310 



! 

 togec,1ier. For personnel assigned the huge task of planning 

 for ecosystem use through the vast and diverse Upper 

 Colvm^iia, that should not be an obstacle of overwhelming 

 ditnenlsions . The ecosystem teams were aible to "coordinate" 

 their efforts with personnel of the BLM, the same personxlel 

 who, by federal law, are required to "coordinate" with . 

 Owyhee County. But, appcirently, they were unable to i 

 determine how to commxinicate with our County's Board or 

 Comrai'ttee. You know, and we know, that such is not the 

 case. Our county, and other land use planning counties, 

 were deliberately eliminated from the planning process. 



Why were we eliminated from the planning process? We 

 believe we have the experience through the last four years 

 of dealing with an arrogant federal bureaucracy to qualify 

 us to suggest the following reasons: (i) we were eliminated 

 because of the inherent intent on the part of the ecosystem 

 planners to portray natural resource uses, particularly 

 grazing, in a negative light; (2) we were better prepared 

 than non-planning counties to combat this negative portrayal 

 of resource uses, such as grazing, which is designed to 

 suppo,rt the efforts of Secretary Babbitt to remove livestock 

 from 't:he public lands (just recently a member of the BLM 

 Solicitor's office advised several Owyhee County permittees 

 that the pressure to remove cattle from the pxiblic lands 

 would increase during the next few years) ; and (3) because 

 of our organized planning efforts, we were familiar enough 

 with the condition of the public lands in our counties and 

 were familiar enough with the Congressionally established 

 structure of management of the public lands that we could 

 present meaningful alternatives to the negative approach) 

 taken in the draft EIS. 



We firmly believe that it is clearly the intent of this 

 federal planning group to usurp the function of Congress 

 with regard to management of the public lands, to provide 

 the means by which the management agencies such as the BLM 

 can curtail natural resource uses such as grazing. In 

 carrying out that intent they falsely represent that they 

 have coordinated their efforts with "counties". They have 

 not done so. 



We, by letter, recently reminded the Coalition of Counties 

 and the ecosystem project team of our repeated atten^ts jto 

 motivate the federal planners to follow the very clear 

 mandates of federal law. We advised them that our attempts 

 had apparently failed, and that there was a preliminary 

 draft which was not prepared in compliance with federal , 

 statutes. We also advised the Coalition that from the 

 beginning our effort had been simply to perform our mandated 

 federal function of coordinating our planning with the 

 federal plan development, but, that the federal teams have 

 chosen to violate the requirements of federal law which 

 their personnel acknowledge they knew about. 



