ISSUE BRIEF: Saving Grazing Rights on Federal Lands
Defend livestock grazing in the West!
The Issue:
Westerners have been grazing livestock on public lands for generations. But some extremist groups want to end this long-standing tradition. Their latest ploy is legislation which would use your tax dollars to entice ranchers into giving up their grazing permits and permanently retiring those allotments from all future grazing.
In past Congresses, Representatives Chris Shays (R-CT) and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) introduced the Voluntary Grazing Permit Buyout Act. The bill would have authorized expenditures of $100 million for the federal government to buy grazing permits from ranchers. These grazing areas would then be placed in non-grazing status and would no longer be used for grazing livestock of any type.
At this level of authorization, approximately 571,000 animal unit months (AUMs) of grazing would be removed from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and national forestland. It would render many cattle operations uneconomic and, once they are gone, no other operator could take their place. Thus, it would be a tremendous blow to local economies throughout the rural West.
On the other side, pro-grazing members of Congress have been developing legislation to protect grazing and addressing permit renewals, buy-outs, invasive species, wolves, reduction in grazing time, Endangered Species Act and other issues that impact grazing operations.
A chief source of contention in the struggle over grazing permits is the backlog of thousands of outstanding environmental reviews the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) must address. NEPA requires USFS to complete environmental assessments for all of its grazing permits. The process, which includes opportunities for public comment on six or seven alternatives, usually takes more than two years for each allotment. USFS is fighting a congressional deadline to complete outstanding NEPA analyses of 4,100 grazing allotments by 2010, which agency officials have said they are unlikely to meet.
Impacts on the West:
The cynical purpose behind so-called "buyout" legislation is to dismantle the infrastructure needed to support America’s ranching families. It would unleash a damaging economic ripple effect across the West’s ranching communities and local economies. It ignores the integral role that public lands grazing plays in many rural economies. For example:
Livestock producers in 62 percent of counties in the West depend on public lands for some of their livestock forage;
40 percent of western beef cattle inventories spend some time grazing on public lands; and
Public land grazing delivers important environmental benefits, such as reducing the risk of catastrophic fire by reducing fuel loads on public lands as well as helping to control the spread of noxious weeds, a serious and growing problem across the West.
Status of the Issue:
Representative Shays and Grijalva are expected to reintroduce buyout legislation again this year. There is great concern that, in the newly configured Congress, such a bill could gain significant momentum.
Solutions:
- Tell your Member of Congress to oppose any legislation that would encourage the federal government to buyout existing grazing rights holders. Rather, ask him/her to support reform of the current grazing permit process to reduce the economic and regulatory burden on ranchers obtaining or renewing grazing leases.
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