While inflation has jacked up the prices of most goods and services, it hasn’t disrupted the price Western ranchers pay to graze cattle or other animals on federal lands.
The Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service announced at the end of January that the two agencies would maintain a grazing fee on public lands at the same minimum amount first set in 1986 during the Reagan administration: $1.35 per animal unit month, or AUM (the amount of forage needed by an animal grazing for one month).
Critics of the federal grazing programs, such as environmental group Western Watersheds Project, say that the price for letting livestock feed on public lands should be much higher.