Large Grazing Permits

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the top 500 grazing permits issued by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. GAO noted that: (1) it could not provide some of the permittees' addresses and phone numbers due to time constraints and unavailable information; (2) the information on the permits may not correspond to the actual livestock operators; (3) some operators hold more that one permit and some permits are issued to associations that represent many operators; and (4) some operators who do not hold one of the top permits may hold several smaller permits which raise their aggregate grazing level higher than that of an operator who holds one of the top 500 permits.