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Show SENATOR WATKINS HEARS STOCKMEN ASK FOREST RIGHTS Senator Arihur V. Watkins, meeting with Beaver County citizens in a lesislalive clinic at the Beaviar courthouse last Thursday, "invited" the cattle cat-tle and sheep interests to "wrile their own bill" regulating regu-lating grazing of livestock on the public domain, and relations rela-tions between the stockmen and the Forest Service. The senator didn't give assurance the bill would pass congress, or even be introduced, but extended the invitation as "the best means of getting the livestock industry's ideas before the men who make the laws." Senator Watkins was accompanied accom-panied on his tour of the state by two assistants from his Washington Wash-ington office, so they as well as the senator could' have an opportunity oppor-tunity to personally meet the business and civic leaders of the state. George C. Murdock, Beaver County Republican chairman, opened the meeting, introduced the few persons who were not acqauinted with the senator, and turned the meeing over to Senator Sen-ator Watkins and his two traveling trav-eling companions. Senator Watkins reviewed the requests made at his Beaver legislative leg-islative clinic a year ago, showing show-ing that he had taken considerable consider-able time to work for completion comple-tion of Hiway 21 and the Southern South-ern Utah Reclamation Project. Major portion of the time was taken up with discussion of various var-ious angles of the grazing program, pro-gram, including reseeding, control con-trol of grazing, erosion, etc. Frank Williams and Sim Murdock Mur-dock of Minersville, and Ira Yardley of Beaver were the most outspoken participants in the discussion. It was pointed out that basis for all the disputes dis-putes seemed to be lack of confidence con-fidence in the forest service and actual "distrust" of the forest service on the part of the stockmen. stock-men. The senator observed that "we can't even "get an agreement on the facts of the matter there is only discord and apparently no concrete efforts on either side to "get together" and settle the differences. After State Senator O. C. Mc-Shane Mc-Shane had observed that it would seem that a cooperative range reseeding program was the answer to the grazing problem, prob-lem, Senator Watkins pointed out the difficulty of convincing Eastren senators that spending federal money for range programs pro-grams is necessary. Sim Murdock of Minersville j described a recent tour of the range areas of Southern Utah, pointing out that where soil conservation had been practiced, the grazing regulated and a reseeding re-seeding program carried out, the range was superb, with the grass in many places "tickling the bellies of the stock grazing in it." Mr. Murdock suggested maintaining a status quo so far as grazing permits are concerned, con-cerned, while a reseeding program pro-gram is carried out, in the valleys val-leys west of Milford. As soon as the valleys would support the stock, they could be moved from the Beaver Mountains to the desert range, while the Beaver Mountain range was being re-seeded. re-seeded. When the mountains See WATKINS, Page Four Hera's More About WATKINS Continued from Page One again were in prime condition, the stockmen would be moved back to their original ranges. To date, the senator reported, 136,764 acres of range land in Utah have been reseeded. He also estimated that one million addition acres could be reseeded, reseed-ed, and stated that government agencies are working out meth- w ods to reseed areas in the higher altitudes. Under a bill introduced intro-duced in congress but not yet passed, a 15 - year program would be inaugurated, reseed-ing reseed-ing from 2Vz to 5 million acres of western range land each year. This bill would have been passed at the last session, Senator Sen-ator Watkins pointed vout, except ex-cept for the stockmen objecting to a provision permitting the Forest Service to use all moneys I paid as range fees, to be spent in the reseeding program. Frank Williams reviewed the range improvement program, which dates back more than 30 years, commended the Forest Service for "taking the lead" in the reseeding part of the range improvement program, and urged larger appropriations for range improvement. Both Reed Smith and Ira Yardley objected to stockmen being "kicked around" by the Forest Service, Mr. Smith particularly par-ticularly citing the tendency of visiting officials, whose jurisdiction juris-diction is in other areas, making recommendations which result in "change of standards" and stockmen not knowing where they stand- Mr. Yardley called for a quick solution to the grazing graz-ing problem, stating the cattle on the Beaver Mountains "can't live on fresh air and mountain scenery." He said the cattlemen cattle-men were willing, at any time, to sit down and talk things over with the Forest Service, and added that while the Beaver stockmen had always "gone along" with requests of the rangers, but would cooperate more if they had "rights" instead in-stead of just "permits" in the mountains. |