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In a joint investigation, High Country News and ProPublica explore the evolution of the grazing system on national public lands over the past century. The investigation found that what started as a program to control over-grazing during the Dust Bowl has evolved into a program that subsidizes private, often wealthy, ranchers through grazing fees that have remained unchanged since the 1970s, along with other taxpayer-funded subsidies including disaster assistance, discounted crop insurance, and other funding.
These benefits are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few: Currently, ten percent of ranchers control two-thirds of grazing allotments on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, and half of the grazing allotments on U.S. Forest Service (USFS) lands. Ranchers are not the only ones benefitting from discounted grazing; mining companies hold grazing permits on millions of acres of public lands as a way to exert greater control over the land surrounding their mines.
Meanwhile, environmental oversight of grazing on national public lands has steadily declined. The BLM and USFS are supposed to review grazing permits every ten years before renewing them, but a law passed in 2014 also requires the agencies to automatically renew permits if they are not able to complete the required reviews. In the decade since that law's passage, the number of agency staff conducting those reviews has declined sharply. Over that same timeframe, the percentage of BLM land that had grazing approved without environmental review increased from 47 percent in 2013 to 75 percent ten years later.
Fewer staff also means less on-the-ground monitoring, enabling bad actors to run more cattle for longer than they should and in places where they're not allowed. The result is degradation of national public lands; the majority of BLM grazing allotments either failed their most recent land health assessments, or have never been assessed.
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Steve Pearce’s nomination is a referendum on whether Congress believes our shared lands still belong to all Americans. The Stewardship Caucus and every senator who claims to care about the West’s outdoor heritage should reject Pearce’s nomination.”
