Who Gets Our Public Lands?

by ARTHUR H. CARHART

1

POWERFUL beyond its actual numbers, a small clique of Western stockmen is today bent on getting possession or dominant control of millions of acres which belong to the American people. Our public lands fall into different categories, chief of which are our national parks and our national monuments, our national forests, and areas formerly unreserved but now in grazing districts. Such public holdings in the West stretch through eleven states and total nearly 300 million acres — about two and one-half times the size of California. With minor exceptions these wild lands of the West have always been the property of the people. Today they are the object of a land grab at bargain prices.

The lobby intent on this “purchase” has power out of all proportion. Consider these figures: Of the 38 million sheep in the United States less than half are found in the Western states. Ohio has more sheep in it than Idaho, or Arizona, or Nevada, or Washington, or Oregon. And of the total 78 million cattle in the United States only 15 million are in the “public lands” states of the Far West.

In the past, the primary objective of our policy was to transfer the unreserved lands to private ownership. Homestead laws were progressively liberalized: at first, patent could be secured to 160 acres, then to 320 acres, and finally to a whole section of 640 acres. But after these lands had been combed, millions of acres continued in Federal ownership. This was the public domain. Cattlemen and sheepmen grazed their animals on these lands at will. First come were first served, and those that followed grubbed at the leavings. This might be called trespass but Uncle Sam winked at it, and over the years the ranges were progressively beaten down toward worthlessness.

The livestock people themselves, faced with total destruction of what grazing values persisted on these lands, were largely instrumental in securing the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of June 28, 1934, which for the first time brought some administration to the public domain. The U.S. Grazing Service was established to assume management of “grazing districts” as they were formed. Steps were taken to adjust the number of head of livestock permitted on any unit of the lands, in an effort to prevent the destructive overgrazing. Some rehabilitation of the soil and herbage was accomplished.

The system of national forests had been established long before this move to protect the remaining public properties, which are known as the Taylor Grazing lands. The act of March 3, 1891, gave the President power to establish, from the public domain, forest reserves that were “wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not.” On March 30 of that year, President Harrison set aside 1,239,040 acres in Wyoming as the “Yellowstone Timberland Reserve.” Before the end of his term, Harrison had proclaimed the reservation, in all, of some 13 million acres. The primary objectives of our system of national forests were basically defined, and the fundamental policy governing them became a part of the nation’s law.

The specific reasons for establishing the forest reserves, as set forth in this first law, were the protection of watersheds and the perpetuation of timber supply. There was no recognition of grazing of domestic livestock on these reserves. In fact, the removal of herbage that would build up retentive values of soil on critical watershed slopes, the browsing of seedling trees, the packing of the earth by animal hoofs, were all recognized as inimical to the purposes for which the forests were established.

But there was forage on some of these lands. Stream bottoms between high ridges often were grassy stringers between flanking forests. Little open spaces within the bodies of timber grew grass that cows would eat. The shrubby growth, massed wild flowers, and other herbage were relished by sheep. Owners of livestock shoved their flocks and herds on these lands and helped themselves to the “free” range. After the creation of the forest reserves, the operators continued to drive their stock on these public properties, actually in trespass, and little was done to stop them.

On June 4, 1897, Congress passed a law which gave the Secretary of the Interior, then responsible for administration of our forests, the power to “make such rules and regulations and establish such services as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction.” The act did not specify grazing of privately owned domestic stock as a designated forest use, but it opened the way for such use to be permitted under the fundamental law.

Regulations issued by the Secretary of the Interior on June 30, 1897, provided in Section 13 that the “pasturing of livestock on the public lands in forest reservations will not be interfered with, so long as it appears that injury is not being done to forest growth, and the rights of others are not thereby jeopardized.”

From the passage of the 1897 law and the issuance of regulations within its scope, the grazing of privately owned domestic livestock has been a permitted use of these public lands. Grazing is allowed on 83 million of the 135 million acres in Western forests. The U.S. Forest Service is charged with administering “permitted grazing” so that no injury shall result to the watershed or to the timber, and so that the rights of others shall not be put in jeopardy.

