Battle brewing over BLM's new grazing rules

A verbal range war has broken out over new grazing rules that the Bureau of Land Management says it will establish next month.

The BLM is promising that ranchers who use this federal land will have a more productive working relationship with the agency while the rangeland will be better cared for. A Utah Cattlemen's Association official likes the new rules, saying they will make grazing permittees more responsible and foster improvements to the range.

But the director of an environmental group that has battled BLM policies in Utah, the Western Watersheds Project, says the new regulations are illegal and would reduce public control over the federal range. The group plans to sue.

Altogether, 1,530 permittees may use 1,414 grazing allotments throughout Utah on BLM land, said Don Banks, spokesman in Salt Lake City for the federal agency; sometimes more than one ranching operation use the same same allotment.

About 21.5 million acres are included in BLM allotments in the Beehive State. Permittees are about 10 percent corporations and the rest smaller, family-type businesses, he said.

New grazing rules are to be posted next month in the Federal Register. Meanwhile, the BLM has issued a final environmental impact statement on the plan.

"We believe the changes are going to improve our working relations with public land ranchers," said Tom Gorey, BLM spokesman in Washington, D.C., reached by telephone. He said the rules restore a "shared title" provision.

This regulation was in the rules previously but was revoked by regulations that went effect in 1995.

It allows the federal agency and ranchers to share ownership of range improvement structures like fences, wells and pipelines. To qualify, improvements are constructed under a cooperative range improvement agreement.

The change "reflects this administration's view that ranchers, when contributing financially to the construction of range improvements, should be able to share ownership in proportion to their investment of labor, material or equipment," says a question and answer sheet provided by the BLM.

"In addition, shared title could help some ranchers obtain loans more easily for their operations, and may serve as an incentive for livestock operators to undertake needed range improvements."

Gorey said the new rules "are going to improve our working relations with the public land ranchers."

Rex Sacco, a resident of Helper, Carbon County, who is a co-chairman of the Utah Cattlemen's Association's Utah Public Lands Council, agreed.

"It's probably good across the board for everyone that really has an interest in public lands," he said.

They will make permittees "a little bit more responsible for some of the actions" and that will help to get things done, he said.