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Outspoken anti-Bears Ears National Monument advocates Sandy and Gail Johnson have lived on public land inside the monument without paying rent since the late 1970s, according to an investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune. The Johnsons run cattle on 261,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land inside Bears Ears and live in a "cow camp" on public land full time.
The couple contends that their grazing allotment is too far from the nearest town to commute and thus they need to live on public land. The BLM requires public land ranchers to own or lease private land, known as a “base property,” inside or near their permitted allotments. The Johnsons’ base property is 277 private acres about 9 miles east of their Fry Canyon home, but it lacks water and is not accessible year round.
The BLM does allow ranchers to set up "cow camps" on public land to take care of their herd during parts of the year when they must move their cattle to graze different parts of their allotment. But Jonathan Ratner with the Western Watersheds Project says the Johnson's permanent year-round home on public land exceeds the scope of what qualifies as a "cow camp" and should never have been allowed to be built by the BLM.
“This long-standing situation shows the BLM has been ignoring federal laws, its own binding regulations and agency policy,” BLM retiree Dennis Willis told the Tribune. “Meanwhile, Johnson is living on, farming on, occupying public lands within a national monument, tax free, rent free, while objecting to anyone using the term ‘welfare rancher.’”
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The 18-million-acre Navajo Nation, where I live, extends across three states in the Southwest and is the largest reservation in the United States. It is roughly the size of West Virginia. But in the 2019 fiscal year, according to my calculations, West Virginia received more than 10 times as much in funding from all sources for wildlife management, on a per-acre basis, as the Navajo Nation did—over $2 per acre, compared to just 20 cents.”
