Agencies set 2007 grazing fees

Published 4:00 pm Tuesday, February 6, 2007

The federal grazing fee for public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service will be $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM) in 2007, down from $1.56 in 2006.

The newly adjusted fee goes into effect on March 1. It applies to nearly 18,000 grazing permits and leases administered by the BLM and more than 8,000 permits administered by the Forest Service across the Western states, including Oregon.

The formula used for calculating the grazing fee was established by Congress in the 1978 Public Rangelands Improvement Act and continued under a presidential order issued in 1986. The grazing fee cannot fall below $1.35 per AUM, and any increase or decrease cannot exceed 25 percent of the previous year’s level.

An AUM is the amount of forage needed to sustain one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month.

The annually adjusted grazing fee is computed by using a 1966 base value of $1.23 per AUM for livestock grazing on public lands in Western states. The figure is adjusted according to three factors: current private grazing land lease rates, beef cattle prices, and the cost of livestock production. Based on this formula, the 2007 fee declined primarily because of an increase in production prices.

The $1.35 per AUM grazing fee applies to 16 Western states on public lands administered by the BLM and the Forest Service. The Forest Service applies different grazing fees to national grasslands and to lands under its management in the Eastern and Midwestern states and parts of Texas.