Cattle grazing near Hanksville, Utah. Much of the West is arid, and has low productivity. Grazing cattle on such land is not sustainable nor can it be done without serious ecological damage. Photo by George Wuerthner.
The Trump administration, in a March 31, 2026, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), mandates that livestock production be given priority use on public lands. The administration has declared a “no net loss of Animal Unit Months” and opened allotments that are currently closed to livestock grazing. The stated purpose of the directive is to “protect America’s ranching heritage.”
There is nothing in federal regulations that makes protecting cultural heritage a priority at the expense of the public’s ecological heritage. The memorandum affects 230 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands—an area more than twice the size of California (CA is 103 million acres), making livestock grazing the single biggest commercial use of the public domain.
Given the vast acreage devoted to livestock production, it is by far the most destructive human activity on public lands. I use the term “livestock production” because the utilization of public lands by ranchers’ impacts more than just the cultivation of grasses. Producing domestic livestock results in the slaughter of native predators, competition for forage between native herbivores from prairie dogs to elk, social displacement of native animals by the mere presence of livestock, the pollution of water, the compaction of soil and loss of cryptogrammic soil crusts, the interference of animal migration by the presence of tens of thousands of miles of fences, the destruction of springs and loss of wetlands, the ruin of riparian areas (the green vegetation along streams) and the endangerment of many native species.
Even before this memorandum was created, public rangelands were in a disastrous condition. A 2024 analysis of agency records by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) found that more than 56 million acres of land assessed by the BLM failed to meet land health standards.
On at least 37 million acres, livestock is identified as the major cause of failure. BLM has found that overgrazing is by far the biggest cause of land health failure across the West.
The poor condition of public rangelands is due to the lack of environmental review and analysis. BLM has not completed land health assessments on more than 36 million acres.
The entire premise of this administrative mandate is to provide huge subsidies to commercial businesses (ranchers) who use public lands for private profit. Among the obnoxious proposals is a requirement that federal land managers participate in “immersion and training programs” so they understand the “daily life, decisions, and dilemmas of ranchers.”
A full accounting of both the economic and ecological impacts of livestock production would rationally lead to the conclusion that there is no place for commercial grazing on public lands. It’s important to note that ranchers have no “right” to graze public lands. A grazing permit is essentially a lease agreement and can be canceled at any time. And ranchers certainly have no right to degrade public resources for their private profit.
The ongoing degradation of public lands by commercial livestock production amounts to vandalism of our public patrimony.
Although it is doubtful that the Trump administration will put the public interest before commercial interests, a reasonable way to end public land grazing is the Voluntary Livestock Permit Retirement Act, which has been introduced into Congress numerous times. The Act would pay the fair market value of the AUMS voluntarily relinquished by a rancher and permanently close the allotment to future grazing.
In the meantime, the Trump administration appears set on sacrificing our public heritage to promote the economic well-being of the West’s Welfare Queens.
