Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy owes more money to the federal government than what all other ranchers owe collectively in late grazing fees, according to new data obtained from the Bureau of Land Management.
Of the roughly 16,000 ranchers who graze cattle on BLM lands, 458 have late grazing bills totaling $237,000, according to agency data.
Compare that to the more than $1 million Bundy owes Uncle Sam for refusing to pay grazing fees on his Bunkerville, Nev., allotment beginning in 1993 and for trespassing fees he has been accruing since 1998.
It suggests Bundy, whose high-profile standoff with BLM over the roundup of his cattle in early April rekindled a national debate over the federal government's ownership of public lands, is an outlier among his rancher colleagues.
Of those 16,000 public lands ranchers, less than 1 percent have grazing bills that are more than two months past due, BLM said. Environmental groups have long complained that the fee provides a
perverse incentive to graze on marginally productive but sensitive
federal lands and fails to recoup BLM's investment in the grazing
program...more
So what fees do the enviros pay for wilderness, endangered species, etc.? Zero. No cost recovery there. They should apply that "perverse incentive" to themselves.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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