BURNS — Oregon’s Hammond Ranches will be vying with at least three other applicants for access to federal grazing allotments that it lost in a court ruling last year.

The company submitted one of four applications to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to use the 26,000 public acres, where the Hammond family has traditionally grazed cattle near its home base in Diamond.

However, Hammond Ranches may still reactivate an administrative appeal against the BLM by May 12 that would suspend the competition for the grazing allotments, at least until the legal challenge is resolved.

Steven Hammond, the company’s co-owner, said he hasn’t yet decided whether to continue that administrative process.

The BLM said it’s not making information publicly available about who has applied for grazing access to the four allotments.

Steven Hammond and his father, Dwight, had been convicted of arson and imprisoned for mandatory five-year terms but were released in 2018 after President Donald Trump fully pardoned both ranchers.

The grazing permit that had been taken away from the Hammonds after their arson convictions was restored by the BLM in early 2019, but that decision was challenged by environmentalists and overturned by a federal judge in December.

Last month, the agency announced that it’d be accepting applications for access to the four grazing allotments because this would bring about the “most expeditious resolution” to the matter.

The Oregon Cattlemen’s Association would have preferred if nobody else competed for the allotments and Jerome Rosa, its executive director, said he was personally surprised that three other applications had been turned in.

“I felt like there was quite a bit of community support and industry support for the Hammonds,” he said.

Without knowing who the applicants are, it’s possible that some intend to use the acreage for environmental or recreational purposes rather than commercial ranching, Rosa said.

Jeff Maupin, former president of the Harney Stock Growers Association, said he’s inclined to think the other applicants are ranchers who want to increase the value of their operations.

More acreage means that a ranch can graze additional cattle, thereby raising the amount of collateral it can borrow against, Maupin said.

“I guess money does weird things to people,” he said. “You can expand your herd, that means you’re building equity.”

For the ranching community that depends on access to federal rangelands, however, competition for the Hammonds’ allotments will set a bad precedent and undermine the industry’s cohesiveness, he said.

“If they start pitting ranchers against each other, competing for those allotments, that’s going to be terrible,” Maupin said. “It’s not going to be good for anybody. Our communities will suffer.”

Aside from weakening the social fabric, the BLM’s decision may create an awkward logistical situation, since the Hammonds will still own the water rights and rangeland improvements associated with the allotments, he said.

“That’s a perplexing question to me,” Maupin said.

The legal outlook could also get complicated, since the BLM is currently challenging the ruling that effectively revoked the grazing permit for Hammond Ranches.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could eventually rule that Hammond Ranches should have kept the permit, but that decision could be issued after the BLM has already awarded access to the allotments to someone else.

Brian Gregg, an attorney who tracks grazing with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, said he’s unaware of any legal precedents that would provide clear guidance in such a conundrum.

That’s especially true since the BLM’s view of its own authority is at odds with the Taylor Grazing Act, which governs public allotments, and decades of case law associated with that statute, Gregg said.

“It’s quite the mess and the BLM doesn’t really know what its grazing regulations are anymore,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it creates more injustice for the Hammonds.”