Groups sue Forest Service over fees plan for livestock grazing on public lands

In a frontal assault on one of the most contentious federal subsidies in the West, eight environmental groups sued the U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday for failing to complete a plan in the mid-1990s to increase fees that ranchers pay to graze livestock on public lands.

People just in State of New Mexico alone have to put up with the stupid-assed incompetents who "work for the government" and control 80% of the land there!! For those of you in the east who think it is your land: How would you like these elitist little socialist bureaucrats to own that percentage of the land in your states?
These are the same dufi who started the Cerro Grande fire near Los Alamos(!), which was a "controlled burn". Well, this controlled burn was set in the dryest conditions possible in a desert in a 50 mph+ wind!!!!! At very high temperatures!!!
The comrades who authorized, ordered, and started the fire(s) went back and changed records, lied, and if the case is true in this one as in others, were not punished and probably promoted and transferred. This BS is common in every federal agency that is part of the occupation force in the west. The BLM is even worse that the Forest Service when it comes to corruption; their office in Carlsbad, NM keeps two sets of books and they recently poisoned large tracts of private land on the Pecos River in Eddy County, another screw-up; and the last I heard are still denying it and trying to cover it up in order to avoid the blame and having to pay reparations . These scum daily do things with impunity, sometimes even with bonuses and raises, that you and I could go to jail for. You people in the east wouldn't tolerate these commies doing things like this to you in your homes, but your representatives in Congress have no such problems doing that to westerners.
Because of their presence, they say the fed salaries and Payment In Lew of Taxes money paid to the local counties are an economic boon, but in fact they are forced confiscation of your money applied to counties that could easily support themselves if "highest and best use of the land" were applied. And by the way, the environmentalist wackos ARE TOO trying to put western ranchers (I'm not one) out of business, and they should get the hell back to Connecticut and Vermont and New York and finish screwing up lives there.
And also by the way, FReepers, where in the US Const. does it provide for the BLM, those b-----rd thieves at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Forest Service, BOR? I think it's a stretch to say that the "implied powers" clause allows for worthless federal occupation bureaucrats to be there in perpetuity.

Let me explain public land for you (I'm excluding forest land right now.)

Public land in the west is usually the land that was so rough and non-productive that no-one homesteaded it. It is the rock bluffs in the mountains and the sand ridge that grows nothing but greasewood. On our ranch, which has been in the family for a hundred years there is a third private land, a third state land and a third Federal land. Almost none of the federal or state land can be accessed without crossing private land. The amount that my family has paid in grazing fees has paid for that land probably ten times but it has never been for sale.

I don't know where you are from but do you know what the West is like? Have you ever spent any time out here? I could write a book and I don't have the time or the typing skills.

Now for cattle on Forest lands. One of the reasons that they never raised the rates is because they've taken the majority of the cattle off of the Forest lands and in a nutshell that is why the West burned this summer and why it will continue to burn next summer.

I don't know where you are from but do you know what the West is like? Have you ever spent any time out here? I could write a book and I don't have the time or the typing skills. Now for cattle on Forest lands. One of the reasons that they never raised the rates is because they've taken the majority of the cattle off of the Forest lands and in a nutshell that is why the West burned this summer and why it will continue to burn next summer.

As a matter of fact I am born and raised in the west. I have spent the better part of my life outdoors in the west and have the crow's feet to prove it.

I can show you vast stretches of desert which were once plush with vegetation but are now just fuel for the dust storms because of over grazing. As for the forest fires, the virtual elimination of logging is probably the major contributor.

You make some valid points and I respect your experience and knowledge, but there have been many instances of abuse of the land. Maybe the answer is not to raise fees, but be more selective in where grazing is allowed.

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