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Show Multiple use of public lands brings up complex questions Walking through tho national forest on a pleasant fall day you may see a hawk gliding above tho cliffs, a hunter looking for deer, cattle grazing the mountain grasses and someone climbing trails on a motorcycle. All these things represent repre-sent multiple use of federally controlled land and multiple use is a concept used to govern much of the federal land in the West. Concern for the multiple use idea has caused two researchers at Utah State University to initiate a long term study of the concept. A preliminary report on their study appears in the September issue of UTAH SCIENCE. "Basically," says USU economics professor Bruce Godfrey, "we want to see who benefits from the use of public land, who pays for this we and how much they pay. We think decisions on public land are currently made on a purely political basis and we hope to uncover information which will take some of the decision making out of the political arena. ' ' Godfrey and graduate student James Christen-sen Christen-sen are primarily looking at grazing on public land in their five-year study which is supported by the Agricultural Experiment Station. The central question ques-tion will be, "What if all domestic animals were prohibited from grazing public lands?" According to the researchers, re-searchers, this is a possibility possi-bility and they wanted to investigate the impact of such a policy on the economics and the social structure of the region. This one central question ques-tion has turned out to be like a lid on a box of moths. Once the box is opened the moths come fluttering out in ALL DIRECTIONS. For instance, in-stance, there isn't even a simple answer for the one question since different livestock owners use the public land in a variety of different ways. One may graze livestock nine months a year and another just three months. Other problems include the cost and benefits to other public land users such as hikers, snowmo-bilers snowmo-bilers and hunters; a 1977 law which established in lieu payments; and a thing called privileged status. The "who pays" question ques-tion is a big one, according to the researchers. research-ers. Historically, the only ones who paid directly for the use of public land have been people extracting minerals, harvesting timber tim-ber or grazing livestock. Recreational users have not paid except as taxpayers. tax-payers. "You have a situation where the taxpayers in the East and Midwest are subsidizing westerners' use of the public land since 95 percent of all government land is in 11 western states," says Christensen. "Most of these people will never see these public lands." "In lieu" payments started in 1977 with a law that returned tax money to counties based on the number of acres of federally-controlled land in the county. Prior to that the counties were paid on the basis of resources timber or minerals extracted within the county or grazing fees collected. The government decided the money should be distributed based on acreage acre-age instead. The law hurt some counties and benefitted bene-fitted others. Privileged status, which established who would get grazing permits when the federal government first took over control of the land, would also mean trouble for some people if the government were to prohibit grazing on public land. "Many grazing permits have remained in the original family for years but many more have been sold," says Godfrey. "If you wipe out grazing on public land the guy who paid for the grazing permit is going to bleed." "The questions are numerous. You have situations situ-ations in Utah where the county government can't tax 90 percent of the county because it is federally controlled, so to pay for roads and schools and other services the county must sometimes have a large property tax on the remaining 10 percent of the land." Part of the study will try to determine whether the money generated if all federal land were privately private-ly owned would equal the money generated by its present federal status. "This may turn into a county versus the state situation rather than a state versus the federal government," says Godfrey. God-frey. "At any rate we expect to get our noses a little bloody. You can't investigate something of this magnitude and importance impor-tance without it." "Our whole purpose," says Christensen, "is to provide answers to 'what if questions. It begins with what if you eliminate grazing and then looks at a number of related questions. Wre don't expect ex-pect to make any decisions but our research should tell concerned people what things are being traded off under different circumstances." |