Effort to turn ranchers into scofflaws nets just one so far-

Ammon Bundy has been trying to recruit livestock operators who have grazing permits on U.S. public lands to stop paying the rental (grazing fees) for their grazing allotment. He finally recruited one, or at least one showed up Saturday to renounce paying his grazing fees before an audience at the occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Adrian Sewell of Grant County, New Mexico told a gathering that he would stop paying his rent for the 85 cattle he said he was permitted to graze on his allotment of public land. Bundy is trying to push the idea that grazing on public land is a right not a privilege. As a right no one would have to pay grazing fees.

Bundy is wrong. Grazing allotments were created out of the public domain in the 1930s after the Taylor Grazing Act became law. The law was passed to bring conservation and order to the Western public range. It was a time of drought and dust storms and an economic and environment collapse of the livestock industry due to not just the weather but overgrazing. The public domain, now managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), was at the time an unmanaged commons, a big vacant lot. Ranchers with private property (ranches) competed with transient herders who wandered the public domain year round searching for any grass that grew. No one had rights or any expectation that there would be any livestock food available at all except inasmuch as they could use local tradition and force to secure livestock forage.

A U.S. Grazing Director was hired and with a small crew. Then 80-million acres of land was divided into grazing allotments for which a permit would now be needed to graze. To get a permit, the “permittee” needed to have some “base” (private property) where the cattle, sheep, or goats could be kept part of the year. The U.S. Grazing Service came into being to administer the law, and a fee per head of livestock was installed — the grazing fee. It was not much then and it is still just a token today, but it has to be paid. A grazing permittee can lose the grazing permit for non-payment. The Taylor Grazing Act specifically says that grazing permits “convey no right, title, or interest” to such lands.

The grazing permits have “terms and conditions” specifying the details of how, when and where the grazing is to be. Over time these terms have become more detailed. A grazing permit is renewed every ten years. Ammon Bundy’s father Cliven Bundy tore up his revised grazing permit in 1992 because he said he didn’t like the new terms. The Bunkerville grazing allotment which Bundy had used was then abolished by the U.S. government. Now he runs cattle with no permit on public lands larger than his old Bunkerville allotment and in numbers that exceed the original terms. This is why he is trespassing on the public lands. He didn’t pay his fees and he disobeyed orders from U.S. district court to remove his cattle and pay his back fees.

A 2014 effort by the BLM to roundup Cliven Bundy’s cattle and impound them was stopped by an armed mob that was recruited at least partly by social media.

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A word about the BLM

The Grazing Service lasted about a decade. In 1946 there was a big dispute between the House and the Senate over grazing fees. The result was no appropriation for the Grazing Service. So it was paralyzed. Finally, in 1946 President Truman used his executive authority to cobble together a new agency, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to replace the old Grazing Service. The BLM had more authority than the Service because it was made from the remains of the Grazing Service plus the Department of Interior’s General Land Office, one of the oldest agencies of government. This gave the new BLM jurisdiction also over public land minerals (worth far more than the grazing), over land transfers and disposals, and other matters. The BLM finally got a rational, comprehensive, mission in 1976 with the passage of the “Federal Land Policy and Management Act” (FLPMA, flip ma). The Homestead Act and other land disposal laws were repealed by FLPMA, and federal policy became to keep all the remaining public lands and manage them for “multiple uses” (many uses and users) and “sustained yield” — make sure the grass grows back, etc. Old West reactionaries hate FLMPA. They have never gotten over it. Ammon Bundy is one of them.

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Despite the loud complaints by some, having a grazing lease on U.S. public land is a great benefit. The fees are a small fraction of what it would cost to buy feed or rent private grazing land. On top of that the federal government makes many range “improvements” and a federal agency named Wildlife Services services wildlife by gunning them down or trapping them — coyotes primarily, but also bears, cougar, wolves, bobcats to make a grazing allotment safer for the permittee. Range “improvements” is in quotes because other users of public land often do not like them. For example, bulldozing a bubbling spring and making a muddy livestock pond out of it is considered an improvement.

Losing a grazing permit is a big blow to a ranch. It can happen for non-payment of fees, the loss or sale of a ranch (the required base property), and grazing permit violations. Most common is loss or sale of base property even though permit violation is very common. Usually a new grazing permit is issued to the new owner of the base property. If this New Mexican rancher loses his permit because of willing nonpayment, the permit might well be given to another rancher. If he doesn’t yield, then local law enforcement will probably step in.

If someone like Bundy is successful destroying the established system of grazing on public lands so that none one is secure that they have food for their livestock, the old west with gun fights and force could quickly return.