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The federal government is rewriting its rules governing ranching on public lands to increase the number of cattle, sheep and other animals grazing on 155 million acres in the West, an area twice the size of New Mexico.
Grazing on public lands is overseen by a nearly century-old system that heavily subsidizes some of the wealthiest Americans without doing much to address its environmental damage. ProPublica and High Country News found last year.
Although grazing management experts say overgrazing has degraded public lands, new rules being developed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management — the first revision since 1995 — would instead expand the practice.
The proposed rules would also reduce public participation in agency decisions allowing grazing on federal public lands. The BLM’s proposed updates would strictly limit who has a say and when they can object, eliminating many steps where the public has been able to observe and comment on decisions to issue or renew permits.
“They are clearly trying to reduce the involvement of anyone other than the ranchers,” said a BLM employee who works on rangeland management.
The BLM did not respond to questions about the proposed regulations, which were made public in May and, after a public comment period, it will return to the agency in mid-July for further review.
In a June press release announcing the actionthe agency said this “reflects the Trump administration’s priority of reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens, promoting productive land, and strengthening local economies.”
ProPublica and High Country News spoke with several current and former BLM employees to assess the impact of the proposed regulations. Some, like the BLM staffer who works on range management, asked not to be named because they are still employed by the agency. Staff agreed that the updated regulations provide several concrete benefits, including requiring the agency to study the ecological impacts of all uses of public lands – from timber harvesting and recreation to mining and oil development. Current rules limit these examinations to the livestock sector, where they have revealed tens of millions of acres of damage from overgrazing.
The regulations would also allow the BLM to more informally handle minor violations of grazing regulations, thereby avoiding potentially unnecessary conflicts between ranchers and regulators; cleaning up sections of the code that may conflict with recent court rulings and laws; and provide the agency and ranchers more flexibility in how they manage the range, allowing for faster decision-making that meets the needs of a local ecosystem.
Tim Canterbury, president of the Public Lands Council, a livestock trade group, in a press release called the update a “big step forward.”
He said existing regulations grew out of the “livestock-free by 1993” movement of the early 1990s, which was hostile to livestock and aimed at ridding public lands of livestock. “The resulting regulations virtually ensured that breeders did not have the flexibility to take full advantage of the scientific and management advances made by the industry over the past 35 years,” Canterbury said.
Other groups working on grazing management say the regulations go too far in the opposite direction, tipping the scales in favor of ranchers. They highlight proposals allowing ranchers to continue business as usual if they appeal agency decisions limiting grazing, threatening the ability of Native American tribes to graze bison and devoting highly subsidized grazing fees. (ProPublica and High Country News found that in 2024 the federal government charged ranchers $284 million below the market rate for the use of public lands.)
“We can expect a lot more places where cows and sheep will be and more damage,” said Josh Osher, public policy director for the Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group. “I think we’re seeing significant impacts on wildlife.”
“Back to the Ronald Reagan years”
The livestock industry influenced the rewriting of regulations both outside and within the Department of the Interior.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Public Lands Council, two major trade groups, publicly celebrated their meetings with the secretaries of the Ministries of the Interior and Agriculture in the spring. Among the items on the agenda was a memorandum of understanding allow professional groups to provide guidance to departments, particularly on an “Action Plan on Grazing” which involved updating the regulations.
The groups did not respond to requests for comment. (The Western Landowners Alliance, which represents conservation-minded ranchers and landowners, said it is still evaluating the regulations.)
Meanwhile, representatives of Native American tribes and conservation groups told ProPublica and High Country News that the administration offered them no opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed regulations before its release.
They are also challenging the process because of the involvement of Karen Budd-Falen, a senior Interior Department official and longtime grazing advocate whose family is in the livestock business. She served in the first Trump administration and was not authorized to discuss grazing policy due to potential conflicts of interest. But after joining the department, she was granted an ethics waiver allowing her to work on grazing policy.
In December, Budd-Falen participated in a discussion on public land management with Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. During the event, Budd-Falen called grazing regulations the issue “probably close to my heart” and gave a rare glimpse into efforts to update it.
“You want to know what put public ranches out of business – it was Bruce Babbitt’s regulations,” she told Lummis, referring to President Bill Clinton’s Interior secretary from 1993 to 2001. “By the beginning of next year, you’ll see brand new regulations that don’t just fix a few of Babbitt’s problems. We’ve gone back to the Ronald Reagan years and we’re putting these regulations back in place.”
“I’m so excited about these regulations” she said.
Native American tribes that manage bison herds say Budd-Falen’s efforts to help ranchers could hurt their operations. Several Montana breeder and breeder associations, who at one time were represented by Budd-Falenhave spoken out against a conservation group called American Prairie that uses permits to graze herds of bison to revitalize local ecosystems. Ranchers fear it could cost them subsidized leases and that the bison could spread diseases to their livestock.
The Trump administration sided with ranchers in this conflict, first by revoking American Prairie’s permits and then by overhauling grazing regulations. require that livestock operations on public lands be “production oriented,” potentially eliminate permits for herds used to revitalize ecosystems. Tribes also fear losing permits for the bison herds they manage to preserve cultural practices or restore land.
“It really concerns us,” said OJ Semans Sr., a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe and executive director of the Coalition of Large Tribes, which represents more than 15 tribes. “I’m just a little confused about how poorly it’s written.”
Less public input, more grazing on public lands
Ranchers have long complained that conservationists are rushing to sue them to prevent them from putting their herds on public land, thereby embroiling their businesses in litigation. BLM updates would reduce green groups’ ability to challenge decisions.
The agency proposes to modify the definition of the “interested public”, that is to say those who have a say in the management of the courses. Under the new proposal, the public would have to demonstrate a “recognizable” interest in the pasture in question. The agency did not respond to a request to define its use of the word. But a former senior BLM official said it would likely raise the bar for who is informed in advance of the agency’s decisions and for their ability to comment on them. Environmentalists assume this means only those with a commercial interest would be allowed to influence the agency’s decisions.
The new regulations would also remove the BLM’s requirement to include the public in “consultation, cooperation, and coordination,” the agency’s process of gathering feedback when preparing actions such as permitting grazing. The update would significantly reduce the number of people who need to be involved, staff said.
Throughout the settlement, the agency proposed changes that would keep the animals on the land.
Mark Squillace, a natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, noted that if a rancher appeals a If an unfavorable decision is made, it is automatically suspended, which means that the breeder can continue the practices that have proven to be harmful. “This effectively invites everyone to appeal to avoid the decision,” Squillace said. “It’s a disaster.”
New regulations also raise the status of cows as firefighterswhich makes it easier to place herds on public lands under the guise that they eat vegetation that could fuel wildfires.
Nada Culver, deputy director of the BLM under the Biden administration, said some provisions would make it harder for agency staff to tell ranchers to remove animals from the land, hampering their ability to combat overgrazing. And renewing permits to continue grazing would be even easier with the new regulations, she said.
“Most of the text of this regulatory proposal is devoted to explaining why the public can no longer participate in almost every step of the process,” Culver said.
The Trump administration has also prioritized repopulating vacant areas, which may be devoid of cows and sheep because they are far from a water source, need time to recover from a wildfire or the agency is trying to eradicate invasive species. A few months after President Donald Trump returned to the White House, policymakers asked staff to compile lists of all vacant parcels that might be eligible for additional livestock.
“By the end of next year,” Budd-Falen said in his discussion with Lummis, “every vacant parcel will be occupied by a rancher.”
