There Are Many Types of Public Land Ranches

One of the myths used to defend livestock grazing on public lands is that it’s predominated by modest family ranches. But the truth isn’t that simple.

Tribal Public Land Ranches

For example, in Arizona there are 22 Native American tribes and at least six of them hold a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or Forest Service grazing permit. As shown in the table below, they hold permits for a dozen total grazing allotments that are combined 389,420 acres, or about 608.5 sq. mi. of public land.

Federal grazing regulations include an onerous “use it or lose it” requirement wherein a grazing permit can be revoked if the permittee doesn’t graze enough livestock, so the tribes have to graze their allotments. Earlier this year, however, the Trump administration proposed new BLM regulations that would prohibit tribes from grazing native bison by adding a requirement that only “production oriented” livestock will be permitted on BLM allotments. The proposal explained that, “there is no basis for a different treatment of ‘indigenous’ animals,” and that they were, “seeking to head off suggestions that grazing permits may be appropriate for other purposes, including preservation or conservation.”

It’s sadly ironic that Native Americans are being told how to manage public lands that used to belong to them.

Note: The Navajo Nation also owns the biggest ranch in Arizona, the Big Boquillas state land ranch, also called the Diamond A Ranch. The ranch is managed by Cholla Livestock LCC.

Mining Company Public Land Ranches

Arizona mining companies also own several public land ranches. As shown below, they hold permits for 17 grazing allotments that are a combined 161,536 acres, or 252 sq. mi. of public land. The allotments are located near existing mines, and also proposed new mines. The five allotments permitted to Copper Word Inc. are in the area of their proposed Rosemont copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains. The three allotments permitted to Resolution Copper Mining LLC are near their proposed massive copper mine near Superior. And the Harshaw grazing allotment, permitted to South32 Hermosa Inc., is near their proposed manganese and zinc mine near Patagonia.

Mining companies are typically capital-rich and have deep pockets, so it seems unlikely that they bought these ranches and acquired these grazing permits because they thought they’d make a significant amount of money ranching. They obviously wanted to create buffers and have some control over the surrounding public lands to try and make it easier to expand their mines.

Like all permittees, mining companies have to graze the allotments to keep the permits. Sometimes they create subsidiary companies to manage their ranches, like the Integrity Land & Cattle LLC owned by Resolution Copper. In the meantime, these ranching operations are paying the below-market federal grazing fee of just $1.69 per head per month. That’s offset a bit by the fact that Arizona mining companies haven’t applied for any of the multiple government assistance programs available to ranchers.

Resolution Copper, however, significantly benefited from a temporary state program called the Arizona Post-Wildfire Infrastructure Assistance Program (APWIAP). It was created in 2021 by the Legislature as part of a state wildfire emergency response. They allocated $10 million to help rebuild livestock fences & watering sites on ranches that had been recently damaged by wildfires. Most of the APWIAP grants went to Tonto National Forest ranches affected by the 180,757-acre 2021 Telegraph Fire. The money was intended to supplement the $2.325 million in federal Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) funds that were approved for the same purpose.

As shown below, Resolution Copper directly benefited from two APWIAP grants that totaled $978,540 – one for their JI Ranch and the other for their Victory Cross Ranch. Indirectly, they also benefited from four other APWIAP grants that helped two ranches they acquired after those grants were approved. These six APWIAP grants totaled $2,169,515 – more than 21% of the $10 million APWIAP appropriation.

Large Public Land Ranches

Long-held family ranches with public land grazing permits are becoming increasingly rare in Arizona, as the decades-long drought in the arid Southwest, widely considered to be a permanent aridification, is continually making more ranches unprofitable. Many public ranchers have struggled to survive financially, despite the millions of dollars of drought relief payments provided by the USDA’s Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP) and its supplemental Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP).

