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Home on the range
How many times have you heard that public lands grazing doesn’t pay for itself? Fifty, perhaps a hundred times? The Government Accountability Office (GAO) came to that conclusion again last week and said that the cost to the government to manage Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service grazing allotments was $144 million and grazing fee receipts were only $21 million.
In the scope of the federal government, this is pocket change, and the idea that management costs don’t match up to revenue actually leads to two simple conclusions. One, the federal government shouldn’t be managing these lands because they can’t control costs and perhaps have too much staff. Or, they really aren’t bringing in enough revenue. As all you public land grazers know, both conclusions are true.
Last year, a federal Animal Unit Month (AUM) cost public land ranchers $1.43. On the surface, that sounds pretty cheap. But, with it comes every known piece of ranching baggage—open gates, shot up cows during hunting season, a rampage of scooters ripping across the pasture—your general multiple use problems.
It’s perplexing that after all these years, we may have not moved the grazing debate forward and it would seem that now we’re retracing old territory. Over the past few years, the courts have seen a few things the way of the resource user and additionally, a small slice of common sense has been applied to the Endangered Species Act as well.
The worst thing is these far left environmental activist groups still just don’t get the multiple use concept or understand the mandate of the Taylor Grazing Act. The government is required by law to lease these lands for grazing. It is daunting to even hear the term over-grazing anymore, but here we go again.
Last week, industry nemesis, Bruce Babbitt surfaced promoting his new book, “Cities in the Wilderness, A New Vision of Land Use in America.” I haven’t read the book, and I’m not sure I need to. We can certainly anticipate that Babbitt’s vision of land use does not include grazing on federal lands.
Our friends at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, AZ, couldn’t resist making a comment on the GAO grazing report. Greta Anderson, a botanist and range restoration coordinator for the center said, “The report fails to account for the full ecological costs of public lands livestock grazing,” citing “depleted soils, degraded and polluted waterways,” and my favorite, “impaired habitat for wildlife.” She also said, “If we’re going to continue to allow ranchers to use our lands, it would be better to spend more money protecting these resources and to recover more of the costs by collecting reasonable fees.” Their idea of reasonable is around $13 an AUM which is what a private lease would go for. But comparing a private lease and a federal lease is like comparing apples and oranges. It just can’t be done.
This is what you would expect from the Center for Biological Diversity. But how on earth could anyone place a value on depleted soils, polluted waterways and impaired habitat for wildlife, when no one could agree on how to define those terms.
She continues to say in their press release, “Grazing is an expensive and wasteful use of our spectacular public lands. Such a small percentage of our beef comes out of western rangeland that if the public lands livestock grazing ended today, the consumer wouldn’t even notice a difference.”
Ironically, the GAO said that there are 22.6 million AUMs managed on 235 million acres of federal lands. It’s the government, so we have to believe their numbers and realize that they are the authority. If we take the 22.6 million head of cattle and divide it by 104.2 million head, the entire national inventory, including dairy cattle, it would suggest that about 22 percent of the nation’s cow herd grazes on public lands. I think consumers would feel a 20 percent reduction in cattle supplies.
This never-ending battle never seems to go away; these are the same arguments we had 50 years ago with federal land use. It is apparent that the Bush administration was able to tone things down a bit from the Clinton administration’s full out assault on federal resource users which killed several timber communities.
Economically, $144 million dollars to manage grazing programs is pretty small when you realize the economic activity that is generated by these public land ranches. Economics rarely gets into the land use debate, but that is changing. — PETE CROW

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