The Western United States is distinguished by its vast public lands—hundreds of millions of acres of forests, deserts, and grasslands that, in theory, belong to all Americans. Some areas are slated for conservation. Others allow commercial operations ranging from ski resorts to oil fields, which (also in theory) benefit the public while minimizing damage to the land.
Among the biggest is livestock: About 240 million acres of federal public land—an area about two-and-a-half times the size of California—are available to ranchers for cattle and sheep grazing at a bargain monthly rate. Who ultimately benefits from this arrangement and what does it cost us?
To tackle that question, investigative reporter Jimmy Tobias, representing Climate Desk partner High Country News, teamed up with ProPublica’s Mark Olalde. Their joint three-part investigation, which I co-edited, is based on 14 months of reporting and more than 100 public records requests. It reveals how generous ranching subsidies flow disproportionately to the very wealthy—including families with names like Murdoch and Rockefeller. Tobias and Olalde also document the erosion of environmental oversight by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, and document cozy relationships between ranchers and politicians that reward rule-breaking.
Grazing on public lands can have public benefits, such as helping independent ranchers stay afloat so they don’t have to sell off their private, often ecologically valuable, holdings to developers. But as our reporting shows, the existing system has left public lands open to exploitation and resulted in, as one critic put it, “a tyranny of the minority.”
Read our “Free Range” investigation to learn how things got this way—and how they can be done better.
—Michelle Nijhuis
