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Fat of the Land
Ranchers in the West have been using public lands to graze for more than a century, and since the early 1900s, the federal government has been making them pay for the privilege. But as a new report by the Government Accountability Office shows, grazing fees do not even come close to covering the costs of administering the federal grazing program. In all, taxpayers lost $123 million on this wasteful program in 2004 alone. The grazing program requires the government to do more than just throw open the fences and let ranchers and their livestock rush in; federal agencies spend a lot of money to make sure that the land is suitable for use. The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spent $136 million in 2004 to administer the grazing program to construct fences, manage permits and leases, and develop water projects. Other federal agencies spent another $8.4 million on such activities as pest control. But for all that work, taxpayers get crumbs in return. The GAO found that ranchers paid the U.S. government only $21 million in grazing fees in 2004, covering a small fraction of the program’s cost. The reason? Federal agencies have been charging far less than market value for public land grazing privileges. While private landowners charge ranchers nearly $13/month to let ranchers graze a cow-calf pair on their land, the BLM and the Forest Service charge $1.79/month. The low federal grazing fee is based, in part, on economic data from a 1966 study that have not been adjusted for inflation in forty years.
It was no secret that the federal grazing programs lost money, but this report demonstrates the alarming size of the subsidy that goes to the tiny fraction of ranchers that graze livestock on federal land. Only 2% of livestock operators actually make use of the federal grazing program, and the program can wreak havoc on the land. Grazing erodes soils, pollutes water, spreads invasive weeds, and alters natural fire regimes. Partly because it is so widespread (235 million acres of federal land alone), grazing contributes to the decline of 22% of species listed under the Endangered Species Act. Rock-bottom grazing fees have helped to encourage overgrazing on public lands. Congress could tackle this problem in the budget reconciliation process by raising grazing fees to match their costs. The GAO estimated that the BLM would need to charge $7.64 to recover the costs of its grazing program, and the Forest Service would need to charge $12.26. Other federal agencies set fees using bidding, market value estimations and other methods that result in a higher return to the taxpayer, and these should also be explored in the long run. Lawmakers concerned about the ballooning deficit need to lasso these grazing fees. Because as the GAO report illustrates, the real cash cow for ranchers is a two-legged animal: the American taxpayer. |
As Congress scrambles this week to trim the budget and battle the fiscal pressures caused by the Iraq war and hurricane relief, it might want to start with one of the oldest boondoggles on the books: the wasteful way we manage grazing on our public lands. 
The Chopping Block is a production of the Green Scissors Campaign. Led by Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the Green Scissors Campaign is dedicated to protecting taxpayers and the environment. To unsubscribe from the Chopping Block, please reply to this email with the word unsubscribe in the body of the email. To sign up to receive the Chopping Block and other Green Scissors Campaign updates click here.
Issue 11, Volume 1 November 3, 2005