Agency lags on grazing permits

The U.S. Forest Service is backlogged with more than 6,000 grazing permit renewals that could take 17 years to complete at its current rate of processing, an official with the agency testified Wednesday during a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing.

By contrast, the Bureau of Land Management backlog will be erased in five years.

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, urged the Forest Service to commit more resources to processing its vast backlog.

A Forest Service representative told the subcommittee Wednesday that the agency is processing grazing permits at a current rate of 368 per year.

“The department has testified previously before this subcommittee that the current decision-making procedures to authorize livestock grazing or other activities on rangelands administered by the Forest Service are inflexible, unwieldy, time-consuming and expensive,” said Tom Thompson, deputy chief of the National Forest System for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He said the agency is attempting to balance its legal obligations with service to the public and is exploring new qualitative rangeland analysis tools.

There are grazing allotments on nearly half of all National Forest System lands, approximately 90 million acres of land in 34 states, he said. The Forest Service administers approximately 8,800 allotments, with more than 9,000 livestock permits for grazing by cattle, horses, sheep and goats. About 99 percent of all permitted grazing is located in the West, with only about 1 percent occurring in the eastern forests....