Claims for Losses of Grazing Rights

The General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, by letter with enclosures, requests GAO's decision concerning several questions involving claims for compensation for losses of grazing rights and privileges in the Commission's National Reactor Testing Station, in southeastern Idaho. Specifically, the General Manager asked (1) whether the law requires that a claimant have a permit or license which has been or will be canceled in order for him to be entitled to compensation; (2) whether a claimant is entitled to compensation in cases where a "no-trespassing" area is established within the general area where he has been entitled to graze, even though the Bureau of Land Management has not reduced the number of animals which he is entitled to run or the number of months in which he is entitled to run them; (3) whether a claimant is entitled to compensation in cases where a "no-trespassing area is established within the general area where he has been entitled graze and and the Bureau of Land Management implements such action by reducing either the number of animals which the claimant is entitled to run on the remaining licensed land or in the number of months in which he is entitled to run them, or both; (4) what bearing the cancellation of a permit in 1950 has on grazer's rights to compensation; (5)what bearing an application for "non-usage" has on a claimant's rights to compensation; (6) what bearing the statement that "this license is temporary, and ...is also subject to cancellation or adjustment at any time..." has on a claimant's rights to compensation; and (7) whether, if a claimant, through administrative error, is not permitted to graze the full number of animals he is entitled, and, in a subsequent year, the error is rectified and the number of animals stated in the claimant's annual temporary license is increased, but, because of the establishment of a new "no-trespassing" area by the Commission in the interim, such action does not increase the number of animals to the number which the claimant would have otherwise been entitled, the claimant has suffered a "loss" which is compensable.