Stan Kroenke doesn’t need federal help to make a business flourish. He is worth an estimated $20 billion, a fortune that has allowed him to become one of America’s largest property owners and afforded him stakes in storied sports franchises, including the Denver Nuggets and England’s Arsenal soccer club.
Yet Kroenke, whose wife is an heiress to the Walmart fortune, benefits from one of the federal government’s bedrock subsidy programs.
As owner of the Winecup Gamble Ranch, which sprawls across grasslands, streams and a mountain range east of Elko, Nevada, Kroenke is entitled to graze his cattle on public lands for less than 15% of the fees he would pay on private land. The public-lands grazing program, formalized in the 1930s to contain the rampant overgrazing that contributed to the Dust Bowl, has grown to serve operations including billionaire hobby ranchers, mining companies, utilities and large corporate outfits, providing benefits unimagined by its founding law.
President Donald Trump’s administration plans to make the program even more generous — pushing to open even more of the 240 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service grazing land to livestock while reducing oversight of the environmental damage. This, members of the administration contend, will further its goal of using public lands to fuel the economy and eliminate the national debt.
“That’s the balance sheet of America,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said of federal lands at his confirmation hearing in January, “and, if we were a company, they would look at us and say, ‘Wow, you are really restricting your balance sheet.’”
ProPublica and High Country News set out to investigate the transformation of the grazing system into a massive subsidy program. In the late 1970s, Congress raised the fees to graze on public lands to reflect open market prices at the time. But the fees have barely budged in decades. The government still charges ranchers $1.35 per animal unit month, a 93% discount, on average, on the price of grazing on private lands. (An animal unit month, or AUM, represents the typical amount of forage a cow and her calf eat in a month.)
Our analysis found that in 2024 alone, the federal government poured at least $2.5 billion into subsidy programs that public-lands ranchers can access, not including the steep discount on forage. Subsidies benefiting public-lands ranchers include disaster assistance after droughts and floods, cheap crop insurance, funding for fences and watering holes, and compensation for animals lost to predators.
Benefits flow largely to a select few like Kroenke. Roughly two-thirds of all the livestock grazing on BLM acreage is controlled by just 10% of ranchers, our analysis showed. On Forest Service land, the top 10% of permittees control more than 50% of grazing. This concentration of control has been the status quo for decades. In 1999, the San Jose Mercury News undertook a similar study and found that the largest ranchers controlled the same proportion of grazing within BLM jurisdiction as they do today.
“That’s the balance sheet of America, and, if we were a company, they would look at us and say, ‘Wow, you are really restricting your balance sheet.’”
Meanwhile, the agencies’ oversight of livestock’s environmental impact has declined dramatically in recent years. Lawmakers have allowed an increasing number of grazing permits to be automatically renewed, even when environmental reviews have not been completed or the land has been flagged as being in poor condition.
The Trump administration’s push to further underwrite the livestock industry supports ranchers like Kroenke, whose Winecup Gamble is advertised as covering nearly 1 million acres. More than half of that is federal public land that can support roughly 9,000 head of cattle, according to an advertisement in brokerage listings. Last year, Kroenke paid the government about $50,000 in grazing fees to use the BLM land around the ranch — an 87% discount on the market rate, according to a ProPublica and High Country News analysis of government data. Previous owners enjoyed similar economic benefits. Before Kroenke, the ranch belonged to Paul Fireman, the longtime CEO of Reebok, who used losses from companies affiliated with the ranch as a $22 million tax write-off between 2003 and 2018, internal IRS data shows. And before Fireman, it was owned by others, including Hollywood superstar Jimmy Stewart of It’s a Wonderful Life fame.
The land where Kroenke runs his cattle has been degraded by overgrazing, according to the BLM. Kroenke’s representatives did not return messages seeking comment. Fireman declined to comment.
The Trump administration’s retooling of this system is being worked out behind closed doors. In May, the BLM sent a draft of proposed revisions to federal grazing regulations — what would be the first updates to them since the 1990s — to the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to communications reviewed by ProPublica and High Country News.
