In the West, which is twice the size of New Mexico, the federal government is changing its regulations governing grazing on public lands to increase the number of cattle, sheep, and other cattle grazing on those same 155 million acres.
Common lands grazing is overseen by a nearly century-old system that greatly subsidizes some of the wealthiest Americans while doing little to tackle its harms to the environment, ProPublica and High Country News found last year.
The new regulations being developed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, the second reform since 1995, would rather increase the practice, despite rangeland management experts claiming overgrazing has degraded public lands.
The proposed regulations would even reverse the company’s decision to permit grazing on federal public lands. The BLM’s proposed revisions may strictly restrict who has a say and when they can object, eliminating countless steps where the government has been able to observe and comment on decisions to issue or renew permits.
One BLM staff who works on rangeland management said,” They’re obviously trying to reduce presence of anyone other than ranchers.”
The BLM did not respond to inquiries about the proposed rules, which were made public in May. After a period of public opinion, the company will return to it for further analysis in mid-July.
In a June news release announcing the activity, the agency said it “reflects the Trump administration’s priority to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens, promote creative working lands and enhance local economies”.
ProPublica and High Country News spoke with a number of BLM employees to assess the potential effects of the proposed rules. Some people requested anonymity because they are still employed by the agency, such as the BLM staffer who works on rangeland management. The employees agreed that the updated regulations offer several concrete benefits, including a requirement that the agency study the ecological impacts of all uses of public lands — from timber harvesting and recreation to mining and oil drilling. The livestock industry is the only area where such reviews are permitted under the current regulations, which have exposed tens of millions of acres of damage as a result of overgrazing.
The regulations would also give the BLM more room to maneuver when it comes to addressing low-level grazing regulations informally, preventing potentially unnecessary fights between ranchers and regulators, and remove potentially conflicting provisions from the code that may not be in line with recent court decisions and laws. They also give the agency and ranchers more room to make quick decisions based on the needs of their respective ecosystems.
Tim Canterbury, president of the Public Lands Council, a ranching trade group, in a news release called the update” a massive step forward”.
He claimed that the” cattle free by ’93” movement of the early 1990s, which opposed ranching and aimed to rid public lands of livestock, contributed to the current regulations. The resulting regulations” all but assured ranchers did not have the flexibility to make the most of the industry’s recent advances in science and management,” Canterbury said.
Other groups working on rangeland management say the regulations go too far in the opposite direction, tipping the scales toward ranchers. They cite proposals that would permit ranchers to continue doing business if they were to challenge agency decisions restricting grazing, putting a strain on Native American tribes, and requiring highly subsidized grazing fees. According to ProPublica and High Country News, the federal government charged ranchers a$ 284 million price increase for the use of public lands in 2024.
” We can expect considerably more places where cows and sheep are going to be and more damage”, said Josh Osher, public policy director of the Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group. ” I believe that wildlife is having significant effects.”
” Return to the Reagan era”
Both the domestic and international sectors had an impact on the regulatory rewrite.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Public Lands Council, two main trade groups, publicly celebrated their meetings with the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture departments in the spring. A memorandum of understanding, which allowed the trade groups to provide guidance to the departments, as well as a” Grazing Action Plan” that involved updating regulations, was one of their agenda items.
The organizations did not respond to comments on the website. ( The Western Landowners Alliance, which represents conservation-minded ranchers and landowners, said it’s still evaluating the regulations. )
Native American tribes and conservation organizations, in turn, claimed the administration had given them no opportunity to comment on the proposed regulations before they were released.
They also object to the procedure because Karen Budd-Falen, a senior official in the Interior Department and a long-time grazing advocate whose family is in the ranching industry, is involved. She served in the first Trump administration and was barred from discussing grazing policy due to potential conflicts of interest. However, she was given an ethics waiver that allowed her to work on grazing policy after she left the organization.
With Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Budd-Falen and Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis had a discussion about public lands management in December. During that event, Budd-Falen called grazing regulations the issue that “probably was the closest to my heart” and gave a rare view into the effort to update them.
She referred to President Bill Clinton’s Interior Secretary from 1993 to 2001 as “you want to know what put the public ranchland out of business.” You will see completely new regulations that don’t just fix a few of the Babbitt things by the first of the year. We went back to the Ronald Reagan years and are putting back in those regs”.
” I am so excited about these rules,” she said.
Native American tribes that manage bison herds contend that Budd-Falen’s efforts to aid ranchers could harm their operations. Several rancher and stock grower associations in Montana, which at one time were represented by Budd-Falen, have railed against a conservation group called American Prairie that uses permits to graze bison herds to revitalize local ecosystems. The ranchers are concerned that the bison could infect their cattle with disease and that this will cost them subsidized leases.
The Trump administration has sided with the ranchers in the conflict by changing grazing regulations to mandate that public lands livestock operations be “production-oriented,” potentially removing permits for herds used to revitalize ecosystems. Tribes fear they too could lose permits for the bison herds they manage to preserve cultural practices or restore the land.
OJ Semans Sr., a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the executive director of the Coalition of Large Tribes, which represents more than 15 tribes, said,” We’re really concerned about this.” ” I’m just kind of perplexed by how poorly it was written.”
More public land is grazing on less public land, resulting in more public land.
Ranchers have long argued that conservationists are quick to sue to stop them from putting their herds on public lands, which has threatened their businesses in court. The BLM’s updates would reduce green groups ‘ ability to challenge decisions.
The organization proposes changing the definition of “interested public,” which refers to those who have a say in rangeland management. Under the new proposal, the public would have to demonstrate a” cognizable” interest in the grazing in question. The agency did not respond to a request to define its use of the word. However, a former BLM higher-up claimed that that would likely raise the bar for those who receive prior notice of agency decisions and their ability to voice their opinions. Environmentalists assume that this means that only those with a business interest could have an impact on agency decision-making.
The new regulations would also remove a mandate that the BLM include the public in” consultation, cooperation and coordination”, the agency’s process of gathering feedback when preparing to take actions such as authorizing grazing. According to staff, the update would significantly narrow down who must be involved.
The agency suggested modifications to the regulations that would permit the keeping of animals on the land.
Mark Squillace, a law professor focused on natural resources at the University of Colorado Law School, noted that if a rancher appeals an unfavorable ruling, it is automatically paused, meaning the rancher can continue the very practices that had been found to be harmful. Squillace argued that” that effectively invites everyone to file an appeal to prevent the decision.” That is a disaster, they say.
The new regulations also elevate cows ‘ status as firefighters, making it easier to place herds on public lands under the justification that they eat vegetation that could become fuel for wildfires.
In the Biden administration, Nada Culver, deputy director of the BLM, claimed that some regulations would make it harder for agency staff to instruct ranchers to remove animals from the land, preventing them from addressing overgrazing. Under the new regulations, she said, renewing permits to continue grazing would be even simpler.
” The most text in this regulatory proposal is devoted to explaining why the public no longer gets to participate in pretty much every step of the process”, Culver said.
Additionally, the Trump administration has given priority to restocking unused areas because they may not have water to drink, need to wait for wildfire recovery, or because the agency is attempting to eradicate invasive species. Within months of President Donald Trump’s White House resumption, political appointees gave staff the instructions to compile lists of every vacant plot that might be used for raising more livestock.
” By the end of next year”, Budd-Falen said in her discussion with Lummis, “every single vacant allotment will be filled by a rancher”.
The first significant revision to public land grazing regulations in a generation appears to have ended public involvement, according to ProPublica.
