Federal Land Red Tap Often Become Detrimental to Public Land Management

Federal Land Red Tap Often Become Detrimental to Public Land Management

Western rancher David Cook who uses a federal grazing permit to remain economically viable with his ranch — testified yesterday in front of the U.S. House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He called on Congress to remove layers of red tape that have become detrimental to the management and health of public lands. Cook says

Cook: "What I think needs to be done is a lot of these rules and regulations need to be rolled back. There needs to be guidance given by Congress to agencies about what they can or cannot due. What happens is when the act is passed, all of a sudden the agencies are left unattended and then they write their own rules and regulations for those agencies which are a lot of times in the opposite direction of what the congressional intent was. We have a saying out in the West, 'Grazing prevents blazing.' That is just one of the best things that we can say. Land must be managed and it must be managed by people that are actually on the land — not Washington D.C. and bureaucrats. We know what is best for the land because we living off of it. So if you go in and you are grazing that land appropriately, then what is happening is you are keeping the fire dangers down, you are using those renewable natural resources and you are generating income for public schools, and for businesses of the county and the state. When you lock it up, and you don't use it all what is going to happen is over time if you don't manage that land that Mother Nature is going to come in and manage it for you — nine times out of ten that is called catastrophic wildfire."

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