In October, the administration released a 13-page “Plan to Fortify the American Beef Industry.” In addition to instructing the BLM and Forest Service to amend grazing regulations, including those that govern how ranchers obtain permits to graze their herds and how environmental damage from their animals is assessed, the plan called for increasing the subsidies available to ranchers for drought and wildfire relief, for livestock killed by predators and for government-backed insurance.
The Forest Service did not respond to requests for comment. The White House referred questions to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which said in a statement, “Livestock grazing is not only a federally and statutorily recognized appropriate land use, but a proven land management tool, one that reduces invasive species and wildfire risk, enhances ecosystem health, and supports rural stewardship.”
In a statement, a BLM spokesperson said that the agency’s mandate includes “sustaining a healthy and economically viable grazing program that benefits rural communities, supports America’s ranching heritage, and promotes responsible stewardship of public lands. The grazing program plays an important role in local economies and land management, providing tools to reduce wildfire risk, manage invasive species, and maintain open landscapes.”
Ranchers say that taxpayers benefit from helping them continue their work, since public-lands grazing can prevent private land from being sold and paved over. Bill Fales and his family run a ranch in western Colorado that has been in his wife’s family for more than a century, and their cattle graze in the nearby White River National Forest. “The wildlife here is dependent on these ranches staying as open ranch land,” he said. As development elsewhere carves up habitat, Fales said, the public and private lands his cattle graze are increasingly shared by elk, bears, mountain lions and other species.
Ranchers and their advocates also point to the livestock industry’s production of meat, leather and wool. And as a pillar of rural economies, ranching preserves a uniquely American way of life.
The major trade groups representing public lands ranchers did not respond to requests for comment.
While the country loses money on public-lands ranching, both ranchers and critics of the system agree on one thing: Without subsidies, many smaller operators would go out of business.
SETTLERS COVERED MUCH OF THE WEST WITH CATTLE beginning in the mid-1800s, spurred by laws and incentives meant to realize the country’s “manifest destiny.” As the nation expanded, settlers, with the backing of the federal government and the military, seized the Indigenous land that would later be called the public domain.
Unchecked grazing followed.
“On the Western slope of Colorado and in nearby States I saw waste, competition, overuse, and abuse of valuable range lands and watersheds eating into the very heart of Western economy,” observed Rep. Edward Taylor, a Colorado Democrat, as Congress was considering how to properly manage grazing in the 1930s. “The livestock industry, through circumstances beyond its control, was headed for self-strangulation.”
In 1934, as Depression Era dust storms darkened the skies over the Great Plains, worsened by overgrazing that denuded grasslands, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act, named for the lawmaker. It divided much of the public domain into parcels, called allotments, and established a permit system to lease them a decade at a time.
Congress modernized laws governing public lands in 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which required federal agencies to balance competing uses, such as grazing, mining, timber, oil drilling and recreation. Two years later, Congress passed a law that brought grazing fees in line with the value of forage on the open market at the time.
Today, ranching interest groups justify their subsidies by arguing that their livestock feed the country. According to Agriculture Department research, ranching on federal lands accounts for $3.3 billion in economic output annually and supports nearly 50,000 jobs.
But grazing on public lands sustains just 2% of the nation’s beef cattle while accounting for a vanishingly small proportion of the country’s agriculture industry.
ProPublica and High Country News’ analysis found that the government disproportionately benefits the largest ranchers, who account for a majority of public-lands grazing.
“The livestock industry, through circumstances beyond its control, was headed for self-strangulation.”
The J.R. Simplot Co. is the largest rancher on BLM land. Founded as a family business in Idaho nearly a century ago, it made a fortune in part by selling potatoes to McDonald’s. The business has since ballooned into a multinational agricultural conglomerate. J.R. Simplot benefits significantly from subsidized forage, paying $2.4 million below market rate to graze nearly 150,000 AUMs on federal lands last year, according to an analysis of BLM and Forest Service data.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Industrywide, the $21 million collected from ranchers by the BLM and Forest Service was about $284 million below market rate for forage last year.
