Group Tenure in Administration of Public Lands

Excerpts from the report Introduction: Ownership, management, and use of public grazing lands are current problems. Essentially they are a matter of landlord-tenant relations with Government as the landlord. The resolving of existing problems in the field deals with individual interest and privileges, public interests, and multiple-use considerations. Through resolving conflicts of interests social progress is made. Group-tenure devices are one means to this end. The term "group tenure" is a convenient designation for various forms of cooperative action by which stockmen obtain control of land for operating purposes. The most notable example of group tenure is the cooperative grazing association or district. In the northern Great Plains, State laws make special provision for these organizations. The district or association acquires control of land through purchase, lease, or other means; thereafter it distributes grazing privileges among its members. The study upon which this report is based is restricted to the northern Great Plains, and particularly to the short-grass range country between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, in the five States of Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. It is primarily concerned with the management of public land that is devoted to private use. Public-use lands, such as parks, monuments, national forests, and Indian reservations, are administered for a definite public purpose. Publicly owned land on which group tenure functions, however, derives its chief importance from the private uses to which it is put. All public lands have public values and multiple-use considerations, and no sharp distinction can be maintained between public-use and private-use categories. The public domain, the national forest grazing land, and the submarginal land acquired by Federal purchase present special problems of management. In this report consideration is first given to cooperative grazing associations and districts that function cooperatively with the land-management program of the Soil Conservation Service. Then follows a discussion of advisory boards in Taylor grazing districts and national forests. Finally, examples of other group-tenure devices are presented.