War Brews Over Public Rangeland Western Republicans, Ag Secretary Have Differing Proposals On Grazing

Public rangeland could be this week’s skirmish in what conservative Republicans like to call the Clinton administration’s War on the West.

Some 164 million acres of public rangeland make for a big battlefield.

Ranchers and conservationists find little consensus on the right way to manage them, and Congress faces two very different proposals on the future course of the agency in charge, the Bureau of Land Management.

One is Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s Rangeland Reform, which considers recreation, environmental and sports interests as well as agriculture.

BLM officials also contend that more groups can lay more legitimate claims to the lands since the Taylor Grazing Act first regulated the use by ranchers some 60 years ago.

“Since the 1930s,” said Lee Otteni, a staff member in the BLM’s Land and Mineral Management office, “we have populated the West faster than any other part of this nation and that population represents a wide, wide spectrum of interests and values.”

Rangeland Reform, scheduled to take effect Aug. 21, is opposed by many cattle and sheep grazers.

They prefer New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici’s Livestock Grazing Act, which will have a hearing Wednesday in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Many Western senators, including Idaho Republicans Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne, also support that measure.

A highlight of the Domenici plan is a new, and complicated, grazing fee formula, which supporters say will provide stability and predictability to the fees.

Grazing lands are leased in animal unit months, or AUMS. Under current policy, an AUM is the amount of forage a cow and a calf or five sheep eat in one month. In 1994, the cost per AUM on federal public rangelands was $1.98. In 1995, that figure dipped to $1.61 because of changes in the livestock market, to which these fees are tied.

Critics point out that’s much cheaper than private lands.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that leasing fees for privately owned, nonirrigated land averaged $8.30 per month in Washington state and $9.70 per month in Idaho in 1994. Figures for 1995 are not available.

Babbitt’s Rangeland Reform does not address grazing fees, leaving that contentious issue to Congress. Two years ago, he proposed raising fees in stages, to reach $4.28 by 1997, and met mass opposition in the Senate and among ranchers.

The argument over grazing fees has cooled, and even Domenici’s Livestock Grazing Act would require some increases.

But advocates of Domenici’s bill, like Bob Sears of the Idaho Cattle Association, are more likely to focus their complaints on “Beltway bureaucrats” meddling in Western affairs.

“The overall (BLM) package is developed by people not from the West, not involved with the West, and who have no idea what is necessary out here to be able to graze and operate on Western lands,” Sears said.

Otteni disputes that contention. Most BLM staffers have decades of experience working in the West, he said.

Still, supporters of the Domenici bill insist that Babbitt and the BLM are out of touch with the West.

“The logical approach,” said Truman Julian, who represents rangeland operators, “would have been to fix what was broke instead of throwing this whole new concept at us.”

Julian added that Rangeland Reform would further complicate the land management process, add onto an already monolithic bureaucracy, and leave less time and money for onsite management. He is president of the Public Lands Council, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that lobbies for the National Cattlemen’s Association, the American Sheep Industry Association and the National Grasslands Association.

Critics of Domenici’s bill argue that it would move public lands decision-making away from the general population of an area and give it to ranchers. The bill sets up local advisory councils to establish grazing policies on lands in their districts. A majority of the council members would be grazers.

“The overall point of the Domenici bill is to give the ranchers total control of their grazing allotments,” said John McCarthy of the Idaho Conservation League. “I think Sen. Craig is working to turn over the rangelands to the 2,000 ranchers who have permits in Idaho.”

McCarthy said that while conservationists reject the Domenici plan, they haven’t wholeheartedly endorsed the Babbitt plan either. Tom France of the National Wildlife Federation agrees.

“We voiced concerns with some of the BLM’s proposals, but they do a fair job of providing everyone with an opportunity to be involved with grazing decisions,” he said. “The Domenici bill is a giant step backward and, in fact, is really just a public lands giveaway to ranchers.”

But defenders of the Domenici bill say that the public will still have a say in the management of public lands. The boards will contain people who are not ranchers.

, DataTimes