2

THE attack on our public lands has been shaping for several years. The stockmen’s clique has stirred up dissension and dissatisfaction among those who use grazing allotments on our public properties. Individuals who favored delivering public lands to private interests have received its support in elections for key offices in certain livestock associations. The chairmen of public lands committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and many members of those committees are allied with this land-grasping group. .

By mid-1946 this cabal believed it was sufficiently entrenched and fortified to start the harvest from the establishment of their men in strategic locations. On August 17, representatives of the National Livestock and National Woolgrowers Associations met in Salt Lake City, Utah, formed a committee of four sheepmen, four cattlemen, and two operators owning both of these classes of livestock, and named it the Joint Live Stock Committee on Public Lands.

During the autumn of that year and into the winter, this committee met and planned; its members attended general livestock association meetings and discussed proposals. Little information of what brewed came before the public until February 2, 1947. On that date J. Elmer Brock of Kaycee, Wyoming, vice-chairman of the Joint Committee, spilled the beans. An article by Mr. Brock, appearing in the Sunday edition of the Denver Post, had the air of telling the people that this group of stockmen was making certain demands and expected them to be complied with forthwith. The demands were clearly stated.

1. Individuals currently holding permits to run stock on Taylor Grazing allotments would be allowed to purchase those lands.

2. Only those stockmen would enjoy the monopoly privilege.

3. Purchase price would be based entirely on grazing values on the land. No other values would be considered. Investigation showed that the price would range from some 9 cents per acre to a top of $2.80.

4. The privileged were to have fifteen years to make up their minds as to whether or not to make the purchases.

5. A down payment of only 10 per cent of total value would be required at the time of contracting the purchase. It would cost from one cent to little more than a quarter of a dollar to cinch control on the lands. And there would be a period of thirty years over which the balance due the government could be paid, with 1½ per cent interest on any unpaid balance.

With enlightening directness, Mr. Brock then stated that after this “first step” had been accomplished, the plan was to proceed toward transferring “other grazing lands in the West to private owners — the men who now utilize these properties.” He modestly revealed that the ultimate objective of this group was to secure possession of all the present public lands in the West on which grazing might be found, when he said: “The total grazing lands include some tracts now in the national forests and even some tracts which never should have been included in national parks but have been placed there.”

After public indignation flamed in the wake of this statement, various denials were made that there had been any intention to get possession of our properties except for some insignificant tracts of Taylor Grazing areas. These evasive denials scarcely stand up in the light of other assertions on record.

There is no retreat from intentions of invading national parks and monuments as well as getting control in national forests. A recent confirmation of that fact is found in the resolution adopted by the National Woolgrowers Association at Salt Lake City, January 28, 1948, which declares: —

“Embraced in many of our national parks and monuments are huge areas upon which the annual growth of forage is now being allowed to remain unused. Large portions of these areas are undeveloped for recreational purposes and can be used by livestock without any conflict with their present special privileged use. We, therefore, request national parks and monuments to be opened for reasonable livestock grazing.” By the stockman’s definition, any plant growth, even in a park, that does not go into cow or sheep bellies is “unused,” and any other use than grazing of private livestock apparently is a “special privileged use.”

To grant such demands as this resolution puts forward would be to abandon basic principles on which our national park system is founded. If commercialization of this sort were allowed, there could be no valid adherence to a policy of excluding timber cutting, impoundings of water for irrigation, power plants at Yellowstone Falls, in Yosemite, and in the Grand Canyon, and the commercial exploitation of all other resources in our parks.

But this stockmen’s clique believes that if they ask they should receive. They have not yet demanded that their stock shall graze across the graves of Gettysburg or on the Mall below the Washington Monument — but give them time. They’ll see the green grass there — see it in terms of pounds of wool, mutton, or beef— and covet it.

3

THE Brock article bared the Joint Committee’s plans. Opposition to this gigantic and preposterous transfer of our public estate to private holdings began with a few people in the West, with a few Western organizations, and with a few lone voices lifted in articles published in national magazines.

