniper Deforestation, Sagebrush Eradication and Livestock Development Proposal
Ely BLM’s Long and Ruby Valley Watershed project is one of a long series of large-scale deforestation, sagebrush habitat manipulation and livestock grazing development expansion projects that this District has rammed through over the years. In these Watershed projects, BLM “treats”/destroys vast areas of mature native vegetation communities over a decade or longer. The agency has many of these finalized Watershed EAs on the shelves – nearly all with massive Pinyon Jay habitat destruction elements and with some projects still to be completed. Despite Pinyon Jay populations plummeting, an ESA listing petition ESA listing petition being filed, a positive USFWS 90-day finding on the petition, BLM and USFS forest destruction continues unabated in the Great Basin.
In Ruby-Long Valley, BLM deploys its usual arsenal of native plant community destruction: Fire, “mechanical” methods including masticator or bullhog machines and bulldozer chaining, sagebrush mowing or roller-beating, aerating/plowing and seeding “treated” sites, and use of persistent and toxic chemical herbicides as weeds proliferate in the wake of the project disturbance. The project also includes continued high levels of livestock grazing and livestock facility expansion (fences, pipelines, well drilling), across half a million acres in 12 treatment units. BLM plans outright treatment destruction of 136,000 acres (212 sq. miles) of sensitive species wildlife habitats and complex and biodiverse native forests and sagebrush. Ely BLM segments veg killing and grazing projects into separate decisions requiring separate Appeals.
The state of an existing unmaintained “exclosure”. The only place free from livestock trampling grass devouring is under the protection of trees and downed tree limbs acting as a small de facto exclosure. BLM plans to kill all trees surrounding wet areas – blaming the trees and not relentless livestock damage for spring flow loss.
The tiny springs and seeps that still remain in the Ruby-Long Valley landscape are under grave threat from 1) Aquifer drawdown from the effects of the ever-expanding Bald Mountain Mine; 2) High levels of rapacious cattle and domestic sheep grazing. There is also concern that the mine will impact water levels in Ruby Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/23/savagery-in-the-great-basin/
BLM’s only answer to livestock grazing degradation – is to expand it even more with new livestock facilities proposed under the same EA as the landscape-level deforestation scheme.
Ely BLM Pygmy Rabbit Habitat Sagebrush Destruction in Long Valley
This prime Pygmy Rabbit habitat is also great Brewer’s Sparrow. Sage Thrasher and Sagebrush Sparrow nesting habitat – which BLM seeks to convert to livestock forage grasses.
Pygmy Rabbit burrow in center of photo. Ely BLM doesn’t just routinely destroy mature and old growth Pinyon-Juniper. They also target mature and old growth big sagebrush communities – the kind of sagebrush that species like Pygmy Rabbit must have to survive. BLM Watershed assessments are based on flawed vegetation models that find the sagebrush “too dense” “decadent” “uncharacteristic” “departed” and all the usual agency pejoratives. The sage is doomed to be rollerbeaten, crushed, mowed and re-seeded like a farm field with a tractor-pulled drill planting primarily livestock forage grasses. BLM treats the public land like a farm field for cows and sheep -sacrificing rare native wildlife species habitat to try to eke out more “forage” on livestock-depleted lands.
Now why would Ely BLM be seeking to destroy PJ and sagebrush? It wouldn’t be because the agency has allowed the herbaceous livestock forage to essentially be mined out by cows and sheep, would it? Uneaten grass protected by utilization cage.
Hard Rock Mining Threats
Gold mining is ever-expanding in the central Great Basin Pinyon-Juniper and sagebrush habitats. Open pit mega-mines are devouring public lands. They’re made even more profitable by US warmongering and global instability that elevates gold prices. Now critical minerals mining looms, too. New transmission lines like Greenlink North threaten wildlife habitats to facilitate remote-sited industrial solar, wind, and geothermal. The BLM’s recent industrial solar EIS relegates vast areas of this region to solar sacrifice zones. Despite all these ever-mounting development threats to wildlife– the BLM is stuck in a 1950s era vegetation eradication mentality cloaked in deceptive terms like “restoration”, “resilience”, “resistance” – with projects like the Ruby and Long Valley Watershed EA senselessly fragmenting and eliminating native habitat.
Old growth overlooking the Bald Mountain mine that is devouring forest tracts.
A closer view: Ancient tiny tree overlooks Bald Mountain mine devouring the PJ forest by the Ruby Valley-Long Valley divide. Mine pit excavation draws down the aquifer, and kills springs flows.
Old pinyon uprooted in apparent mine “exploration” activity.
More old growth destroyed to facilitate Bald Mountain mine “exploration”
Dead Golden Eagle along access road to the Bald Mountain mine. The toll that the monstrous gold mines are taking on wildlife in central Nevada is enormous. Access roads, powerlines, noise, disappearing ground and surface water.
You often find evidence of long-ago wood cutting in rot-resistant juniper. To a reasonable person, the presence of evidence of tree presence on a site over a long period of time would indicate that Gee, maybe this is actually a PJ forest site. But BLM’s livestock industry-driven public land “management” vegetation policies are never sane or reasonable.
Endless examples of past forest on the landscape where BLM claims tree invasion is taking place– this site now has relatively younger trees that are slated for destruction because the trees re-occupying what appears to be an old BLM deforestation area are branded as invaders and encroachers. Range-centric scientists developed a system of tree canopy cover “Phase” categories as another way to justify deforestation Trees in what are typically termed Phase I and Phase II are typically doomed. Only Phase III (denser canopy) is sometimes immune – but often gets heavily thinned, or destroyed anyway, or bark beetles attracted to injured trees take out the “Phase III” Pinyon anyway. There’s no end to BLM and USFS plant community categorization schemes used to justify deforestation.
Old Utah juniper sheltering a youngster. But BLM models claim the site should be sagebrush instead.
BLM ignores the biodiversity values of PJ forests.
How many centuries does it take from seedling to maturity to tree death to produce this nesting cavity???
Ancient Tiny Trees – How Can Anyone Want to Masticate, Bullhog, Clearcut and Burn Up These Tough Survivors that Predate White Settlement?
BLM’s Watershed health analysis found many of these sites were supposed to be sagebrush, and not PJ forest. Nevada has some splendid examples of truly tiny ancient trees – Ely BLM Long Valley, Elko BLM Spruce Mountain (now mostly destroyed by Elko BLM chaining, burns, clearcuts), Ely BLM Douglas Canyon (targeted for “treatment” destruction and more cow projects).
Savagery in the Great Basin includes more information about the Ely BLM Long and Ruby Valley Watershed project.
Long History of Settlement Impacts to Forests
The project area includes a section of the Pony Express Trail and lands surrounding the historic Fort Ruby site, where US soldiers were tasked with exterminating Newe (Western Shoshone) indigenous resistance to frontier mining and settlement. This was followed by a second wave of deforestation for livestock forage (1950s-1980s heyday). The region’s forests suffered large-scale impacts from settlement-era wood use and deforestation, as described in Ron Lanner’s The Pinon Pine, Zeier 1987, Young and Svejcar 1999, Lanner and Frazier 2011. Now over the past 15-20 years, “fire suppression” and “sage-grouse” have been used as cover for the same type of deforestation projects used to generate livestock forage in the past. Public lands management is based on a continuing settler management mentality papered over with new terminology and false agency vegetation models.
