Over 200,000 acres of land used for livestock grazing in Gunnison County and the adjacent lands are failing to meet the Bureau of Land Management’s own land-health standards, according to an analysis of BLM records obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a non-profit watchdog.
Looking outside of the Gunnison Valley, the data revealed that a quarter of the federal land across the West managed by the agency were also labeled “failing.” The land-health standards — benchmarks for public land management — measure soil and riparian health, water quality and plant and wildlife diversity.
