🚀 go-pugleaf

Don Baccus (donb@rational.com) wrote:
: Federal grazing rights are normally attached to a ranch, i.e. if you
: buy a ranch you usually get the grazing rights which belong to it.

Federal grazing tights do not belong to a ranch, they are leased by the 
federal government to ranchers.  Owning a ranch adjacent to public 
grazing land can give one priority when seeking a grazing lease, but one 
does not acquire a grazing lease by buying a ranch near public grazing 
land.

: The land was overstocked to the point where a population crash occured
: after a particularly hard winter in the 1890s.  It was claimed one
: could walk hundreds of miles on the carcasses of cattle without
: ever touching the ground.

: I'm not sure just when the feds began regulating access, but the

The feds began regulating some access prior to 1890, but they weren't very
successful until a permitting system was developed under the Taylor
Grazing Act of 1934. 

: When the feds began actually managing the open range on a permit
: system, the historical claims of various ranches were recognized.
: As they still are today.

The supposed "prior rights" to federal grazing lands were disavowed by 
the Supreme Court a quarter century before the federal government began 
managing its rangelands under a permitting system.  In the 1918 case of 
_Omaechavarria v. Idaho_, Justice Brandeis wrote, "Congress has not 
conferred upon citizens the right to graze stock upon public lands.  The 
government has merely suffered the lands to be so used."  One gains a 
preference in obtaining a lease by owning land adjacent to certain 
federal ranges.  One does not gain a historical claim upon the federal 
rangeland itself by owning an adjacent pience of property.

Todd Ourston