The Bureau of Land Management is rewriting grazing regulations for the first time since 1995, targeting 155 million acres of Western public land with rules designed to expand livestock numbers, not reduce them.
ProPublica and High Country News documented last year how the existing system subsidizes wealthy ranchers while degrading rangeland. The new BLM draft rules ignore that record. Rangeland management experts say overgrazing has already harmed the land. The federal government is moving in the opposite direction.
The full article details how the overhaul also seeks to cut public involvement in the process, which is the mechanism that would normally allow scientific and community input to slow or reshape rules like these. That angle is worth reading in full.
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