This:
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-n...f/2016/01/malheur_standoff_local_control.html
"If I was a smart rancher, I'd realize I was getting a very good deal from the federal government," said George Wuerthner, an ecologist and board member of the Western Watersheds Project, an advocacy group that focuses on the negative impacts of livestock grazing on public lands.
Yet ranchers say the grazing fee alone doesn't tell the whole story. They say federal lands are often less productive and they face higher costs to maintain water pipelines, fencing and public access – costs that erase the difference in the public and private grazing fees.
"Environmentalists continually hit on us about the fees issue," said Bob Skinner, past president of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association and head of its public lands committee. "It's like comparing apples to boxcars. With public lands, we do everything. The BLM does nothing."
Costs, ranchers say, are usually not the main issue when conflict arises. Some describe a time-consuming and unproductive decision-making process to get even the simplest things done.
Anderson described a four-year ordeal trying to get federal approval to install a fence along a 10-mile stretch of highway so his cows wouldn't wander onto the road and kill someone. It never happened, so he can only use half that range. A similar process with the state took a year, he said.
He says it's a similar process drilling a well, or watching combustible undergrowth build up on range that he's been restricted from using to protect sage grouse habitat, only to watch massive wildfires burn through "more sage grouse habitat than you could re-establish in a lifetime."
Treetop Ranches is the largest leaseholder on state grazing lands, and Anderson says he's happy to pay 10 times more in grazing fees to the State of Oregon for the certainty and efficiency he gets in return.
Stephanie Venell and her husband own the C Bar Ranch in Crane, and have similar frustrations. They've aggressively managed an infestation of Medusa Head weeds on their own property, but can't come to any agreement on how to deal with the problem on their federal allotment other than limiting more and more grazing.
