Friends of Idaho Watersheds Project
On Tuesday September 28, Idaho Watersheds Project outbid Idaho
mega-sheep rancher Brad Little for the right to a ten year lease on 777 acres
on Idaho school endowment lands near Boise, Idaho. This lease and the
two Simplot leases mentioned below were among the 26 thrown out by the
Idaho Supreme Court in two unanimous decisions in April 1999. The lease,
in two parcels (80 acres and 697 acres), includes almost two miles of
Cottonwood Creek within two miles of the city limits of the Idaho state
capitol. Rancher Little's family owns over 50,000 acres of private
property in southern Idaho and holds grazing leases to more than 200,000
acres of federal land. Little is also a current board member of High
Country News (HCN), a biweekly which focuses on western public land and
related issues which is published in Paonia, Colorado. HCN often
supports sustaining public land ranching without regard to the public
cost of doing so. Little opened the bidding for $100. and the bidding
ended with the winning bid by IWP for $1,500. Little declined to state
if he would appeal the auction to the Idaho Land Board within the 20 day
appeal period. In all previous auctions in which IWP has been the high
bidder, the losing rancher has appealed the auction results. In all
those cases the Land Board has awarded the lease to the rancher and not
IWP.
On Wednesday, September 29, Idaho Watersheds Project was outbid in two
auctions by Simplot Livestock Co. President, Tom Basabe. Simplot
Livestock is a small part of the 3.8 billion dollar business empire of
potato king, J.R. Simplot who recently celebrated his 90th birthday. The
leases of 640 acres and 160 acres included over two miles of tributary
streams of the Bruneau River, Sheep Creek and Marys Creek. IWP was
outbid for the Sheep Creek lease after several raises in the bidding by
a bid of $2,000. to IWP's final bid of $1.950. Simplot won the Marys
Creek lease with a bid of $1,500. to IWP's final bid of $1,400. The
latter lease is unusual in that Simplot livestock cattle do not graze
the lease which is located in an allotment permitted to another
centimillionaire rancher, Pete Jackson of Tuscarora, Nevada. Basabe did
not provide an explanation as to why Simplot would bid $2000. for a
lease his company's cows do not graze !
These three auctions do provide an indication that ranchers are now
realizing that they must bid for conflicted grazing leases or risk
losing them permanently. The auctions also reinforce IWP's long term
contention that public lands ranchers will pay more for forage than they
now are obliged to pay. Simplot will now be paying approximately $10.00
per AUM for the school land grazing leases or 7.5 times the fee charged
on adjacent federal land.