Asked whether western ranchers should be concerned, McDonald said he “would be pretty worried.” More than 90 percent of the land owned by the federal government is out West. Although proposed guidelines offer protections for those with valid existing rights, ranchers might lose their chance to renew their claims thanks to competition from deep-pocketed environmental groups that can now claim priority.
“Ranchers should definitely be concerned enough to be paying attention,” McDonald said, adding the proposal has created “storm clouds on the horizon.”
Pendley was more fatalistic. “It’ll drive them out of business,” the former BLM director said. “We have ranches in the West that exist because they have a grazing allotment.”
“Livestock people settled the West, so when you take away the ability of a ranch to graze on an allotment associated with the ranch, then that’s the end of the ranch,” Pendley added. “They’re able to graze their livestock on BLM or Forest Service lands and it makes that ranch economical.”
The new rules appear to come straight from BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning’s 1992 graduate thesis. While her 2021 nomination was controversial primarily over her history as an ecoterrorist, Biden’s BLM chief also condemned public grazing and promoted a Chinese-style child cap. Stone-Manning now oversees 155 million acres of grazing land, about the size of Arizona and New Mexico.
Grazing Is Good for Our Diet..
BLM’s new rules thus threaten to take out ranchers, the original conservationists. A major blow to regenerative ranching, which incorporates animals as critical to the natural biological cycle, could actually be detrimental to the nation’s health.
Here is the reason the ranches need to graze cattle on the BLM land. First, grass grows there. Ranchers have the right to go to the green high country. They pay a fee per cow. They are in a cattle pool from other ranchers. They maintain fences and keep cowboys up there for the summer. But the main point: The ranchers need to grow hay for the winter feed. Ranches are in deep snow during the winter. The cattle come off the BLM and USFS land in October. The ranch bottomland has to be irrigated during the summer to grow the hay. The amount of hayland is small...it has to be flat river bottom. If the cattle were on the ranch in the summer... then two things happen: They eat the winter feed. And they trample the wet soil and destroy the grass and soil grading.
End the BLM Allotments, no ranch. Ranches would be sold for millionaire housing sites.