Trump looks to Make America Graze Again
Plus: BLM peddles vacant grazing leases; Wacky weather watch
š® Grazing Gazette š„©
When Donald Trump was elected president for the second time, we all knew what was coming to the nationās public lands: The administration would favor extractive uses by eviscerating environmental protections, rolling back regulations, and leasing out as much land as possible while handing out drilling permits like Shriners throwing candy at a parade.
Yet there was one realm where I figured the administration couldnāt bestow any more deregulatory gifts, namely public lands grazing. Itās not that I thought Trump would clamp down on the destructive practice, itās just that I figured the status quo was about as permissive as it could get. Past administrations, be they Democratic or Republican, have generally shied away from updating or reforming public lands grazing policies out of fear of inflaming the Westās cowboy culture ā even if it is based largely on myth.
But Trump, his Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are intrepidly going where previous administrations did not dare: grazing reform. Well, sort of, though maybe not in the way public lands lovers might have hoped. In fact, they are doing their best to make grazing policy even more lax with a goal of getting more cattle out there to trample public lands, cryptobiotic soils, and cultural sites.
Last month, Burgum and Rollins announced an MOU between the two agencies designed to āboost the supply of American born, raised, and harvested beefā by cutting ābureaucratic red tapeā and giving the livestock industry more control. The MOU has a goal of āmaintaining grazing capacity wherever possible, including no net loss of Animal Unit Months within allotments,ā even if those allotments are degraded or in poor health. In Burgumās words, one goal is to āpreserve Americaās ranching heritage for generations to come.ā Forgive me for getting anxious whenever I see āheritageā used in conjunction with public lands.
āTodayās signing sends a clear message: the Trump administration is putting Americaās farmers and ranchers first,ā said Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. Which brings up the question of what message the administration was sending in February when Trump signed an executive order to quadruple beef imports from Argentina in an effort to keep Big Macs affordable.
šŗļø Messing with Maps š§
To help it carry out its mission, the Bureau of Land Management has released an interactive map aimed at putting more cattle and sheep back on public lands. The āfederal grazing lands potentially availableā map shows allotments that have been vacated, often as a result of deals brokered by environmentalists, with the intent of peddling the tracts to livestock operators. While thereās no guarantee that the BLM would lease out all of the vacant tracts, the presence on the map of the ones vacated for environmental purposes is enough to set off alarm bells.
For example, the map includes 10 allotments in the high country around Silverton, Colorado, totaling about 70,000 acres. In 2023, the National Wildlife Federation paid the Etchart Sheep Ranch to vacate five of these allotments in an effort to give Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep more breathing room and protect them from diseases transmitted by domestic sheep. The deal was made with the hope that the leases would be retired permanently. Yet the inclusion on the map indicates they could see domestic sheep once again, emphasizing the need for legislation that would make such retirements perpetual.
Also on the map are the Flodine Park and Yellowjacket allotments in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument near the Colorado-Utah border. In 2005, a rancher gave up the allotments, north and south of McElmo Canyon, respectively, and sold 4,500 acres of adjacent private land to the BLM to add to the national monument. Both allotments and the private land contain a number of intermittent streams, shallow canyons, and numerous cultural sites. They had been grazed relentlessly for decades prior, and showed the wear and tearāmuch of the cryptobiotic soil had long before been trampled and destroyed and invasive cheat grass had infiltrated the grazed areas. An archaeological assessment conducted later found grazing had damaged dozens of sensitive and cultural sites in the areas.
In 2010, the BLM, which manages the monument, issued a new resource management plan, which allowed for continued grazing, but also opened the door to permanently retiring vacant grazing allotments if they fail to meet BLM rangeland health standards or when grazing is negatively impacting cultural sites. Five of the 28 allotments in the most heavily visited areasāincluding Sand Canyonāwere cancelled, but not the Flodine Park and Yellow Jacket allotments, which were still in retirement at the time.
Instead, the local county commissioners and a group of ranchers pressured the BLM to reauthorize grazing on both allotmentsāto bring them out of retirement, if you will. The BLM acquiesced, but environmentalists and tribes with roots in the area fought back, forcing the agency to do a more thorough environmental analysis of the proposal. The opposition was enough to prompt the agency at least to delay issuing any leases, and the allotments remain in limbo.
Meanwhile, a team of scientists assessed the healing process on the Flodine Park and Yellow Jacket allotments, which by then had been cow-free for 11 years (though feral horses had grazed there). They compared biocrusts on those allotments to a fenced enclosure that hadnāt seen grazing for 53 years and a plot that was being actively grazed. What they found was both predictable and remarkable: The longer a plot went without cows, the healthier it was, as summed up by these graphs.
While the natural landscape can eventually heal itself, livestockās damage to the cultural landscape is irreversible. BLM surveys identified 266 cultural sites on the two allotments, including 35 with āstanding architecture.ā At least 43% of those had been damaged by livestock.
Now whatās left may be in danger, too, at least if those allotmentsā presence on the new map is any indication. And guess what? Packing these allotments isnāt going to make that steak any cheaper. Only about 1% of American beef is grazed on public lands.
Check out the BLM Grazing availability map yourself: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/0a208d6eac6144969213c68519a8cfdd
āļø Wacky Weather Watch ā”ļø
If you were to get all of your information about the Westās climate from daily weather reports and road condition websites, you might think that April snow showers and deep freezes had ended the snow drought and would lead to big May streamflows. After all, it snowed enough in Colorado to turn roads to slip-and-slides and causing a 75-car pileup on I-70 near the Eisenhower Tunnel. The temperatures dropped low enough to wipe out most of the fruit blossoms the March heat wave tricked into blooming early. Only the farmers who used extraordinary measures ā starting fires or smudge pots in the orchards, running wind machines, etc. ā could save some of their summer harvest.
Sure, the snow that did fall in April helped, but only enough to elevate snowpack levels to, well, the lowest on record (only by a slightly smaller margin than before). And the freeze was deep, which helped extend the spring runoff in the few areas where there was any snow left. But even there, I suspect that peak runoff has already come and gone (though Iām not calling the Predict the Peak contest yet!).
I flew over Coloradoās mountains the other day and was rather shocked at the dearth of snow, even on the highest peaks. Mt. Blue Sky, formerly Mt. Evans, had only a few patches of white left ā at 14,130 feet in elevation. Everything below 10,000 feet appeared to be snowless. While the San Juan Mountains appeared to be in slightly better shape, it was still looking pretty dry. The Animas River watershedās snowpack remains lower than it was on 2002 on this date.
