The results of more than a century of grazing on public land are
testimony to the failure of land-use socialism. By all measures,
private grazing on federal lands has been a costly venture. The
environmental condition of public ranges deteriorated in the
early 1900s because of overgrazing, and improvement since then
has been slow and expensive. Taxpayers have paid for federally
supervised and subsidized grazing. Ranchers, the intended
beneficiaries, have gained little except debt, insecurity, and
mountains of regulations. Environmental quality has withered on
the political vine of congressional appropriations and multiple-
use management. Range reform is the centerpiece of Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s environmental agenda, yet his
Rangeland Reform ‘94 is a bitter disappointment. It ignores the
institutional impediments that have made overgrazing and land
abuse official programs of the federal government, and it leaves
unchanged the federal policies that discourage rancher
stewardship and pay stockmen to