Lawmakers Block Increase in Grazing Fees : Appropriations: Western senators succeed in eliminating measure from Interior Department spending bill for the third consecutive year.

House and Senate negotiators hammering out a $12-billion Interior Department appropriations bill dropped an amendment Wednesday that would have sharply increased permit fees for ranchers whose livestock graze on 200 million acres of publicly owned land in 16 Western states.

The withdrawal of the amendment marked the third consecutive year that Western senators, backed by the Bush Administration and the National Cattlemen’s Assn., have succeeded in blocking such a proposal when it reached a conference committee.

Under a House measure adopted in July, cattlemen would have been required to pay a monthly rate of $5.36 by 1996 for every 1 1/2 cows that graze on land belonging to the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. The ranchers pay a rate of $1.92 per month for the privilege.

Supporters of the new pricing formula maintain that the present arrangement amounts to a huge federal subsidy for corporate and millionaire ranchers that costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

But opponents of the amendment sponsored by Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.) countered that its passage would drive 90% of the 18,000 permit holders out of business.

To get the amendment dropped, Senate negotiators, caught between ranchers and Western mining interests, had to accept House demands for new federal mining fees.

The provision would set an annual $100 holding fee on miners’ claims, even though Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had argued that such a measure would be a burden for miners in his state.

As they did last year, however, House and Senate negotiators dropped a more ambitious plan for a one-year moratorium on land sales under the 1872 Mining Act. The law allows public land to be sold for $5 an acre, even if it contains a vast wealth in minerals.

Negotiators also abandoned a plan by senators from mining states to make individuals pay market rates for the surface value of federal land.

Western senators admitted they devised the surface value plan to fend off more comprehensive mining reform bills, which would bar land sales and set an 8% royalty on minerals.

“The surface value of that land is totally irrelevant, it is inconsequential. (Federal mining law) is the biggest scam going on in America today,” said Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), an advocate of mining reform.

A House version of a mining reform bill, written by Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), is due to be taken up on the House floor before Congress adjourns. A Senate measure, first introduced by Bumpers in 1989, is still in committee.

On the grazing fees, Synar promised to continue his fight for a new formula.

“The decision to jettison grazing fees from the conference report is unfair and makes bad economic sense,” he said. “It’s outrageous that the American taxpayer is forced to subsidize millionaires like Laurence Rockefeller and huge corporations like Metropolitan Life and Getty (Oil Co.).”

A report by the National Wildlife Federation earlier this week said that the 20 largest grazing permit holders use 20 million acres. They include billion-dollar corporations such as Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. and Sierra Pacific Resources. They also include wealthy individuals such as J.R. Simplot of Grand View, Ida., who makes the Forbes magazine list of the wealthiest Americans.

The Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management opposed the House measure.

“The (current) formula works,” said Dan Talbot, a former ranch manager who is deputy assistant secretary of the interior for lands and minerals. When times are good, the fee goes up, and it has gone up 44% over the last six years. . . . But it has been a contentious issue for too many years.”

One chief criticism of the existing arrangement is that low fees lead to overuse of rangelands and widespread damage.

Accordingly, a BLM task force is studying an incentive system that would provide more favorable grazing fees to permit holders who carry out conservation measures.

Efforts to use the Interior appropriations bill to increase grazing fees flopped in the last two years because the measure became a bargaining chip in the conference to resolve differences between House and Senate versions of the bill.