For the fifth straight year, ranchers will pay the lowest allowable amount for grazing livestock on federal land in the West.
The Western Watersheds Project and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility recently criticized the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service for keeping the federal grazing fee for this year at what they call a bargain-basement price. But Carlyle Currier, a Molina rancher and president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, said the fee is pretty fairly based on a formula that partly reflects cattle prices, and he thinks the fee could go up in the next few years because those prices are likely to rise.