These were sparks of anger that lit a conflagration. A grocers’ association in Rhode Island adopted resolutions opposing the scheme. A CIO union in Pittsburgh went on record demanding that the proposal be killed. The Sierra Club in California protested the grab. Garden clubs, women’s clubs, conservation clubs, the D.A.R. — people — damned the scheme and insisted, as owners, on their right to be heard.

Most significant of all, within a few weeks twentysix local livestock associations in the one state of Colorado repudiated this extremist leadership, its platform and plans. These and many other livestock organizations condemned the proposals by resolutions. Many individual ranchers who are in thorough accord with the conservation practices and policies now applying on our public lands protested the Joint Committee’s schemes outspokenly.

This was clear evidence that the Joint Committee, which has repeatedly claimed it represented the livestock industry, does no such thing. It does not represent the industry as a whole, nor in the Western states. It does not represent even that small segment of the industry which utilizes forage on public lands under the present permit system.

The cataract of damnation poured down on this land-grab scheme. It reached such volume that the bills which were being prepared were not even introduced in the first session of the Eightieth Congress. The issue had become so “hot” no member of Congress would touch it.

The proponents of the scheme were dazed. For years they had been entrenched in Western legislatures and even in Congress, and never had met such opposition. But if they were dazed they were undaunted. Within a short time they started their next move. One of their intimates is the Honorable Frank A. Barrett of Lusk, Wyoming, his state’s lone Congressman. A stockman, he is chairman of the Public Lands Subcommittee of the Public Lands Committee of the House. Over in the Senate the Honorable E. V. Robertson of Cody, Wyoming, is chairman of the Senate Public Lands Committee. Senator Robertson owns many sheep, thousands of which graze on the Shoshone National Forest under Federal permits. Senator Robertson had introduced a drastic measure in the Seventy-eighth Congress, S. 1945, which would have delivered all types of public lands to the Westerners. It never passed. Senator Robertson had muffed the play. It was Mr. Barrett’s turn to carry the ball. So Mr. Barrett heard a “public demand” and agreed to hold hearings throughout the West before his subcommittee.

The April, 1947, issue of the American Cattle Producer, official organ of the National Livestock Association, and sounding board for those now in control of offices in that body, printed an urgent appeal to stockmen to write letters to national headquarters. They were to express dissatisfaction with grazing practices on our public lands, particularly in national forests. The appeal was reprinted in many other journals of the state associations. Under the general heading, in a helpful and guiding spirit, were listed seven specific suggestions as to what writers should gripe about and how to do a good job of griping.

By July of last year, it was possible to have sifted out the most virulent of the communications received, and by their incidence to spot communities where it would be possible to gather in a considerable number of disgruntled range users and hear their “testimony.”

The scheduled hearings began in late August at Glasgow, Montana, went on to Billings, thence to Rawlins, Wyoming, in the heart of the sheep country, on to Grand Junction, Colorado, which has been a point of ferment among forest range users, and then on into other Western states from Washington to Arizona. At least four members of that subcommittee hold permits to graze their stock on Federal lands, and have a financial interest in matters involved.

The purpose for which these hearings were rigged was plainly evident. They were designed to throw fear into the U.S. Forest Service men present, and would provide a bulky volume of “testimony ” from the selected stockmen who appeared. This would be presented to the Congress as the voice of the West.

The transparent manipulation of the meetings, the bias displayed by the chairman and evident in other members of the committee, the very odor of these meetings, merely accentuated the conflict and focused more public attention on the landgrab gang. Public anger and opposition mounted.

4

CURRFNTLY leaders of the land-acquisitive segment are working through various associations to raise a great “war chest” — that is what they have dubbed the fund within their own circles — which will finance a publicity campaign. In addition to the Joint Live Stock Committee on Public Lands, there now is another “joint committee” — a publicity committee. It has met, organized, and appointed a livestock man by the name of Sinclair, of Sheridan, Wyoming, as “Public Relations Director.” Money for the fund will be raised by a device that resembles a “head tax” on livestock owned by members of the associations. No figure has been set but leaders speak of raising millions to “inform” the public.

