Contamination of forest streams is one key reason for the lawsuit

The issue of water contamination by livestock is controversial for the Forest Service and livestock interests because the issue poses the risk of courts halting grazing to protect water quality. CSERC has attempted to get Forest officials to remove grazing from portions of the public forest that have high levels of recreational use. Instead, the Forest Service has written in its planning documents that visitors who come to the public forest should bring water filters. That perspective fails to respond to the health threat that comes from any bodily contact with polluted water when visitors wade, camp, fish, swim, or otherwise contact water in the forest.

The Clean Water Act and other legislation restrict pollution of water. Yet every year in the Sierra Nevada region, tens of thousands of cattle graze across millions of acres of national forest lands without any safeguards to prevent livestock from contaminating streams, lakes, and special aquatic features.

Since 2009, CSERC biologists have carefully followed protocols to do water quality sampling of forest streams in areas where cattle are present for weeks or months along flowing streams. Before cattle arrive in what the Forest Service describes as “grazing allotments,” stream water quality is generally high. Once cattle are present, fecal coliform and E. coli contamination levels rise, often exceeding health thresholds set to protect recreational visitors who may have bodily contact with the polluted water.

Despite stream impacts (such as those in the above photo), livestock industry interests dismiss any need for the Forest Service to change grazing policies to reduce water contamination by cattle. They insist that sampling done by pro-grazing researchers has failed to find forest streams with high levels of contamination.

CSERC biologists have consistently found fecal patties in or adjacent to streams in areas with livestock presence, especially in high elevation tributary stream areas. Cattle also chisel, slough, and crumble stream banks — causing small streams to become wider and shallower each year – increasing stream temperatures and also often stripping away the riparian plants that would shade and cool narrow, deep streams. After so many years of USFS officials literally shrugging off such obvious negative impacts to water resources, CSERC has finally filed a legal challenge to try to force a significant change in Forest Service livestock management practices.