Livestock are grazed on all federal lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges. Still, most livestock grazing occurs on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the US Forest Service. Even specially protected landscapes that are supposed to be managed for natural conditions, like designated Wilderness areas, are grazed by domestic animals.
Often, these landscapes are degraded by the private for-profit use of public land ranchers.
Approximately 62% of BLM lands are leased to ranchers for livestock grazing. This number would be much higher if not because the BLM controls 70 million acres of holdings in Alaska, where virtually no land is suitable for livestock production.
Another 49% of US Forest Service lands are available for grazing leases. Many Forest Service lands are heavily timbered, thus unsuitable for livestock grazing.
Virtually all land that could be grazed is available for livestock grazing. What is particularly egregious about these western public lands is that they tend to be more arid than other lands in the mid-west and Eastern US, where most livestock production occurs. Thus, these federal lands are more vulnerable to erosion, overgrazing, and livestock damage and unsuitable for domestic livestock use from an ecological carrying capacity.
Years ago, I published a book titled “Welfare Ranching” Many western livestock producers objected to the title, suggesting it misrepresented reality. Ranchers argued that western livestock producers were “hardworking” and “land stewards.”
There are numerous ways that the western livestock industry is subsidized, but one of the most obvious is the grazing fees paid by ranchers who use federal lands for forage. Some estimates put the subsidy at $100 million annually, and do nothing to compensate the public for the damage that often occurs from livestock use.
Ranchers currently pay $1.35 an AUM. An AUM is short for Animal Unit Month or the forage a cow and calf presumably eats in a month. It doesn’t take a genius to note that feeding a cow and her calf for $1.35 is ridiculously low. You couldn’t feed a hamster for that amount.
The fee formula considers several factors, including private land grazing lease rates, beef cattle prices, and livestock production costs.
However, the gap between public and private lands is huge, hence the subsidy. In 2024, private leases’ average monthly grazing fee was $23.40 per AUM.
Public lands livestock producers argue that federal lands are typically not as “productive” as private lands. However, this argument doesn’t hold water because it is still based on what a cow and calf need in forage.
In many instances, public range allotments are directly next to private land, identical to federal land leased at a much higher rate.
However, below-market grazing fees are not the only way Western livestock producers are subsidized.
Numerous programs help subsidize the livestock industry, particularly the western livestock industry. For instance, the US Department of Agriculture just announced a billion-dollar aid package for producers who suffered from wildfires, droughts, or other calamities.
Subsidized irrigation is also a significant factor in the western livestock industry. Ranchers who remove water from rivers do not pay a cent for that public resource. Public dollars also subsidize many reservoirs built around the West to store water for irrigation.
This is particularly true when the ecological externalities are considered. For example, the dewatering of rivers to irrigate livestock forage production can harm fisheries. It can impact recreational opportunities such as fishing or river floating. Dams constructed for reservoirs can impact fish migration (salmon) or downstream aquatic conditions.
Another subsidy is how public land livestock production impacts wildlife. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the vast majority of forage on public allotments is consumed by domestic animals, resulting in a loss of forage for native species.
The mere presence of domestic animals can socially displace native species like moose and elk, which tend to abandon allotments when livestock are present.
There is disease transfer between domestic species and native species, such as pneumonia transmission to wild bighorn sheep.
Native predators are often at risk of lethal control if they prey on domestic animals grazing on public lands.
The spread of weeds like cheatgrass is associated with domestic livestock grazing. Cheatgrass is a highly flammable plant that promotes wildfire.
Water pollution of public waterways is yet another externality. Often E. coli levels exceed safety standards on allotments grazed by livestock.
These are only a few of the subsidies known to impact public lands from private use of these landscapes.
In nearly all cases, these “costs” are externalized to the land or taxpayer, who pays to correct or mitigate the damage.
One solution is the Voluntary Grazing Permit Retirement Act, which would compensate ranchers for voluntarily giving up their grazing “privileges” (not rights) in exchange for the permanent retirement of the allotment from any livestock production.
This provision has been successfully used to terminate grazing privileges in various locations around the West, though it is not yet implemented westwide and needs Congressional designation.
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