YOUR DUES DOLLARS AT WORK

by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur

Ranchers calling into the CCA office in the fall often ask if the Association’s government affairs work slows down after the legislative session comes to a close. The answer is that it doesn’t slow down, it just looks different.

The 2021-22 Legislative Session came to a true end on Sept. 30, the date by which Governor Gavin Newsom was required to sign or veto any legislation advanced to his desk by the Legislature by the end of the prior month. The 202324 Legislative Session will begin in earnest on Jan. 4, 2023 (though there will be a Special Session beginning Dec. 5 to consider a windfall tax on oil and gas companies).

There’s no less work to do from October through December, the work is just different – and to some extent a little more focused and less hectic than the legislative year.

Those three months provide lobbyists and other government affairs advocates opportunities to follow-up on legislative mandates, tackle long-gestating regulatory issues and to gear up for the legislative session to come.

This November, for instance, your CCA government affairs team worked tirelessly to advance the ball on a wide variety of policy priorities outside of the Legislature (in addition to monitoring the 2022 General Election and how it will shape the upcoming Legislative Session).

In the first days of the month, CCA joined a two-day meeting of the Wildfire Resilience Working Group in Sacramento to identify forest health and fire prevention policies that could enjoy widespread support and to gameplan how those policies might be effectuated in 2023 via legislation, the State Budget or regulatory reforms.

CCA has been active in the Wildfire Resilience Working Group since its inception in 2020. The Working Group is a “big tent,” including advocacy organizations representing tribal interests, land trusts, environmental groups, public health advocates, laborers and other interests. Given the diversity of the group, there are a great many issues upon which we disagree. Where these disparate interests can find common ground on wildfire resilience policy, though, our shared priorities carry extra weight with state policymakers.

In the past couple years, the Working Group has come together to successfully advocate for significant State Budget allocations for forest health and wildfire resilience and to promote the use of prescribed fire and cultural burns, among other priorities. The Wildfire Resilience Working Group has aligned with CCA’s efforts to reform liability laws that have historically disincentivized controlled burns, including 2021’s CCAsponsored SB 332 (Dodd) – which shields prescribed burners and landowners from liability for funds expended by CalFire in extinguishing an escaped burn under certain circumstances – and efforts to stand up a Prescribed Fire Claims Fund via the 2021 Budget and this year’s SB 926 (Dodd).

During the early-November meeting in Sacramento, the Working Group outlined several potential priorities for the 2023 legislative year, including continued funding for forest resilience and the Prescribed Fire Claims Fund, potential improvements to the Air Resources Board’s Smoke Management Guidelines to improve deployment of prescribed fire and exploring potential reforms to California Environmental Quality Act and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) permitting requirements.

The Wildfire Resilience Working Group will continue to meet monthly over the coming year, and the priorities identified in early November will help form the foundation of our collective lobbying efforts over that time.

Challenges presented by NEPA took center stage the following week, when CCA, other agricultural trade associations, ranchers and representatives of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5) met in Sacramento for a Region 5 Grazing Committee meeting organized by University of California Cooperative Extension. The meeting’s purpose was for attendees to understand the scope of vacant grazing allotments within

Region 5 and to brainstorm solutions to shift those areas into active grazing permits.

Several valuable insights were gleaned from the Region 5 Grazing Committee meeting. For instance, Region 5 reports that of the 213 USFS grazing allotments throughout the state which are currently vacant, 42 have undergone NEPA analysis – the bureaucratic hurdle that most commonly stands in the way of activating those allotments. Region 5 also reminded participants of a statutory categorical exclusion, signed into law in 2014, which allows a grazing permit to “be categorically excluded from the requirement to prepare an environmental assessment or an environmental impact statement under” NEPA if “the issued permit… continues the current grazing management allotment.” This exclusion has only been used once throughout the West in the past seven years, but has the potential to streamline NEPA on active allotments if properly utilized – which would free up resources to conduct NEPA on vacant allotments in order to move them into active status.

Participants discussed several strategies to move the needle on activating vacant allotments, including identifying grazing permittees to graze the 42 NEPA-analyzed vacant allotments referenced above, educating line officers and district rangers regarding available categorical exclusions and contracting with third parties to complete NEPA analysis (among numerous other potential avenues for progress). The Region 5 Grazing Committee will continue to meet – including at the CCA Annual Meeting and again in March – to further explore activating vacant allotments and addressing other issues on Forest Service lands.

As of press time, two other consequential meetings had not yet taken place. On Nov. 17, CCA staff appeared in Redding to urge the Department of Fish and Wildlife to adopt a Pay-for-Presence Wolf-Livestock Compensation Program. That meeting was convened after CCA, the California Cattlemen’s Foundation, California Farm Bureau Federation and California Wool Growers in June demanded that such a program be set-up to compensate producers under a $3 million allocation made in the 2021 State Budget.

Finally, on Nov. 18, CCA joined a call with CalFire and other stakeholders to discuss administration of the State’s Prescribed Fire Claims Fund, established by CCA-supported SB 926 (Dodd) this year. That legislation dictates that CalFire “collaborate with other relevant state agencies, cultural fire practitioners, and burn bosses to establish guidelines governing the program and administration of the fund.” Given the role that CCA has played in supporting the Claims Fund, advocating for prescribed fire and promoting the training of state-certified burn bosses, CalFire is eager to have the Cattlemen’s perspective as it builds out the fund.

The above is a sampling of some particularly consequential meetings just in the early part of November, to say nothing of the everyday advocacy CCA engages upon at the local, state and federal levels on behalf of California’s beef producers.

Certainly there’s no shortage of work to be done for California’s cattlemen while the Legislature is in recess – but that work is a welcome change of pace from the frenetic work of the Legislative Session!

The Bureau of Land Management is seeking public comments on mineral exploration for gold within the Picacho Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) at the Oro Cruz Pit Area, in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains, Imperial County. The Project would result in minor surface disturbance and measures would be taken to prevent unnecessary or undue degradation during project operations.

The proposed project by SMP Gold Corp. includes constructing permanent and temporary access roads, making existing road improvements, creating helicopter landing pads, installing drill pads, and creating a staging area. The surface disturbance on BLM-managed land from the proposed exploration activities is approximately 20 acres. The project would be completed within a two-year period, which includes the reclamation at each drill site.

Most of the proposed drilling locations will occur within areas that have been previously disturbed by a mining project that concluded in 1996 with reclamation completed in 1999. The Picacho ACEC encompasses 183,970 acres of BLM-managed public land and contains important cultural resources and historic properties, including the Tumco historic gold mining district. The Picacho ACEC also serves as a critical habitat for the desert tortoise and a movement corridor for wildlife species, including bighorn sheep and mule deer.

The BLM will host a virtual public informational meeting via Zoom on Wednesday, Nov. 30 from 4-5 p.m. PST. Please register in advance at: https://bit.ly/3V05jj2. The informational meeting will provide details on the project and the National Environmental Policy Act process. Written or oral comments made during the meeting will not be considered as formal public comment.

Public input on the proposed project is due by Dec. 16. Public comments may be submitted through ePlanning at: https://bit.ly/3Ej3tEd; by fax at 760-337-4490, Attn: Mayra Martinez; by mail to Bureau of Land Management, Attn: Mayra Martinez, 1661 S 4th St., El Centro, CA 92243; or by email to: mymartinez@blm.gov. Please add “Oro Cruz Exploration Project” in the email subject line.

Environmental documents, maps and other information is on the Oro Cruz Exploration Project ePlanning website: https://bit.ly/3Ej3tEd.