The Oregon Natural Resources Council, with legal help
from the National Wildlife Federation, has thrown 500,000 acres of
public grazing land in south-central Oregon into legal limbo.
The Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals
overturned a decision by the Bureau of Land Management transferring
grazing permits to the new owners of the MC Ranch, near Lakeview,
Ore. The ONRC had asked the BLM’s Lakeview office to go through a
public process before transferring the grazing permits to the MC
Beaty Butte Grazing Association. The BLM refused, but now must do
so, potentially opening to public review endangered species,
wetlands and riparian issues.
In 1991 and 1992,
The Nature Conservancy set off a controversy in Oregon when it
attempted to buy the huge spread from George Gillett, a junk-bond
financier in Vail, Colo., who had come on hard
times.
Lakeview-area ranchers reacted strongly,
calling for a congressional investigation of the conservancy and
labeling it a radical environmental group, even though the
conservancy said it would continue to graze the land and would pay
property taxes.
In addition to attacking the
conservancy, a group of ranchers joined to make a successful bid
for the ranch, apparently ending environmentalists’ involvement in
the property. The successful appeal by ONRC reopens
environmentalists’ opportunity to influence management of the
500,000 acres of public land associated with the MC Ranch.
The MC Ranch is the subject of Owning It All, by
writer Bill Kittredge. The book describes how his family
industrialized what was once a natural area.
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Ed Marston
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline BLM reversed on grazing permit transfer.
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