Some Oregon Ranchers Support Enviros In Pushing To Limit Federal Grazing

[hatrack]

"Bob Miller, a fourth-generation farmer in Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, is ready to call it quits.

He grazes 150 head of cattle on mountainous federal land that provides crucial forage for his herd, but he is well aware that in a matter of years, the government may push him off after completing a multimillion-dollar study on how ranching is affecting the local ecology. This study has become a big albatross," Miller said. "They're going to have to buy us out one way or another. We think they better do it now."

Miller and about a dozen other ranchers in Cascade-Siskiyou own federal grazing permits, lifetime permits that allow them to graze cattle for less than $1.50 a month apiece on the public land. But with concern intensifying about what grazing is doing to the land and the rare species that depend on it, he and others are making common cause with environmentalists who want to end the practice.

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But the nascent push to end federal grazing in Oregon, Arizona and elsewhere has sparked a backlash from several cattlemen's associations, as well as some Republicans in Congress. The debate over how to treat the ranchers underscores the growing political and economic tension over the federal government's decades-old policy of promoting grazing on federal land with low-cost permits. No one argues that the policy is a moneymaker. Last year the Bureau of Land Management took in nearly $12 million in grazing receipts, officials said, but it spent $50 million administering the program. Critics say the true cost is at least twice as high, noting that the figures do not include expenses such as range development and predator control."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16765-2004Sep12.html

[MisterP]

1. dammit, we can't let nature be all natural;

there was no environment before humans came along! It's all decadent! What nonsensical drivel comes out next from the Republicans?!