Fales, the Colorado rancher, relies on access to cheaper forage on federal land. To him, it makes sense that grazing there is less expensive. “Private leases are almost always more productive land,” he said. And unlike private leases, public leases typically require ranchers to pay for the maintenance of infrastructure like fences and water tanks beyond what land-management agencies fund.
The full cost to taxpayers, including grazing’s impact on the land, is unknown.
Even before Trump began to aggressively downsize the federal workforce, it was impossible for agencies’ limited staff to monitor the public lands for environmental damage from excessive grazing. The number of BLM rangeland managers fell by 39% from 2019 through 2024, according to the most recent Office of Personnel Management data. By June 2025, after the Trump administration spurred a mass exodus from the federal workforce, the number had shrunk by another 9%, according to internal BLM employment data.
Now, each rangeland manager is responsible for an average of 716 square miles, making it impossible for them to inspect their entire territory every year, BLM employees said.
FOR MANY OF THE COUNTRY’S LARGEST RANCHERS, the benefits of running cattle on public lands extend beyond profits from selling beef.
In June, Air Force Two landed in Butte, Montana, where Vice President JD Vance transferred to a motorcade of black SUVs that shuttled him south to a sprawling cattle operation near Yellowstone National Park. Vance had traveled to this remote ranch to meet with its owner — Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire founder of Fox News.
In 2021, Murdoch purchased the Beaverhead Ranch for $200 million from a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the conglomerate controlled by conservative billionaire Charles Koch. Peggy Rockefeller Dulany, an heir to the Rockefeller fortune, owns a massive ranch nearby. Dulany’s ranch did not respond to a request for comment.
“This is a profound responsibility,” Murdoch told The Wall Street Journal through a spokesperson when he bought the ranch. “We feel privileged to assume ownership of this beautiful land and look forward to continually enhancing both the commercial cattle business and the conservation assets across the ranch.”
Ultrawealthy families like the Murdochs, Kochs and Rockefellers own cattle ranches for a variety of reasons. Some want a taste of cowboy-themed luxury or the status gained from controlling vast and beautiful landscapes.
For some, it’s also good business. Even hobby ranches qualify for big property tax breaks in certain jurisdictions. Business expenses related to ranching can be deducted from federal taxes. And federal agencies assign grazing permits to the owners of nearby private ranches, called “base properties,” inflating the value of those properties and making them stable long-term investments. Real estate agents touted Murdoch’s ranch as encompassing 340,000 acres, but two-thirds of that land is public and leased from the Forest Service and BLM.
As with Kroenke’s operation, taxpayers help underwrite grazing at Murdoch’s ranch.
Beaverhead paid less than $25,000, 95% below market rate, to graze on federal lands last year, according to an analysis of agency data.
At least one of Beaverhead’s BLM allotments in the picturesque Centennial Valley — a several-thousand-acre parcel known as Long Creek AMP — is failing environmental standards as a result of grazing. Matador Ranch and Cattle, which was formed from the aggregation of Beaverhead and a smaller ranch purchased by Murdoch in 2021, declined to comment for this story.
“We feel privileged to assume ownership of this beautiful land and look forward to continually enhancing both the commercial cattle business and the conservation assets across the ranch.”
Public-lands grazing can also help advance unrelated businesses. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves the Las Vegas Valley, is continually searching for new sources of water. Beginning in the 2000s, the utility purchased land hundreds of miles from Las Vegas in order to acquire its groundwater rights. Those properties were associated with public-lands grazing permits, which the utility inherited. Bronson Mack, the water authority’s spokesperson, said in a statement that it continues the grazing operation as part of its “maintenance and management of property assets, ranch assets, and environmental resources in the area.”