In a report of one meeting, statements indicate concern on the part of proponents of this moneyraising plan over whether they will be able to collect from sheep and cattle owners in Iowa or Ohio or other Eastern states. The war-chesters are afraid that Midwesterners who own fifty or a hundred head of sheep, or a carload or two of cattle, may sense the undercover purpose of this fund and refuse to donate.

In fact, if the livestock industry were fully aware how this radical, grasping group, which is such a small part of the whole, is leading all to disrepute and condemnation, the industry might make certain it has leadership that really represents it. At the moment, the “war chest” is set up, and the program of “informing the public” is being launched.

This small, selfish clique has triumphantly pointed to a policy adopted two years ago by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which declared that “in order to attain the highest use and fullest conservation of grazing resources of public lands, private ownership should be re-established as the ultimate objective in government land policy.” But a new referendum is being submitted, decidedly modified from the original declaration, which slipped through most chambers because their members voted on it without knowing the issues involved. In the present referendum there is no such sweeping statement to support the land-grabbers as appeared in the first declaration. Undoubtedly leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have studied the matters involved and are forthrightly disentangling the organization from upholding those few who covet our public estate in the West.

The battle roars at other points. A vicious recent aspect is the demand that the U.S. Forest Service be emasculated. The following resolution, adopted at Albuquerque this year by the New Mexico Woolgrowers Association, is merely one statement; there are other pronouncements of similar nature. This particular one reads: —

WHEREAS, the Secretary of Agriculture has failed to accept the major recommendations made by the House of Representatives Public Lands Committee Report relative to management and policy regarding the administration of the National Forests, and WHEREAS, it is evident that the Forest Service is too well entrenched in management of its own affairs and affairs of those using forest lands to accept recommendations from Congress, which might be helpful both to the production of livestock and the general welfare of the nation, Therefore be it

RESOLVED, we petition the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States to so severely cut that part of the Agricultural Department’s appropriations for the Forest Service as to cause the removal of all officials connected therewith who defy the will and dictates of Congress. (My italics.)

The Public Lands Committee referred to is the discredited “Barrett Committee.” At the conclusion of its series of “hearings,” it submitted a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture. This was not a report; merely a letter containing recommendations. The Secretary reasonably accepted five of the six recommendations. The sixth was unacceptable. It demanded that the Forest Service should make no reductions in stock permitted on the range for a fixed period, regardless of the urgency for doing so to protect other values.

This subcommittee letter was not submitted to Congress. So far as is known, it never was submitted for consideration by the House Public Lands Committee as a whole. It wasn’t a “dictate” of Congress. Nor did anyone defy Congress. The fact is that the U.S. Forest Service is merely attempting to manage the properties in its care as law provides, so that the optimum values may be realized for all the people. That conflicts with the demands of certain stockmen. So those stockmen would like to cut down the Forest Service.

Some two years ago the stockman clique used this appropriation-cutting method on the U.S. Grazing Service. It was merged with a new Bureau of Lands Management. Personnel of this service was so drastically cut that field staffs wero reduced to a mere token organization. Stockmen themselves paid the salaries, in whole or in part, of many field men. That is a very unhealthy situation, in one respect at least. A man who gets his living from stockmen users of the public lands which he is supposed to administer would hardly stand up to denying demands of those from whom he received his income. In all fairness, it should be said that many of the stockmen who put up the money to keep these men on the job did so for the good of the landuse program and did not avail themselves of the leverage they possessed.

At the present time, as a part of the Land Management Bureau, the administration of our Taylor Grazing lands is making some recovery. It needs the tonic of adequate funds and the encouragement of public support and understanding to do the task for which it is responsible.

