How to Stop Grazing on Public Lands: Buy Out the Permits
APRIL 17, 2019
by GEORGE WUERTHNER
Across the West, it is well documented that livestock grazing is one of the most destructive land uses on public lands. Some 250 million acres of public lands including those administered by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as some national wildlife refuges and even some national park units are grazed by domestic livestock.
DIRECT AND INDIRECT COSTS
Livestock production is not benign. Livestock pollute public waters with their waste. Livestock compact soils reducing infiltration. Their hooves break up biocrusts which hold the soil together and reduce wind erosion. They spread diseases to wildlife, for instance, pneumonia to bighorn sheep. They spread weeds. They eat forage that might otherwise support native herbivores from ground squirrels to elk. They socially displace native animals like elk from the best lands. We kill predators like wolves, cougars, bears, and coyotes to facilitate livestock operations. Fences on public lands block wildlife migrations, and serve a look out posts for avian predators that prey on sage grouse and other endangered species. Grazing can also reduce the capacity of soil to store carbon.
To add insult to injury, we charge ranchers a ridiculously low fee for grazing our public lands. Currently the fee is $1.35 an AUM (animal unit month) or the amount of forage a cow and calf can consume in a month. You could not feed a pet goldfish on $1.35 a month.
A 2005 General Accounting Office review estimated that federal public lands grazing on BLM and Forest Service lands may cost taxpayers as much as $500 million to $1 billion annually in indirect and direct costs-a huge subsidy to a small number of livestock producers.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/17/how-to-stop-grazing-on-public-lands-buy-out-the-permits/
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