Ranch-Level Economic Impacts of Altering Grazing Policies on Federal Land to Protect the Greater Sage-Grouse

The greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a candidate species for listing as an endangered species. Proactive policies and conservation measures that have been proposed to protect the species would potentially alter grazing policies on federal lands to include reductions in allowed grazing levels and adjustments in seasonal grazing use of federal permits, particularly during spring and fall months. Profit-maximizing models developed for Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming were used to estimate economic value of public land forage to ranches dependent on public lands for seasonal grazing capacity. Optimal (profit maximizing) adjustments to reductions in allowed grazing uses of BLM permits were to substitute alternative sources of forage and to reduce herd sizes. As would be expected, the less substitute forages that were available and the higher the dependency on public land grazing in the current situation, the higher the estimated economic impact of changing BLM grazing capacities and seasonal forage uses.   Cash flow restrictions could not be met if all grazing on the BLM permit were eliminated. The highly-dependent public land ranches considered in the analysis would then be forced to reduce herd sizes to a level that would no longer be economically viable.