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A veteran Bureau of Land Management employee in the San Luis Valley has filed a whistleblower complaint, claiming illegal grazing is harming the Rio Grande River.
Melissa Shawcroft, who has been a BLM rangeland management specialist since 1992, told the Denver Post the illegal grazing has gone on for years on the nearly 250,000 acres she manages in Colorado. Shawcroft manages federal rangeland along the Rio Grande River where property on the east side of the river is private. She says cows and horses are crossing the river to the federally-owned Rio Grande Natural Area, where they eat grass and young willow trees down to the ground along the banks.
“It’s almost like pavement,” Shawcroft told the Post. “That’s what happens when you graze from spring into the summer and into the fall.”
Shawcroft is currently facing a two-week unpaid suspension, according to the Post. She said she is being punished for speaking up about the illegal grazing, which she says her supervisors have so far ignored.
“They come right out and tell me we don’t want another Bundy situation,” Shawcroft said, referring to the 2014 standoff in Nevada in which the Bundy family and an armed militia faced off against federal agents who were trying to round up the family's cows that were illegally grazing on federal land.
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We are trying to restore these forests to be more resilient so they will be able to withstand a hotter and drier climate... The logging left behind a forest that is very unnatural and unhealthy. We’re trying to make these stands as healthy as possible.”