5

IN the attack on the Forest Service an entire bureau is the target. In the case of the New Mexico resolution, the official lives of all forest officers who will not bow to the will of the clique are demanded. But all over the West our public servants, striving to manage our properties in the interest of all citizens, have felt the threat of attack. In the administration of their districts to secure highest values and returns to the whole community, forest rangers have made reductions in stockman allotments where too many animals have been grazing for the continued wellbeing of the forage, the forest, the watershed, and other resources. As they have carried out their obligations as our managers, they have had to face such situations as the following.

On February 28,1947, Ranger Raymond Bennett, of the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado, was meeting with the Conejos River Stock Association. As reductions in the number of head to be grazed on the forest came into the discussion, a stockman named Fred Haynie demanded the floor.

Mr. Haynie declared he would fight reductions with all resources at his command. He appealed to his fellow stockmen to back him in this. He said he would carry the matter to the courts, and would resort to the use of a gun if “necessary.”

At Salida, Colorado, Ranger M. R. Hickle, a veteran in the service, deemed it his responsibility to make some reductions in the numbers of livestock on certain range allotments in the San Isabel National Forest. A resolution was adopted quickly by the Poncha Springs Livestock and Range Improvement Association. It said that Ranger Hickle’s administration had been damaging to the welfare of permittees and to the social and financial structures of the community. To allow Hickle to remain in his capacity as ranger would be a serious detriment to the Forest Service and to the inhabitants and permittees of that section. It called him a dictator. It accused him of claiming that in reducing the domestic stock load on the ranges, he was guarding the interests of wildlife, irrigation, and domestic water systems — and that, apparently, was reprehensible. It called him a one-track thinker. It demanded Hickle’s removal and carried a threat that if the forest supervisor did not accede to the demands in the resolution, the stockmen would take the case to “State or National officials and boards.”

A civic group, the Lions Club of Salida, forthwith wrote the forest supervisor that it wished “to express confidence in Mr. Hickle. In view of the criticism by the cattle raisers we wish to commend Mr. Hickle upon his fine judgment concerning the use of grazing land.”

In January, 1945, a committee of five Arizona stockmen approached Forest Service officials with demands that Forest Supervisor F. L. Kirby of the Tonto National Forest be transferred outside the state and that Supervisor J. C. Nave of the Prescott National Forest be “retired.” Nave was accused of not keeping his word. This was the sort of accusation that appeared repeatedly in “testimony” of the “Barrett Committee” — that forest officers lacked not only ability but integrity. A year later, the heckling of Nave was continued by a resolution from a local cattle growers’ association that declared he had “been guilty of discrimination — and that it would be to the best interests of the [forest] permittees and the Service if he were removed.”

A request by superior officers of the U.S. Forest Service for a bill of particulars in this case brought no reply. It is characteristic of these attacks that the officials are criticized in extreme, general terms, but no specific charges are made.

On September 9, 1946, one of thirty Arizona stockmen telephoned J. A. Lillevig, then supervisor of the Tonto National Forest, and requested immediate attendance at a conclave this group was holding in a hotel. When Lillevig faced the thirty stockmen, they demanded the removal of the assistant supervisor, R. I. Stewart, and said they had a petition all signed embodying their demands. A subsequent comment by the supervisor on this encounter stated that this was “the type of a meeting where you immediately drew yourself into the comer so that when they do cut your throat it will be from the front.”

These are merely examples of the direct-threat action which has occurred at many places in the West. This is administration by intimidation.

The essential situation in the controversy over the destiny of the public lands we own in the West lies in the progression of uses of those lands. The aggressive and acquisitive type of stockman looks back on the era in which he was king of the range. His grazing then was the dominant use. He had only the competition of his own kind and the homesteader. Repeatedly this stockman clique has asserted its conviction that the use of the public lands for the grazing of its small part of the country’s livestock is the paramount use.

But now the public lands are recognized as areas containing other values and uses. These are: watershed values above all others; then timber production, recreation for millions — hunting and fishing open to all citizens — and the many private enterprises that rest on the multiple use of these lands.

It is unthinkable that the public interest should be scrapped and that these lands should be delivered, on demand, to satisfy the desires and wishes of a small segment of one class of public land users.