Arizona Land Department Pans
Ecos’ Non-Grazing Lease Bid

TUCSON, Ariz. — The Arizona Land Department has rejected an environmental activist group’s bid to win two state trust lands grazing leases for non-grazing use.

The ruling, based on a recommendation from an administrative law judge, is among the latest developments involving a legal challenge and legislative action over livestock grazing on state trust lands.

Arizona is one of several western states in which environmental activist groups are attempting to interfere with decades-old leased grazing rights by targeting crucial parcels and outbidding ranchers. They justify the tactic by claiming that their goal is to maximize revenues for education and to help "abused" land "recover".

State land departments, including that of Arizona, have generally resisted the ploy, citing laws that do not permit "fallow use" except through more expensive commercial leasing.

The Arizona officials have also argued, along with the targeted ranchers, that changing the system would threaten rural Arizona's economic fabric, in particular where state lands, federal holdings and private property are interspersed. They contend that predatory competitive bidding would drive many operations out of business, creating a domino effect on local communities.

That, of course, is the stated goal of many activist groups, which have vowed to drive all residents out of rural areas of the West and recreate a so-called "buffalo commons." For obvious reasons, groups that engage in the bidding battle, by and large, are careful to insulate themselves from their more forthright comrades.

The Arizona department's ruling prompted one such group, the New Mexico-based Forest Guardians, to characterize the administrative appeals process as "a bit of a kangaroo court" and to promise still another appeal.

Bob Beatson, director of the Tucson-based Arizona League of Conservation Voters, said cattle grazing on public lands will come under increasing scrutiny as discussion heats up over a controversial urban sprawl initiative and Gov. Jane Hull's proposal for dealing with unplanned growth.

Cattle ranchers and environmental activists have some mutual concerns, such as tracts of rural land being developed in fragmentary fashion, he said. As a result, some people in both their camps are talking these days, Beatson added, citing a February conference held in Tempe.

"I honestly don't think it's at the point where we're going to have traditional opponents coming together and kissing and making up," he said. "It's going to take a long time, a lot of dialogue and some long, hard decisions."

That is an understatement, given the activists’ vow to destroy the ranching industry and their record of relentlessly pursuing that goal. Any meaningful move toward alliance by ranchers would require a massive leap of faith, something akin to Isreali parents shipping their children off to a PLO day-care center.

Meanwhile, there have been other developments:

— The Land Department is appealing a Superior Court judge's ruling that found its practices inadequate for earning maximum revenue from long-term grazing permits that benefit public education.

— Legislation sponsored by pro-rancher legislators has passed the House, aimed at addressing some of the issues that Maricopa County Superior Judge B. Michael Dann raised.

Dann gave the state until September to enact new measures allowing for competitive bidding on leases, criticized the lack of mandatory advertising in newspapers and ordered it to collect money from grazing subleases.

A rancher-backed plan now in the Senate would keep intact many of the preferences current lease holders get from the state Land Department. It would allow them to match the highest bid for their grazing leases and would require leases to remain with them if bids are equal.

The proposed legislation also carries advertising provisions, surcharges, and makes a stab at competitive bidding.

— Another measure, introduced by anti-grazing lawmakers, went nowhere.

— The Forest Guardians also submitted applications to bid on different grazing leases along the Little Colorado River near Springerville.

The group's executive director, John Horning, said last month's ruling by administrative law judge Brian Brendan Tully was expected.

The "proposed non-grazing use falls outside the use permitted under a state grazing lease," Tully wrote in his March 9 decision, which was classified as a recommendation to the department.