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Buy-Outs

Section I.   Title

Public Lands Grazing Buy-outs:  
The ‘Win-Win' Needed to Break an Environmental Impasse

Section II.   Problem Statement

Public lands ranching accounts for more ESA listed species in the West than any other single use of our public lands.   Conservationists have been extremely successful at combating abusive grazing in the courtroom.   However, if the problem is to be significantly resolved in a way that all stakeholders can reasonably swallow, a legislative solution must be adopted.   Voluntary permit buy-outs have struggled to gain legislative support as congressional and administrating agencies have been under dominant control by politicians whose unabashed support for the public lands grazing industry has in large part been one-sided.  

Section III.   Key Steakholders

The stakeholders involved include regional conservation organizations throughout the West.   Western Watersheds Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Forest Guardians, Oregon Natural Desert Association, and the Committee for Idaho's High Desert have joined with the American Lands Alliance in Washington, D.C.   These groups have joined to form the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign which seeks to promote buy-outs of allotments on public lands by promoting legislation.   Other stakeholders include individual public lands ranchers, corporate public lands ranchers, the trade-associations they have formed such as national and regional Farm Bureaus.   Land use agencies that administer the allotments, including the BLM and Forest Service, would also benefit from buy-outs as the agencies frequently find themselves sued by both sides over grazing disputes.   The agencies would administer the buy-outs.

Section IV.   Analysis

The fact that grazing significantly contributes to environmental degradation is not contested.   Public lands ranching takes place on 300 million acres of public land in America (Wuerthner & Matteson 2002: xiv).   While individual conservation...