One result of the situation has been that wealthy people are buying up ranches. For instance, Hal J. Earnhardt III, of the state’s Earnhardt Auto Centers car dealership empire, has been buying up ranches on the Tonto National Forest and Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests for the last several years. As shown below, Earnhardt Ranches LLC holds permits for nine Forest Service grazing allotments that are a combined 436,577 acres, or 682 sq. mi. of public land.

His Tonto National Forest ranches alone include 345,807 acres of public land. The Tonto National Forest encompasses 2,873,200 acres, so Earnhardt Ranches LLC is permitted to graze about 12% of the forest.

The Diamond Rim allotment was created in 2018 by combining the Payson Ranger District’s Cross V, Star Valley, Green Valley & Indian Gardens grazing allotments. The Railroad allotment was created in 2017 by the combination of the 6 Carlisle Complex grazing allotments.

There are also out-of-state millionaires that are acquiring large public land ranches in Arizona. Real estate mogul Stan Kroenke owns a couple of them in the southeastern corner of Cochise County. He also owns large public land ranches elsewhere in the western U.S., as reported by ProPublica in December 2025.

Kroenke’s Arizona ranches are different from Earnhardt’s because they also hold BLM grazing permits, along with a couple of associated state grazing leases. The 10 federal grazing allotments permitted to Geronimo El Coronado Ranches Holdings, LLC and Geronimo Ranch LLC  include 49,598 acres, or 77.5 sq. mi. of public land.

There are, however, many large Arizona public land ranches that have received large amount of government assistance, such as the Francis Creek and Crozier Canyon ranches, owned by Clay & Sandra Overson.

The 16 federal grazing allotments permitted to Francis Creek Ranch LLC and Crozier Canyon LLC  include 467,464 acres, or 730.4 sq. mi. of public land. All of the grazing allotments are BLM allotments, and there are at least three associated state grazing leases.

The tables below show the amounts of government assistance that have benefited these ranches.

* This was shared with neighboring ranches.

The tables below show all of the recent government assistance, including the Heritage Fund public access payments, that have benefited the three Babbitt Ranches.

* This project was shared with Hat grazing allotment on the nearby Kaibab National Forest.
Some of the government assistance listed above for the CO Bar Ranch may have benefited the Espee Ranch.

Facts Matter

The ranches highlighted above were selected for being real world examples of the wide variety of Arizona public land ranches. But they are not unique, and there are plenty of other ranches that could tell revelatory stories.

Public land grazing is a quasi-feudal, byzantine government institution that deserves scrutiny, not slick talking points. But it’s difficult for the public to get past the myths and obtain the facts, and that’s intentional. One of the biggest obstacles has been federal land managers that don’t want to release public information. In fact, for several years the Forest Service’s Southwestern Region required that grazing permittee names be redacted from livestock management documents before they were released in response to Freed of Information Act (FOAI) requests. That didn’t change until a 2024 FOIA appeal response directed that grazing permittee names should not be redacted – only their personal information.

But even after that, there continued to be some agency resistance. For example, annual operating instructions (AOIs) for grazing allotments are the most numerous of Forest Service grazing records. Some Arizona national forests began posting unredacted AOIs to their websites after the 2024 FOIA appeal response. But others revised the format of their AOIs so that they didn’t include permittee names.

The American public is, of course, entitled to know who holds grazing permits for public land, in addition to learning more details about ongoing livestock management. Fortunately, recent FOIA requests submitted to the Forest Service by Western Watersheds Project have resulted in the release of the names of all current Arizona national forest grazing permittees, along with thousands of AOIs, and hundreds of grazing allotment management plans (AMPs). These important public records have been posted to the Arizona Public Land Grazing Document Library. But the Coronado and Tonto national forests still have never posted any of these documents to their websites.

As previously mentioned, the Trump administration has proposed regressive new BLM grazing regulations. And they previously had the BLM and Forest Service sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to promote more livestock grazing on public lands. It included a provision to try and initiate grazing on all vacant grazing allotments.

These are signs of desperation, because they know that if more Americans obtain factual information about pubic land livestock grazing their house of cards will fall to reforms.