Cattle Grazing

Grazing Public Capital

Approximately 300 million acres of public lands-federal, state, and county-are currently leased for livestock grazing. This figure includes some 90 percent of all Bureau of Land Management holdings, 69 percent of the lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, plus national wildlife refuges, national parks, and other nature preserves.

The combined area is as large as the entire eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida, with Missouri thrown in! And 300 million acres is what potentially could be restored if public lands livestock production were eliminated. Nowhere else in the United States is there such potential for large-scale ecosystem restoration at so little cost-and ultimately affecting so few people-as in the termination of domestic livestock production on our public lands.

An Inappropriate Use of Public Lands

Although the impacts associated with livestock production vary from region to region, and even from ranch to ranch, there is overwhelming evidence that livestock production has impoverished the West's biological capital.

Livestock production, by its very nature, is a domestication of the landscape. It requires using the bulk of water, forage, and space for the benefit of one or two domestic animals-at the expense of native creatures. Although this is characteristic of agriculture everywhere, the expropriation of resources for the raising of livestock is particularly egregious in the arid West because natural productivity is limited and highly variable.

Grazing public lands is inappropriate for numerous reasons. It interferes with recreation, harms important plant and animal habitats and spoils water quality. It also costs taxpayers thousands of dollars per year.

In the Red

A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office (the investigative arm of Congress) concluded that the federal government spends at least $144 million each year managing private livestock grazing operations on public land, but collects only $21 million in grazing fees—for a net loss of at least $123 million per year.

Several agencies, including the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, which spend money mitigating grazing damage such as non-point source water pollution, did not provide estimates of their grazing related costs to the GAO. The report also does not address the environmental costs of livestock grazing on public lands.

Making Progress in the Klamath-Siskiyou

KS Wild is working to remove cattle from the ecologically sensitive Bigelow Lakes Botanical Area on Grayback Mountain in southwest Oregon, as well as the Billy Mountain area in the Middle Applegate. KS Wild also advocates that cows be removed from the Marble Mountain and other Wilderness areas in the region.