Mining companies are among the biggest public-lands ranchers, in part because grazing permits afford them greater control over areas near their mines. Copper-mining companies like Freeport-McMoRan, Hudbay Minerals and Rio Tinto all run large cattle operations in Arizona, for example.
A Hudbay representative sent a statement that said, “Ranching and mining have coexisted in Arizona for generations, and we operate both with the same commitment to land stewardship and care for our neighboring communities.” The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Nevada Gold Mines, which owns 11 ranches surrounding its northern Nevada operations, is the behemoth of the group. A joint venture between the world’s two largest gold-mining companies, the company holds millions of acres of grazing permits.
“We own them for access,” explained Chris Jasmine, the company’s manager of biodiversity and rangelands. “Access to mineral rights, water rights and mitigation credits.”
Many of Nevada Gold Mines’ grazing permits surround its open pits, including the largest gold-mining complex in the world. Access to that land makes it easier for the company to participate in programs that give it credits in exchange for environmental restoration projects. Then, the company can either sell these credits to other companies or use them to offset its environmental impacts and expand its mines.
Jeff Burgess, who tracks grazing subsidies via a website he calls the Arizona Grazing Clearinghouse, said such massive government assistance provides little benefit to taxpayers.
“When does the spigot stop? When do we stop throwing away money?” asked Burgess. “It’s a tyranny of the minority.”
IN CENTRAL NEVADA’S REESE RIVER VALLEY, A RED BRICK farmhouse that once served as the headquarters of the Hess Ranch has been reduced to crumbling chimneys and shattered windows. Despite its dilapidated appearance, this ranch is one of the private base properties that has allowed a little-known company called BTAZ Nevada to assemble a livestock empire that stretches across roughly 4,000 square miles of public lands, according to a Western Watersheds Project analysis of BLM and Forest Service data.
This empire illustrates the livestock industry’s consolidation, the subsidies that prop it up and the environmental harm that often follows.
Based in Fremont, Nebraska, BTAZ belongs to the Barta family, which owns Sav-Rx, an online provider of prescription medication. The contact phone number BTAZ provided to the BLM is a Sav-Rx customer service line. The family patriarch, Jim Barta, was convicted in 2013 on felony charges for conspiracy to commit bribery. (The conviction was overturned after a judge ruled that Barta had been subjected to entrapment. Barta has since died.)
“We own them for access. Access to mineral rights, water rights and mitigation credits.”
The Bartas’ operation, now among the largest beneficiaries of the public-land grazing system, includes permits in Nevada, Oregon and Nebraska. Last year, BTAZ paid the government $86,000, $679,000 less than the market rate, according to agency data.
In the Toiyabe Range of Nevada, where BTAZ’s BLM and Forest Service grazing allotments border each other, cow feces covered the ground around a stock tank fed by mountain streams. A dead raven floated on the water’s surface. The BLM listed allotments in this area as failing land-health standards due to grazing in 2020 and again in 2024.
Higher in the mountains, the evidence of BTAZ’s grazing was even clearer: swaths of ground chewed and trampled bare, discarded plastic piping, cow feces and bones in an unfenced creek. Streams like these were once suitable habitat for native Lahontan cutthroat trout. But activities such as grazing and development have degraded so much habitat that the threatened species now occupies only 12% of its historical range, according to a 2023 survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“This is completely unnecessary,” Paul Ruprecht, Nevada director of the Western Watersheds Project, said as he surveyed the damage. “It’s not supporting the local economy, at least in any major way; it’s not providing significant amounts of food for anyone; it’s being heavily subsidized at every turn by taxpayers; it’s not adding anything to the scenery or the wildlife.”
BTAZ did not respond to requests for comment.
SMALLER RANCHERS HAVE ACCESS TO MOST OF THE SAME subsidies as the wealthiest ranchers, but the money isn’t enough to protect them from harsh economic headwinds.
Roughly 18,000 permittees graze livestock on BLM or Forest Service land. The bottom half accounts for less than 4% of the AUMs on BLM land and less than 10% of those on Forest Service land, an analysis of the agencies’ data found.
