Cost to graze cattle on public land is not changing

The Obama administration this week rejected a proposal that would have raised the price ranchers pay to graze livestock on public land. The decision "suggests ranchers will continue to be charged below-market prices to graze cattle on federal rangelands," Phil Taylor of Greenwire reports for The New York Times. "The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in separate letters yesterday to environmental groups said other priorities prevent them from pursuing new rules to revise the current grazing fee."

Both agencies disagreed with the groups' 2005 arguments that challenged the legality of the fee structure. "Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the National Forest System, said the agency is pursuing separate rulemakings to revise its forest planning rule and respond to Colorado's roadless proposal, each of which have drained agency resources," Taylor writes. Holtrop said in the letter that "roughly 4,000 grazing allotments on Forest Service property are in need of environmental analyses that will help determine the best management of rangeland resources," Taylor writes.

Environmental groups the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Great Old Broads for Wilderness and Oregon Natural Desert Association filed a lawsuit last summer seeking to raise the public land grazing prices and re-evaluate the effects of grazing on public lands. "Ranchers currently pay the federal government $1.35 a month to graze one cow and her calf -- several times lower than the cost of grazing on private lands," Taylor writes. A Government Accountability Office report said federal government's grazing program cost taxpayers $115 million in fiscal 2004. (Read more)