08/16/06 BLM grazing rule update;NABC grant

Washington Ag August 16, 2006 A federal district court judge decided last week to allow the Bureau of Land Management to move forward with substantial portions of new grazing regulations it released last month. In a legal challenge brought by the Western Watersheds Project, Judge Lynn Winmill only issued a preliminary injunction blocking that part of the grazing rules dealing with public participation in rule making. When it announced its new rules, Deputy BLM Director for Programs Jim Hughes said they changed the definition of interested public because it was so broad. People from back east would say they were interested in decisions on some rancher's allotment in west. Hughes: "And then we never hear from them again, but under our regulations we had to make an effort to contact those people every time we tried to do something out there. So what we tried to do was to narrow the scope to people who are actually committed to being involved in the decision making process on public lands in the West." While that change cannot be implemented the other rule changes can be. The Northwest Agriculture Business Center in Burlington, Washington, has received a grant of just under 100-thousand dollars through USDA's Rural Business Enterprise Grant Program. That grant will fund three projects including value-added product development at a local dairy and establishing a USDA inspected meat processing facility in Snohomish County. I'm Bob Hoff.