Grazing Permit Buyout Makes Room For Bears

...A recent buyout of livestock grazing permits -- made possible with the financial help of a little-known organization in Utah -- virtually guarantees that cattle will roam no more on a huge chunk of land east of Grand Teton National Park.
The deal is the largest of its type in the 27-million-acre greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the latest in a growing trend of free-market buyouts of grazing permits in sensitive places around the West.
Despite the removal of domesticated red meat from grizzlies' diet, this latest buyout is good news for the animals. When bears eat cows, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is bound by law to pay ranchers for the losses and to remove or kill the offending bears...
After nearly a year of negotiations, they and the Walton Ranch struck a deal. The National Wildlife Federation agreed to pay the Walton Ranch $250,000 for their grazing allotment. The Waltons have used the cash to buy grazing leases on private land in Idaho.
And the U.S. Forest Service agreed to end livestock grazing in the allotment, which is sandwiched between the park and the Teton Wilderness Area, another important range for grizzly bears...
The retirement of the grazing permits by the Forest Service is not permanent. Subsequent forest managers could reinstate grazing, but most people associated with this buyout say that is unlikely.
The buyout is similar to a transaction that occurred in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah last year. In that deal, the Grand Canyon Trust paid several ranchers $600,000 for grazing permits. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which administers the monument, then agreed to end or drastically reduce grazing on 350,000 acres inside the federal reserve...