OCR Text |
Show BLM grazing fees increased to $2 36per AUM The 1980 fee for grazing livestock on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the U.S. Department of the Interior will be $2.36 per animal unit month (AUM). The new fees will become effective on March 1. This will be the second increase in the grazing fee under provisions of the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978 which mandates the formula to be used in calculation of grazing fees on all public lands administered by the BLM and the western national forests administered ad-ministered by the Forest Service. Under the formula, the fee for 1980 would have been $2.77. The increase over last year is primarily due to an increase in-crease in prices of beef cattle which were substantially greater than the increases in-creases in the prices paid index or cost of production. However, because the act limits the increase in any given year to 25 percent of the fee for the previous year, the basic fee for 1980 will be $2.36, with fees ranging from $2.48 to $2.54 for Bankhead-Jones lands and western Oregon. Under the formula that was used prior to passage of the Public Rangelands Improvement Act, the grazing fee for 1980 would have been $2.54. Receipts from BLM grazing fees for the fiscal year which ended September 30, 1979, amounted to $19,877,143 in the nation. Of this total, $9,907,476 went into the Range Betterment Fund to be used for range improvement work. Western states received $3,626,426 of the fees. In Utah, grazing fees amounted to $1,424,810, of which the state received $178,073. An AUM is the equivalent of one cow grazing for one month. |