Senator Wyden is cosponsoring legislation that would give blank checks and get-out-of-jail-free cards to all BLM grazing permittees and lessees.

The largest organism on Earth is one quaking aspen clone with more than forty-seven thousand stems (trees). This organism is being cow-bombed and otherwise abused. The cow-bombing, if not stopped, might well eventually result in the demise of the organism. As goes this singularly large quaking aspen clone, so may go the rest of the quakies in the American West.

Congress authorized the establishment of Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) in Marin County, California. At the time, the acute threat was sprawling subdivisions, while the chronic threat to public recreation, benefit, and inspiration was industrial dairies and the grazing of beef and dairy cattle. It still is.

It costs more to feed a domestic house cat than to graze domestic livestock on federal public lands. This has generally been the case since the early 1900s, when the federal government first required ranchers to pay a fee for grazing their livestock on millions of acres of federal land, primarily in western states.

While federal public land grazing permittees don’t have a property right associated with such grazing, they do have a property interest. Federal grazing permits have monetary value in that they are associated with particular ranches (“base properties”). The IRS taxes capital gains in the value of permits attached to ranch properties when they are sold.