Owyhee Avalanche Feature

Unselfish rancher looks after sage-grouse
From the Feb. 4, 2009 issue of The Owyhee Avalanche

Donna Bennett has perfected the rural lifestyle of doing a little bit of everything for the good of everyone.
Truth be told, the longtime Grand View resident does a lot of everything.
The Owyhee Cattlemen’s Association will honor the longtime rancher at its winter meeting Saturday in Oreana. But there is more to Bennett than the Society of Range Management (SRM) Outstanding Achievement Award for which she will be recognized this weekend.
“If there’s a need, somebody’s got to do it,” Bennett said. “In a small community like this, you’ve got to wear a lot of hats.
“What concerns me is the young people aren’t putting on those hats. It’s the other generations that are. The younger people need to step up to the plate and start doing it.”
Among the hats worn by Bennett:
• She’s an advanced emergency medical technician for Grand View Ambulance. She has been involved with the ambulance service since the early 1970s. She and her husband, George, shared the Idaho EMT of the Year Award in 2003.
• She’s a rancher, running cattle on Owyhee desert rangeland and a farm near the Snake River. She and her husband are OCA members and have been ranching since the early 1960s.
• She’s a mother of two — Scott and Debbie — and the grandmother of two — 14-year-old Courtney and 11-year-old Nick.
• She’s one of two Owyhee County residents serving on the Bureau of Land Management’s Resource Advisory Committee for the Boise District. Fellow rancher Brenda Richards is the other.
• Bennett has been either co-chair or chair of the Owyhee County Sage-Grouse Local Working Group (LWG) since 2002, and she is a charter member of the 40-person panel dedicated to preserving sage-grouse habitat in the western part of the county.
• She also serves as an Elmore County Republican Precinct Committee member and is chairman of the board and a director for the Idaho State Bank, according to nomination papers submitted to the Idaho Section of the SRM.
“One of Donna’s greatest contributions is that of her time,” OCA secretary Scott Jensen wrote in the nomination form he submitted to SRM. “She gives willingly and unselfishly to fulfill her responsibilities.
Jensen said Bennett is a well-respected voice as chair of the sage-grouse LWG, which was established in 1998 to keep the sage-grouse off the endangered species list, thereby sustaining the ranching industry.
“She does an outstanding job on that committee, and I think it’s through her leadership that they’ve been pretty successful at getting some on-the-ground habitat restoration projects completed,” Jensen said.
In his nomination form, Jensen said Bennett’s leadership has carried a delicate process through a “diverse group of members and personal interests”, and that her standing in the community has been vital in the sometimes-sensitive process of obtaining permission and cooperation from landowners for projects.
Her leadership has triggered more than $130,000 in grants for various projects to help sage-grouse in western Owyhee County, including habitat restoration and radio collars to track the bird’s mortality rates, which also helps study the affects of West Nile Virus on the species.
Jensen said two of the LWG’s bigger successes are the restoration of Crab Creek Meadows west of Grasmere where dikes and berms were built to raise the water table and replenish the wet meadow for sage-grouse habitat. The planting of native grasses and sagebrush in the area of the Chubby Spain Fire also helped bring back vital habitat and put grazing land back on the grid.
Bennett said she got involved with the LWG a decade ago for obvious reasons.
“Because I could see the handwriting on the wall,” she said. “If we can keep the sage-grouse from being listed, it’s better for the ranchers. Because if the sage-grouse is listed, then it’s going to put a whole lot of constraints on the ranchers, enough that I don’t think enough of them won’t be able to operate.
“If we can keep them from being listed, I think we’re all better off.”

But Bennett, whose parents ranched on Mary’s Creek near Grasmere when she was growing up, lets the unselfishness that Jensen alluded to shine through when she reflects on the work that has been done to keep ranching alive in the county and ultimately led to her award.
“I was amazed that they gave it to me,” she said. “I was surprised, I guess. I feel like it goes to the whole group that works on all these because they put a lot of effort into writing the proposals and making sure they’re carried out and doing the actual work. I don’t really do that.”

-JPB