Grazing permit transfer plan draws fire

CEDAR CITY — Hugh Thompson knew his draft proposal to allow the transfer of federal grazing permits for uses other than grazing would raise a few eyebrows — and maybe even a few voices — once he shared his idea.

"This issue is starting to boil over," Thompson, deputy director of the state Department of Natural Resources, said at the Utah Rural Summit in Cedar City last week. "I come from the ranching side of the fence on this. My plan is simple and common sense. I don't think it's overloaded on one side or the other."

Thompson was one of four people invited to discuss the "lightning-rod topic" of grazing buyouts as part of the two-day rural summit held on the Southern Utah University campus. The topic was expected to be so volatile that two breakout sessions on the topic were scheduled in one day.

Kane County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw and Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, both ranchers, and Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust, rounded out the list of presenters who faced a roomful of people holding a stake in the future of grazing allotments.

"We believe that in some areas of the arid southwest, cattle shouldn't be there," said Hedden, who has a doctorate in biology and has helped broker buyouts of grazing permits on public lands in Utah and Arizona. Ranchers who want to sell are getting top dollar from groups like the Grand Canyon Trust, far more than the government would pay.

"In a few carefully selected cases, we would like to remove cows (from the permitted area). We have no intention of running anyone off his or her land. It's really hard to substantiate the allegation that we're putting the screws to ranchers so they fold," Hedden said.

Noel and Habbeshaw said the Grand Canyon Trust and other special interest groups have a private agenda markedly different from the one Hedden described.

"Their emphasis is to eliminate grazing on every square mile of public land in the western United States. That is their agenda," Noel said, adding that grazing allotments are lost forever once they're sold to such groups. "There is no meeting their appetite for buying out grazing allotments. They see what they want and they take it. What does that do to the rural economy? I submit to you that it destroys it."

Taking care of the needs of livestock is the plan's first priority, said Thompson. And none of the options carves out new policy or infringes on federal land management law.