A passerby would figure the compound and home occupy private land. But the site, dubbed a “cow camp,” actually is public land, which the BLM has allowed to be used as a permanent residence rent-free for decades.
For 45 years, a San Juan County family has lived in a farm compound on public lands in Fry Canyon, now inside Bears Ears, where they hold BLM grazing permits.
“This long-standing situation shows the BLM has been ignoring federal laws, its own binding regulations and agency policy,” said BLM retiree Dennis Willis, who lives in Price and remains active in conservation causes. “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.’”
To critics like Ratner and Willis, however, the Johnson home is illustrative of what they and other critics see as a pattern of the BLM failing to hold livestock permit holders accountable to rules designed to protect rangeland health and the public interest. On his way out of office in 2016, President Barack Obama used his power under the Antiquities Act to designate 1.3 million acres, including nearly all of the Johnsons’ grazing allotment, as Bears Ears National Monument.the Johnsons have appeared in national and local media, claiming the monument designation would impinge on their ability to use the land and usher in unwanted visitors who would wreck the landscape.
The Johnsons in 1978 acquired the Fry Canyon camp and White Canyon grazing allotment on 261,000 acres of public land in and near Fry Canyon, spanning about 17% of the monument’s current footprint and spilling into Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Sandy and Gail Johnson's ranch home, pictured May 16, 2022, occupies public land in Bears Ears National Monument, where their families have run cattle for more than a century. The Bureau of Land Management has allowed them to live on this site, which serves as a headquarters for their 261,000-acre ranch, in Fry Canyon without rent for 45 years.
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