🚀 go-pugleaf

Paul Schwartz (capstan@netcom.com) wrote:


: Could someone answer a question for me?  I have been following this thread
: and have yet to see a description on how this grazing land is leased.  It
: sould be leased one of three ways:

I can't answer for the state lands within each of the 17 states with
large amounts of public grazing lands, but as most of the range in
those states is managed by the BLM (i.e. federal), I'll provide
the answer for them:

: 1.   The right to graze is sold to the highest bidder.  Like T-Bills

Nope.

: 2.   The price is determined by the government and the users selected
:      in some manner.

Bingo!

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.

The general setup has been dictated by the history of the west: when
the various Homestead Acts were enabled, the land with water went first
and most of today's successful ranches are built around such a homestead.
(actually, normally a bunch of them lumped together - the dominant
ranchers had their vaqueros and buckaroos homestead and (illegally)
give the land to them).

In those days, ranchers would just run their cows on summer pasture
which was not valuable enough to homestead and was still in the
public domain.  There was no regulation and no fees charged.

Individual ranchers with the power to back up their claims would
use summer range as though it was their own, but their legal
standing was shaky - thus the infamous "range wars", rustling,
sheepmen-vs.-cattlemen battles, etc.

(this is a simplification, because a lot of unsuitable land was
 also homesteaded.  Most of these folks, though, couldn't survive
 without access to better water and the resulting fields of hay which
 could be grown for winter forage.  Marginal ranches such as these
 often ended up back in the public domain after abandonment).

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
above crash was a formative event in the sense that the ranchers
themselves realized that they were grossly overstocking the range.
(also a lot went belly-up as a result, leaving a smaller bunch of
bigger ranches in existence).

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.

While the above is shakey on details, the general scenario is right.

Let me save Phil Ronzone the trouble of posting:

"It's all a pack of LIES!  Don's LYING! LYING! LYING!!"

There - hopefully I've saved some bandwidth...

--

- Don Baccus -