Babbitt To Urge Clinton To Veto Gop Grazing Bill

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt will urge President Clinton to veto Republican legislation overhauling federal grazing policies. Babbitt said it would give ranchers preferential treatment in using public land in the West.

“Rather than helping to forge consensus about improving the public rangelands, the bill instead would lead to another contentious, lengthy and unnecessary debate in Congress over livestock grazing on western public lands,” Babbitt said in a letter to House Agriculture Chairman Bob Smith of Oregon.

Even as Babbitt’s letter was circulating on Wednesday, the committee approved the grazing measure and sent it to the full House. It is unclear whether lawmakers will have time to finish the bill before Congress recesses for the year.

Smith contends it would bring greater stability to western ranchers and require greater use of science in determining the environmental impacts on grazing. It also sets a new, higher grazing fee based on a fixed formula.

“This bill is critical to the livestock industry’s existence,” Smith said.

Western ranchers use some of the 270 million acres of federal land to feed their cattle and sheep. They have long been at odds with environmentalists and recreation enthusiasts who want grazing curtailed.

Babbitt said the bill would upset Bureau of Land Management efforts to balance interests on Western public lands, including a proposed requirement that existing advisory councils make decisions based on majority vote instead of consensus and that their members live in close proximity to the land they oversee.

Other objections listed by the secretary include new definitions that appear to give preferential legal land rights to holders of grazing permits and imposition of a “severe” burden on BLM to arrive at the grazing fee each year.