Yes, that Edward Abbey and yes, he did hold a Bureau of Land Management grazing permit.

In the fall of 1979, I moved to Price, Utah, taking the job of Assistant Area Manager for BLM’s Price River Resource Area. One of my duties was supervising the range management program on 1.8 million acres of public land in Carbon and Emery counties, and an early task was examining case files of the 87 ranchers holding grazing permits on 113 grazing allotments in the area. Permittee files were arranged alphabetically by name, and the first one in the top drawer was Edward Abbey. I immediately asked the range conservationist, Michele Abbey (no relation), if the file was for the Edward Abbey. She assured me it was and I took the file back to my desk for perusal. Continue reading Cancelling Edward Abbey’s Grazing Permit →