WildEarth Guardians

Wednesday, November 9, 2005
Congress Ought To Round Up Answers

For federal agencies to somehow break even at the current level of expenditure, grazing fees would have to more than quintuple
Contact: Albuquerque Journal

If government management of grazing on public lands costs $123 million more than ranchers pay in fees, would rounding up those cattle save that much money? Or would the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have to cover much the same bureaucratic overhead without any grazing income?

A Government Accounting Office report says the BLM and Forest Service-which oversee 231 million acres of range- spent $144 million managing grazing programs in 2004. They took in only $21 million in grazing fees.

Nobody seems to be arguing that fees could be raised some to close the gap. That seems reasonable; they have declined by 40 percent since 1980. But for the federal agencies to somehow break even at the current level of expenditure, grazing fees would have to more than quintuple.

Making ranching economically impossible fits the environmentalist goal of returning public lands to a cattle-free condition. But what would the savings be? Could the agencies downsize enough to save the $144 million attributed to grazing management? Would there be massive lay-offs of range specialists, biologists and middle management?

Are the agencies managing grazing on public land as efficiently as private property owners do on their land? Almost certainly not. Could they be more efficient? That's a question worth exploring, as is whether grazing, any more than hiking or other uses of public land, should be required to cover all administrative costs that could be attributed to it.

Congress, as the report points out, sets policy on public lands. It needs to get a loop around those questions.

Copyright 2005 The Albuquerque Journal - Reprinted with permission