ADVISORY BOARDS FOR NATIONAL FOREST RANGE LANDS MONDAY, APRIL 29, 1940 UNITED STATES SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY, Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a. m. in the committee room of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 324 Senate Office Building, Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach presiding. Senator SCHWELLENBACH. We have for consideration this morning S. 3532, introduced by Senator Johnson of Colorado, pertaining to the management and administration of national-forest range lands. The Secretary of Agriculture has made a report on the bill, and the bill and the report will be placed in the record at this point. (The bill and the report follow :) [S. 3532, 76th Cong., 3d sess.] A BILL Pertaining to the management and administration of national-forest range lands Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in order to insure a collective expression of the views and recommendations of national-forest range users concerning the management and administration of national-forest range lands there shall be duly elected advisory boards when a majority of the permittees of a subdivision of a national forest, or an entire national forest, or a group of national forests, petition the Forest Service for such boards: Provided, That existing local elected advisory boards shall be recognized for the unit or area they represent. Each such advisory board shall meet at least once annually at a time to be fixed by the board and at such other time as its members may be called by the chairman of the board, or the Forest Service. Each such board shall consist of not less than three nor more than twelve members, exclusive of a wildlife representative, who may be appointed to the board by the State game commission to advise on wildlife problems. SEC. 2. Such advisory board shall be duly elected under rules approved by the Secretary and, when so elected, shall be recognized by him as representing the permittees of a district from which elected to advise and recommend on (a) modification of permits and preferences, (b) establishment or modification of individual or community allotments, (c) changes in management plan features affecting grazing seasons, capacities, boundary changes, grazing systems, range improvements, and other matters relating to range and livestock management: Provided, That all these matters dealing with general grazing policy of the unit or area represented shall be considered by the board at meetings as provided in section 1, any other matters shall be referred to it if not adjusted to the complete satisfaction of the affected permittee or permittees: Provided further, That advice and recommendations concerning changes in the Secretary's grazing regulations shall be requested by the Secretary not less than thirty days prior to the promulgation or change of such regulations. In case the Secretary or his authorized representative decides to overrule, disregard, or modify the recommendations or advice of any advisory board, he or his authorized representative shall, when requested by the board, state the reasons for his decision in writing and mail to the respective board members concerned. 1 SEC. 3. In order to insure a reasonable degree of stability for existing, soundly established livestock operations, no fully commensurate permittee, complying with the rules and regulations of the Secretary, shall be denied a full renewal of permit unless the Secretary finds such action necessary in the interest of permanent public welfare for the proper correlation of grazing with other uses or for the protection of range or other resources of the national forests. Hon. ELLISON D. SMITH, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, Chairman, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, United States Senate. DEAR SENATOR SMITH: This is in reply to your letter of April 9 requesting a report on S. 3532, a bill pertaining to the management and administration of national-forest range lands. S. 3532 deals with two features of national-forest range administration. Sections 1 and 2 relate to advisory boards: sections 3 to stabilizaion of grazing permits. I should like to discuss them separately. Sections 1 and 2 would give specific legislative recognition to a cooperative procedure which has been in effect on the national forests for 35 years, established under the board basic legislative authortiy for the administration of the national forests. Under regulations promulgated immediately after the national forests were placed under the Department of Agriculture in 1905, more than 700 livestock associations composed of forest range users have been established, with their advisory boards. These have furnished the means for joint consideration of mutual interests and problems by forest officers and range users, out of which have been developed mutual confidence and the whole fabric of current grazing policies, rules, and regulations. I know of no better example anywhere of the development and application of the principles and practices of public administration right at the grass roots. Without doing what they could not and should not attempt to dosurrender administrative authority to nongovernmental agencies-the Forest officers have brought the users into range administration in a most fruitful way. Adequate legislative authority for this exists in the law of June 4, 1897, which authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to make all necessary rules and regulations to govern the occupancy and use of the national forests. The principle of broad basic authority, devoid of administrative details, has worked well on the national forests and no advantage is seen in repeating the authority in more detailed form. Nevertheless, if expressed in appropriate language, stripped of unnecessary detail, the Department will not expressly object to specific advisory board legislation. However, should your committee decide to recommend such legislation, it would be preferable from our standpoint to have it drawn in more general language, as follows: In order to insure a collective expression of the views and recommendations of national-forest range users concerning the management and administration of national-forest range lands, the Secretary shall provide by regulation for (a) the election and recognition of advisory boards representing a subdivision of a national forest, an entire national forest, or a group of national forests; and (b) the establishment of the rules under which the boards shall function. Section 3 of the bill deals with quite another matter. The intent of the section is to require the Secretary of Agriculture to continue existing grazing permits in perpetuity except when he finds that contrary action is "necessary in the interest of permanent public welfare" in order to correlate grazing properly with other uses of the national forests or to protect the range or other nationalforest resources. Thus the hands of the Secretary of Agriculture would be forever tied so that he could not make any reductions whatever in the permits of the larger users in order to allow increases in the permits of small users, many of whom cannot make a decent living on present numbers, or to admit any small new applicants, no matter how great their needs. In other words, this is a "bigman" bill as far as section 3 is concerned. To go back a little. When the national forests were established, grazing privileges were granted first to those who had been using the lands for grazing before they were placed under administration, but the transients were eliminated in favor of the home owners. Next were admitted those who lived |