John Day Fossil Beds Administrative History

Chapter Five:
LANDS

Grazing

After the monument's establishment, the NPS found itself with few ways of avoiding problems with trespass cattle on former state park lands without positive boundary identification and adequate fences. [23] Since the prospective land exchange with Brooks Resources gave the NPS a chance to consolidate control of Painted Hills, it completed a boundary survey for this unit in 1977. [24] A fencing project followed once the exchange had been finalized three years later. NPS employees built over nine miles of fence by the end of 1980, an undertaking which included removal of roadside fences constructed by the state. [25] Additional protection resulted from a cooperative agreement with Brooks Resources in 1982 to fence the east side of Bridge Creek. [26] Completion of the Painted Hills project came the following year, when the NPS built the final four miles of fence. [27]

Placement of fences in the Sheep Rock Unit began once the NPS obtained a parcel connecting the parking for Blue Basin with donated state park acreage. This project consisted of constructing two miles of fence around Blue Basin in 1983. [28] The NPS then moved to survey and fence Cathedral Rock and Foree through BLM in 1985. [29] Completion of fencing approximately ten miles on the east and west sides of the Sheep Rock Unit proper in 1986 effectively closed most of the contiguous park lands to trespass grazing. [30] That year the NPS also built one mile of fence at Clarno, something which Ladd described as excluding livestock from most of the unit. [31]

Five grazing leases inherited from BLM at the time of the monument's establishment posed few complications, especially since their number fell to two by the end of 1979. [32] Both of them were located in the Sheep Rock Unit and remained active throughout the 1980s. Their impact on park lands, however, remained relatively slight. Most of the calculated usage took place on a 640 acre tract that the NPS called "trading stock" located east of the monument's revised boundary near Picture Gorge. [33]

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