Critics cry foul over bargain U.S. grazing fee holding steady again

RENO, Nev. -- Ranchers will pay the legal minimum to graze livestock on federal land for the fourth consecutive year, a bargain critics say is a government-subsidized incentive to overgraze sensitive rangeland.

Plagued by depressed cattle prices, Western ranchers say thousands would be run out of business if the government charged any more than the $1.35 rate per month per cow and calf.

But environmentalists say the market demands five to 10 times as much - that inflation alone should have caused the fee to be raised higher than $5.

"It's cheaper to graze cattle on public lands than it is to feed your pet hamster," said John Horning of Forest Guardians based in New Mexico, N.M.

"It's high time the livestock industry started paying its fair share," he said Friday.

The Interior Department and Agriculture Department announced the $1.35 fee per animal unit would remain in effect for the new grazing year effective March 1 on lands managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

About 18,000 ranchers paid about $24 million in fees last year to graze livestock on federal land, mostly across 264 million acres of BLM land in the West.

Betsy Macfarlan, executive director of the Nevada Cattleman's Association, said she anticipated the annual criticism from critics.

"It's kind of a mixed bag," Macfarlan of Elko said about the frozen fee.

"We can't really afford to pay more than that right now. At the same time, it will garner us bad publicity from the people who don't feel we pay enough and don't understand the formula," she said.

An animal unit month, or AUM, is the amount of forage needed for a cow and a calf, one horse or five sheep or goats for a month.

The formula sets the fee based on beef cattle prices, the cost of livestock production and rates for private grazing land leases.

The 1999 fee stays the same because there was a small decline in beef cattle prices and a small increase in both private land lease rates and livestock production costs.

Critics of the government price say the private lease rate amounts to about $11 per AUM.

But ranchers say that's an unfair comparison because they bear the expensive burden of providing their own water on federal lands, often the roughest, poorest quality rangeland.

Congress established the federal fee in 1978. President Reagan signed an executive order in 1986 that prevented the fee from dropping lower than $1.35.

Horning said that without the floor set by Reagan, the fee today would stand at just 70 cents.

His group is urging Congress to raise the fee to $5.18 per AUM - the level he says it would stand if adjusted for inflation since 1980.

Under the group's plan, all money from the increased fee - an anticipated $75 million a year - would be spent on a new program to buy out grazing permits from ranchers and retire the land.

"We believe it's only appropriate that instead of subsidizing destruction, ranchers should help restore streams, watersheds and fish and wildlife habitat that's been destroyed due to a century or more of Western public lands ranching," Horning said.

Various grazing reform bills have passed in the House and Senate over the past five years, but the same proposal has been unable to clear both houses in the same year.

The highest fee ranchers have paid was $2.36 in 1980 - the first year the Forest Service and BLM adopted uniform fees. It fell to $1.35 from 1985-87 and ranged from $1.81 to $1.98 from 1989-94.

Macfarlan said ranchers fear that if Vice President Al Gore were elected president, "he's so environmental" he might order a significant increase in grazing fees.

"In the current market if you handed us a $3 or $4 fee, you would see a large percentage - if not all - of the Western ranchers who are dependent on federal land going out of business," she said.

About 700 Nevada ranchers have federal grazing allotments "and almost all of them are dependent on that federal land," she said.

BLM spokesman Maxine Shane said there might be some ranchers interested in the buy outs but that the agency had no comment on the criticism of the fee level.

"It's their opinion," Shane said.

"'They are looking at it in pure monetary figures. Our concern is more the rangeland health instead of the money," she said.

"Several years ago we spent two or three years studying what the private rate was. We broke it down in different areas and submitted it all to Congress. They chose not to change the formula or the fee."

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