The smaller operations lack the economies of scale available to larger corporations, making it difficult for them to survive on agriculture’s thin profit margins. They’re also more vulnerable to shifting conditions on the ground. Climate change has strained their water supplies. And more than 70,000 wild horses and burros now compete with livestock for forage.
Consolidation in the meatpacking industry is further squeezing ranchers. The four largest operations have taken over more than 80% of the market, giving them leverage to lower the prices paid to ranchers.
Burgess argues the federal government should stop supporting ranchers who would otherwise go out of business. “They refuse to face the reality that a lot of people aren’t going to be able to raise cattle profitably, so they’re just throwing money at it,” he said, calling the system “a vestige of the past.”
That could have ripple effects, shuttering businesses in rural towns. It could also force small ranchers to sell their private land — perhaps to developers who would build on the open spaces, perhaps to wealthy owners like Kroenke or BTAZ.
Mike and Danna Camblin run a small cattle operation near the Yampa River in northwest Colorado. Years of drought have forced them to downsize their herd, while each year they must tie up much of their money in their operation until they can sell their animals. Even with beef prices breaking records, they couldn’t turn a profit without subsidized drought insurance and other government support — including the ability to graze cheaply on federal land.
“Most of these BLM leases have been in the family for years and years, and, if you take care of it, the BLM will allow you to continue to stay,” Mike Camblin said. If they lose their federal grazing permits or otherwise can’t make the economics work, the Camblins might have to sell their private land. Camblin has mixed feelings about the influence of government assistance on his industry, saying it “tethers us to those subsidies.”
“That’s where they screwed up, they started subsidizing a lot of these guys clear back in the Dust Bowl,” Camblin said of the biggest ranches. Some larger operators who don’t need government assistance take advantage of the system, he said, speaking favorably of an income-based metric that limits richer producers’ access to certain agricultural subsidies.
Smaller ranchers’ precarious financial situation can lead to environmental harm, as they may run too many livestock for too long on federal land where grazing is cheaper.
The Camblins make environmental stewardship part of their operation — monitoring soil and plant health and rotating their several hundred head of cattle among pastures to let the ground rest — but that adds costs.
“A cow turd will tell you more than anything else,” Camblin remarked as he eyed a fresh one left by his cattle. If it’s flat, that means the cow is getting enough protein from the grass, he said. If it degrades rapidly, that means insects are attracted to the plentiful organic matter. “I spend more time looking down than at the cattle.”
If the Camblins lose their federal grazing permits, they might have to sell their private land.
Technology helps them rotate their herds. Danna Camblin’s smartphone displayed a satellite view of the area that showed purple cow icons confined within red polygons — virtual fences that shock the cattle via collars should they stray. Unlike physical fences, virtual fences don’t get in the way of migrating wildlife, and the Camblins can redraw them in an instant to shift their cattle to less-grazed areas.
Leasing the collars for the system cost nearly $18,000 last year, Mike Camblin said.
Silvia Secchi, a University of Iowa economist who studies agriculture, said federal grazing subsidies need to be reimagined so they benefit the American public instead of enriching the wealthiest ranchers. She suggested potential solutions like subsidizing co-ops that allow smaller ranchers to access economies of scale, capping the size of ranching operations that pay below market rate for forage and ending disaster payments for climate change-fueled droughts that are here to stay.
“We have baseline subsidies that are going up and up and up because we are not telling farmers to change the way you do things to adapt,” Secchi said.
Secchi and the Camblins agree that ending all public support would have repercussions for rural communities and landscapes. Mike Camblin acknowledged it could put his and Danna’s operation at risk.
“You’re going to lose your small rancher,” he said.
For more information about the data and analyses used in this story, visit hcn.org/grazing-data.
Gabriel Sandoval of ProPublica contributed additional research.
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation. Additional financial support provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Aerial support provided by LightHawk.
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This article appeared in the December 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Free Range.”
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