Senate Heads Off Challenges To Idaho’s Grazing Leases

Legislation precluding challenges to state livestock grazing leases by environmentalists won approval on Tuesday from the Idaho Senate.

The Senate voted 22-6 to forward the bill to the House after heading off an attempt by some skeptics to derail it.

“It’s not in the best interests of our state or the lands to let environmental interests pick off middle allotments to prevent grazing,” Republican Sen. Dean Cameron of Rupert said. “It is not in the best interests of the state of Idaho or the endowment lands to cripple our livestock industry.”

The legislation is similar to a bill retired Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus vetoed a year ago, claiming the livestock industry was trying to stage what he called “the great terrain robbery.”

But livestock interests, bolstered by last November’s election of the first Republican governor in 24 years and the most Republican Legislature in the nation, hoped Gov. Phil Batt would take a different view.

The bill makes it clear that anyone bidding on a state grazing lease must be able to comply with the grazing management plan, essentially precluding any bids from people with no intention of using the land for grazing. In return for that preference, all lessees would have to have an approved environmentally sound management plan or be preparing one for approval by the Department of Lands.

“We’re going to raise the standards for grazing lease management,” Resources and Environment Chairman Laird Noh, R-Kimberly, said. “We’re going to put the department in charge of those standards and put some teeth into it.”

Only about 300,000 of the 1.8 million acres of state-owned grazing land are currently under management plans. The state is earning about $1.2 million a year from the leases, money that goes to public schools.

The campaign to revamp the grazing lease law was sparked by the attempts of Hailey architect Jon Marvel and his Idaho Watersheds Project to outbid holders of existing leases he believes have been overgrazed so he can take the land out of use. The Land Board rejected his first attempt a year ago and was upheld by a district judge, but he has several more pending.

“I’ve got to agree the Watersheds Project has been a disruptive force,” Democratic Sen. Clint Stennett of Ketchum said. “Instead of working with people, it has alienated those who could have achieved its goals.”

Stennett pointed out the success other environmental groups like the Nature Conservancy have had working with ranchers to improve riparian and other areas on Idaho’s range.

But his opposition focused on the constitutionality of the proposal, and others argued that under the broad powers state Land Board has to manage natural resources, the law could probably be ignored without consequence.