BLM Wyoming Guidelines for Livestock Grazing Management

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1. Timing, duration, and levels of authorized grazing will ensure that adequate amounts of vegetative ground cover, including standing plant material and litter, remain after authorized use to support infiltration, maintain soil moisture storage, stabilize soils, allow the release of sufficient water to maintain system function, and to maintain subsurface soil conditions that support permeability rates and other processes appropriate to the site.
   
   
2. Grazing management practices should restore, maintain, or improve riparian plant communities. Grazing management strategies consider hydrology, physical attributes, and potential for the watershed and the ecological site. Grazing management should maintain adequate residual plant cover to provide for plant recovery, residual forage, sediment capture, energy dissipation, and groundwater recharge.
   
   
3. Range improvement practices (instream structures, fences, water troughs, etc.) in and adjacent to riparian areas will ensure that stream channel morphology (e.g., gradient, width/depth ratio, channel roughness and sinuosity) and functions appropriate to climate and landform are maintained or enhanced. The development of springs, seeps, or other projects affecting water and associated resources shall be designed to protect the ecological and hydrological functions, wildlife habitat, and significant cultural, historical, and archaeological values associated with the water source. Range improvements will be located away from riparian areas if they conflict with achieving or maintaining riparian function.
   
   
4. Grazing practices that consider the biotic communities as more than just a forage base will be designed in order to ensure that the appropriate kinds and amounts of soil organisms, plants, and animals to support the hydrologic cycle, nutrient cycle, and energy flow are maintained or enhanced.
   
   
5. Continuous season-long or other grazing management practices that hinder the completion of plants' life-sustaining reproductive and/or nutrient cycling processes will be modified to ensure adequate periods of rest at the appropriate times. The rest periods will provide for seedling establishment or other necessary processes at levels sufficient to move the ecological site condition toward the resource objective and subsequent achievement of the standard.
   
   
6. Grazing management practices and range improvements will adequately protect vegetative cover and physical conditions and maintain, restore, or enhance water quality to meet resource objectives. The effects of new range improvements (water developments, fences, etc.) on the health and function of rangelands will be carefully considered prior to their implementation.
   
   
7. Grazing management practices will incorporate the kinds and amounts of use that will restore, maintain, or enhance habitats to assist in the recovery of Federal threatened and endangered species or the conservation of federally-listed species of concern and other State-designated special status species. Grazing management practices will maintain existing habitat or facilitate vegetation change toward desired habitats. Grazing management will consider threatened and endangered species and their habitats.
   
   
8. Grazing management practices and range improvements will be designed to maintain or promote the physical and biological conditions necessary to sustain native animal populations and plant communities. This will involve emphasizing native plant species in the support of ecological function and incorporating the use of non-native species only in those situations in which native plant species are not available in sufficient quantities or are incapable of maintaining or achieving properly functioning conditions and biological health.
   
   
9. Grazing management practices on uplands will maintain desired plant communities or facilitate change toward desired plant communities.