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

Wednesday, July 27, 2005
WildEarth Guardians wins Lawsuit to Obtain Data on BLM Grazing Permits used as Collateral for Bank Loans -10th Circuit Court of

WildEarth Guardians claims the lienholder policy has made banks a silent player in the subsidized destruction of western public lands, and is calling on the BLM to cancel the policy.
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

SANTA FE, NM – WildEarth Guardians won a key victory in its efforts to document the influence of the banking industry in perpetuating the network of subsidies propping up the livestock industry on Western public lands. Despite a federal district court ruling giving WildEarth Guardians the right to obtain documents known as “lienholder agreements” held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency wanted to charge a prohibitive $88,000 to collect and copy the documents. On July 22, 2005, the Tenth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals reversed the lower court decision and granted WildEarth Guardians a fee waiver for their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the documents.

A little known Bureau of Land Management (BLM) policy allows public land ranchers to use federal grazing permits as collateral when seeking loans from banks via these “lienholder agreements.” In 2002, WildEarth Guardians obtained information about a similar process in the Forest Service known as an “escrow waiver.” The escrow waiver information showed that banks have made $450 million in loans to private livestock permittees using Forest Service grazing allotments as collateral. WildEarth Guardians expects that the figure will be similar or even higher for loans using BLM grazing allotments as collateral.

“The lienholder policy undermines the legal principle that has time and again confirmed that grazing permits are privileges and not rights,” said Billy Stern, Grazing Reform Program Coordinator for WildEarth Guardians. “A principle that the Bush administration seems to want to turn in its head, with the new BLM regulations – backed only by doctored science that ignores their effects on wildlife and the environment – that aim to ‘improving BLM’s working relationships with ranchers’ by making it harder to remove livestock from the publicly-owned lands managed by the BLM.”

WildEarth Guardians claims the lienholder policy has made banks a silent player in the subsidized destruction of western public lands, and is calling on the BLM to cancel the policy. A case in point is a lawsuit filed by a the State Bank of Southern Utah challenging proposed reductions in livestock grazing on federal allotments. The brief states that reductions in permitted grazing would reduce the value of the grazing permit, and that these “reductions in value will jeopardize the collateral for the loans. Thus, [we] will stand at risk for significant losses on these ranching loans.”

WildEarth Guardians contends that the lienholder policy promotes further commercialization of public lands. The entire purpose of the lienholder agreement policy, WildEarth Guardians argues, is to provide financial security for banks and ranchers – a security that is based on ignoring the environmental impacts of continuing to permit too many cattle on the land.

The BLM initially refused to provide the documents, claiming the information fell under Exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act, which exempts an agency from providing “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” However, the district “court concluded that the BLM failed to demonstrate that release of the redacted lienholder agreements sought by WildEarth Guardians would constitute a ‘clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’”

The agency then agued that WildEarth Guardians did not deserve a fee waiver as the documents would not significantly contribute to the public’s understanding of the operations and activities of the BLM. The lower court agreed, but the 10th Circuit disagreed, noting in its decision that: “The use of public funds to facilitate the collateralization of grazing permits on public land is certainly important to the public’s understanding of the BLM. An understanding of how the BLM makes policy decisions, including the influence of any outside groups on this process, is also important to the public’s understanding of the BLM.”

“By its very nature, the influence private groups may have over the BLM’s land management policy is not likely to be out in the open and to require WildEarth Guardians to provide more concrete factual support for its assertions would be setting the bar too high” states the decision. It continues: “The requested records are likely to increase the public’s understanding by revealing the monetary scope of the collateralization, identifying the specific financial lending institutions involved, and associating the collateralized grazing permits with particular land areas.”

WildEarth Guardians represent more than 1500 residents of the Southwest who believe public lands should be managed primarily for the protection of fish and wildlife.