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Show Bennett Urges Fee Hike Be Recinded WASHINGTON Sen. Wallace Wal-lace F. Bonntt, R-Utah, today to-day urged the Senate Interior Inter-ior Subcommittee on Public Pub-lic lands to initiate action to rescind a new shedule of grazing feos on Forest Service Ser-vice and Bureau of Land Management lands. The Utahn said the fees will increase over the. next . ten years by an average 250 per cent on Forest Service land and 375 per cent on BLM land. "They can only speed up the rate at which ranchers leave the industry, as ranchers already are faced Willi agricultural prices failing to keep up with infaltionary trends. Sen. Bennett, in testimony before the Subcommittee, continued, "The increased grazing fees would result in an annual net income loss to Utah ranchers of $835,000, according to a Utah State University study. In addition, addi-tion, since in essence grazing graz-ing permits are capital assets, as-sets, the Utah ranchers' capital losses would be about $33 million. "Added to all this is the estimated $1.7 million in annual an-nual income lost in the sec- ondary sectors of the economy, econ-omy, and the possible negative neg-ative effect on the county and state tax base for the . areas in question." The Utah lawmaker said that Utah's ranchers graze about 280,000 cattle and 1, 416,000 sheep on Forest Service Ser-vice and BLM lands. "However, if these grazing graz-ing fees increases are allowed al-lowed to stand unmodified, this can only result in a decline de-cline in the ranching industry indus-try and an increased migration migra-tion from our rural communities communi-ties to our already overburdened over-burdened cities," Sen. Bennett Ben-nett said. "These fee schedules, which were another of the Johnson administration's last minute legacies to the American Am-erican people, should be rescinded re-scinded pending the results of a public land fee study now underway by the Public Land Law Review Commission," Commis-sion," he said. The commissions study results are to be made available avail-able by June 30, 1970 . |