OCR Text |
Show 1999 Federal Grazing Fee Announced The grazing fee for western public pub-lic lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service will be $1.35 per animal unit month (AUM) in 1999, which is the same amount charged in 1998. The formula used for calculating calcu-lating the fee, established by Congress Con-gress in the 1978 Public Ran-gelands Ran-gelands Improvement Act, has continued con-tinued under a presidential Executive Execu-tive Order issued in 1986. ' An animal unit month is the amount of forage needed to sustain one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month. Under the 1986 presidential Executive Execu-tive Order, the grazing fee cannot fall below $ 1.35 per AUM. The annually adjusted grazing fee, which takes effect March 1, is computed by using a 1966 base value of $1.23 per AUM for livestock live-stock grazing on public lands in Western States. The figure is then adjusted according to three factors -current private grazing land lease rates, beef cattle prices, and the cost of livestock production. Based on the formula, the 1999 fee remains at the same level as 1998 because there was a small decline in beef cattle prices and a small increase in both private land lease rates and livestock production costs. The $ 1.35 per AUM grazing fee applies to lands in the West administered by the BLM and to national forests and National Grasslands Grass-lands administered by the Forest Service. The BLM, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages 264 million acres of Federal Fed-eral land, most of it in 12 Western States, including Alaska, for a vari: ety of public uses and values, including in-cluding grazing, outdoor recreation, watershed protection, wildlife habitat habi-tat conservation, and mining. The Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, manages 191 million acres of Federal Fed-eral lands in 44 states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The Forest Service manages these lands for multiple uses, including grazing. |