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SUNNY Temp: 68 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Wednesday, October 1, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine Joy Magazine Tempo A & E RogueValleyAutoFinder RogueValleyHomeFinder Real Estate Showcase Wellness Connection Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Employment Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend September 14, 2003 Grazing: A property right? Ranchers believe so, but the federal BLM says it’s just a lease By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune Rancher Bob Miller is bracing himself for the likely end of open range grazing on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. "There has been so much adverse publicity and so many people who don’t understand the situation that we will not be able to survive this battle, physically or economically," he concludes. "Consequently, if the public wants the cattle off that bad, then they should pay us for the property rights we own," he says of grazing permits. "These are valid existing property rights." Rancher Don Rowlett agrees. Advertisement "If running cattle out here becomes such an issue that we have to spend half our lives trying to defend it, trying to meet the rules and regulations and facing the lawsuits that come from it, well, I don’t have that much time left to live," he says. But ranchers have to be able to replace lost grazing lands if they are to survive, he says. "The biggest issue to all of us is the replacement," he says. "It has to be at a fair market value." Uncle Sam doesn’t quite see it that way, says Rich Drehobl, manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s Ashland Resource Area. He says the bureau does not recognize an AUM — animal unit month, the equivalent of a cow and a calf feeding for one month —as vested property rights."We only recognize it as a lease," he says. "It’s a privilege, not a right. From the government’s perspective, they (ranchers) have nothing to sell." But Ashland resident Andy Kerr, an environmental activist who has long been a burr in the side of the cattle industry, says the AUMs do represent a monetary value. The financial and real estate markets, along with the IRS, recognize the AUMs as a "property interest," says Kerr, director of the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign, a coalition lobbying Congress to pay ranchers to voluntarily give up federal grazing permits. "For decades on many of these ranches, when the property changes hands, those AUMs routinely go with them," Kerr explains. "So the base property reflects the fact AUMs go with it." Yet Kerr also rejects arguments by local ranchers who describe the public land AUMs as a property right. "The Supreme Court has ruled a dozen times since the turn of the (19th) century that federal grazing leases are a privilege, not a property right," he says. "The federal government can cut the number of permits or the season because of a drought or whatever. The court has said that does not constitute a taking that has to be compensated." Kerr, who has represented the local environmental community in discussing with ranchers a possible buyout of grazing permits on the monument, doesn’t hide the fact he is against grazing on public lands. "I want to end the abuse of grazing on public land," he says. "How could any rational person believe grazing is good for the land? "These allotments should be retired and the forage reallocated for watershed and wildlife habitat," he says. His group is proposing that $175 be paid for each AUM on federal grazing land, a price the local ranchers say is way too low. The average price per AUM is $40 to $75 in the West with as much as $110 to $120 per AUM in the Northern Rockies, according to Kerr. Noting each AUM per year costs about $30 in taxpayers’ money, Kerr says it’s disingenuous for ranchers to argue they are paying their way at $1.35 per AUM. "It costs me more than that to feed my cat," he quips. Four out of five cattle operations in the United States do not have federal grazing permits associated with them, he observes. "It’s a fair and equitable and generous way to resolve this conflict," he says. "Here’s an opportunity to provide those permittees and leasees with a golden saddle. "If they want to go for the fair market value we would support that, but they would be shortchanging themselves," he adds. Horse feathers, reply the ranchers. "If they want it, then all we ask is that they pay a fair price — don’t steal it from us," Miller says. "We will sell, but don’t try to steal our rights." He and other local ranchers repeatedly stress they want fair market value for the AUMs, but declined to name a price. "At this point, I don’t think it’s fair to put it out in print," Miller says. "All we’re asking for is a fair price representing what it would take to replace what we have for the grazing season. "You’ve got to feed a cow year round," he adds. "You just don’t park a cow like a car or a piece of equipment." The $1.35 ranchers pay per AUM represents, in essence, a tax on private property, he believes. Half is earmarked to go into a county fund to improve the range; another 25 percent is for BLM administrative costs; and the remaining 25 percent is used to support local schools, he says. "If we cannot run the cattle here and want to stay in business and maintain our lifestyle and protect our basic investment, our equity, then we have to go someplace else and purchase this," he says of grazing land. "These AUMs on the mountain cannot be replaced with dryland range like that just outside of Ashland because that forage is not nutritious this time of year," he says. "You have to go somewhere else where it’s nutritious enough to replace this land." That means costly irrigated pastureland in late summer, he says. Meanwhile, if the outcome of the ongoing grazing study is simply a predetermined effort to boot out the cattle, then Uncle Sam should not do the study, Miller says. "The cheapest thing for everybody is to just pay a fair price now and we’ll all walk away and do something else," he says. 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