In the 1970s, Congress raised the fees to graze herds of animals on public lands in order to reflect market prices at the time, but they’ve barely moved the price since. Today, ranchers are charged just $1.35 per animal unit month (an AUM is the amount a cow and her calf eat in a month), which is 93 percent cheaper than what is charged on private lands. Two-thirds of all livestock grazing on the Bureau of Land Management’s land is controlled by 10 percent of ranchers, and the bottom half of permittees are responsible for just four percent of AUMs on BLM land. This amounts to a massive federal giveaway to the richest people in the cattle ranching industry. The $21 million collected from ranchers by the BLM and Forest Service is now $284 million below the market rate for forage.
Mark Olalde and Jimmy Tobias, High Country News
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