Hint: It was not passed to create a nature preserve in eastern Montana
When most people think of “public land grazing,” they think about grazing cattle and sheep that are used for the betterment of our economy, range health and food supply. That is also what Congress thought when it passed the Taylor Grazing Act (TGA). However, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the American Prairie (AP), a group using public lands to create the “one of the largest nature preserves in the United States,” do not fit what Congress intended in the TGA.
Congress passed the TGA “to stop injury to the public grazing lands by preventing overgrazing and soil deterioration, to provide for their orderly use, improvement, and development, [and] to stabilize the livestock industry dependent upon the range.” The 1934 act was to counter the “tragedy of the commons,” which theorizes that unfettered access to a finite resource, such as open, unappropriated lands in the West, will cause those lands to be overused and may end up destroying them.
Because of the vast amount of open, unappropriated land in the West, Congress passed the TGA which directed the predecessor of the BLM to organize advisory boards of local ranchers (my grandfather called them the “Taylor grazing boys”) to grant preference rights and grazing permits to local stockmen who: 1) owned base property which was land or water rights which could be used by their livestock when they were not grazing on the public lands, 2) had been grazing their livestock on the lands for the prior five years and 3) were living in the local area and contributing to the economy.
To implement this concept, the BLM regulations provide that “grazing permits and leases authorize use on the public lands . . . that are designated in land use plans as available for livestock grazing.” The BLM defines “livestock” as “species of domestic livestock—cattle, sheep, horses, burros, and goats.” Seems pretty simple—but now Montana’s AP has entered the picture.
To reach AP’s goal, their biologists have determined that a mixed-grass prairie would need to be approximately 3.2 million acres (5,000 square miles) to be a fully functioning ecosystem for bison. Thus, AP proposes to purchase approximately 700,000 acres of private lands that it will “stitch together” with millions of acres of public lands that will end up being roughly the size of Connecticut.
It is the elimination of livestock from millions of acres of BLM lands that concerns the ranchers. First, these lands are governed by the TGA, whose purpose was to stabilize the livestock industry, not eliminate the livestock industry in eastern Montana by turning grazing allotments into a wildlife preserve. Second, certainly there are ranchers who raise bison as livestock for meat consumption. In 2023, the sale of bison meat was a $13.81 billion dollar industry. But that is not what we are talking about with AP. Rather, their goal is to eliminate livestock grazing on vast areas of public lands, eliminate the fencing and other range improvements that ensure these public lands are protected from overuse and trample the purpose of the TGA.
This is clearly not a complaint about ranchers who raise bison, but if the goal is to comply with the TGA, then creating a “nature reserve” out of BLM allotments in eastern Montana is outside the law.
The grant of BLM grazing permits should continue to be reserved for those who are using the allotments for continued improvement of our economy, range health and food supply—not to end livestock grazing in eastern Montana. — Karen Budd-Falen, Cheyenne, WY
(Karen Budd-Falen owns Budd-Falen Law Offices LLC with her husband, Frank Falen. Karen mainly represents private property owners, ranching and farming organizations, and local governments.)
