Current work in wildlife, rivers, public lands, and climate

Friday, June 16, 2006
Ranchers Using Grazing Permits As Collateral

Bank loans to public lands ranchers using their federal grazing permit as collateral force high numbers of cattle despite drought, threatended endangered species, or impaired riparian areas
Contact: Andy Lenderman The New Mexican

A Santa Fe-based environmental group blasted ranchers in New Mexico and 10 other Western states Thursday, specifically those who use their public-lands grazing permits as collateral for loans.

WildEarth Guardians issued a report Thursday that says “Western public lands ranchers” have received 1,700 current loans totaling $1.1 billion. Those same ranchers used federal Bureau of Land Management grazing permits as collateral for the loans, the group reported.

“We see this as one more obstacle to much-needed public-lands-management reform,” WildEarth Guardians conservation director Nicole Rosmarino said. “And there’s a real problem on BLM lands across the West in that there is a conflict between livestock grazing and a slew of endangered species.”

A spokeswoman for the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association said the report doesn’t tell the full story, and grazing permits are a small part of collateral for loans.

“These folks are trying to destabilize the grazing industry by attacking our lenders,” association director Caren Cowan said.

The report was spurred by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by WildEarth Guardians against the BLM in U.S. District Court, which sought information related to loans and grazing permits.

The suit was filed in 2002 and settled this year, according to WildEarth Guardians. The government fought “tooth and nail” to prevent the release of the information, the group said.

These loans, Rosmarino said, prevent livestock from being reduced in times of drought, allow grazing that harms Western streams and is harmful to certain threatened species like the bull trout. Grazing also harms the lesser prairie chicken by depleting its nesting cover, the group reported.

Cowan said the permits are “a small picture of what may be included in the collateral for those loans. There’s other private property and equipment and livestock that quite possibly and quite probably are part of the collateral,” she said.

The loans in question are usually operating loans, Cowan said. Ranchers need a lot of capital to run a livestock operation, she said.

“And people borrow money just like any other legitimate business and pay it back at the end of the year when they sell their calves,” Cowan said. There are 1,500 members of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, which is a private-trade group.

Copyright 2006 New Mexican – Reprinted with permission