Document Type
Comment
Subject Area
WY Law Division
Abstract
The Thunder Basin National Grassland is facing an imminent, and perhaps unique, problem. With the advent of surface strip-mining in the late 1970s, the Forest Service withdrew public lands within the National Grassland from grazing use and transferred the lands to energy production use. Some of that land has been fully mined. These mines are about to complete their reclamation process—where the land is restored to a condition suitable for its prior use—after which it will be released from the mines’ special use permits and returned to grazing. Currently, there are no explicit guidelines in place for the distribution of grazing permits on the reclaimed land. To address current grazing permit administration issues within the National Grasslands, the Forest Service should return to the historic right of grazing preference by strengthening and enumerating the remnants of that right still present in the rules and regulations of the Forest Service and grazing associations. This historic right has survived despite significant difficulty applying it within the courts and varying terminology within Forest Service regulations. Forest Service grazing preference, unlike similarly named grazing preferences on Bureau of Land Management lands, creates a limited, nonpossessory property interest in grazing land which provides the holder with priority for renewal of the grazing permit if, and only if, the Forest Service decides to continue to use the land for grazing. It does not prioritize grazing over other potential land uses but rather provides a priority for the permit over other potential permittees. If applied, grazing preference would require reissuance of the grazing permits to the party that held the grazing preference rights prior to the withdrawal of the land. Not only would applying grazing preference address the imminent issues within the Thunder Basin National Grasslands, but it would bring a number of ancillary benefits, such as economic stability and effective stewardship.
DOI
10.59643/1942-9916.1510
Rights
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Recommended Citation
Pellatz, Magdalena
(2024)
"Forest Service Grazing Preference,"
Wyoming Law Review: Vol. 24:
No.
2, Article 7.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlr/vol24/iss2/7