Today, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and Public Lands Council (PLC) filed a lawsuit against the misguided Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming and seeks to overturn the rule which threatens generations of family ranching operations in the U.S. by undermining the long-held balance of multiple-use management.
“NCBA is suing the BLM to stand up for America’s western ranchers and push back on this harmful rule that only serves as a stepping stone to removing livestock grazing from our nation’s public lands,” said NCBA President Mark Eisele, a Wyoming rancher. “Under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the BLM is supposed to balance the multiple uses of public lands, including livestock grazing, energy, mining, timber, and recreation. The BLM’s rule upends this multiple use system by creating a brand new use for federal lands without Congressional approval and in conflict with existing federal law. NCBA will continue working to hold the BLM accountable in federal court.”
Since the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934, livestock grazing has been a federally recognized use of public lands. Grazing provides a way to both manage the federal government’s vast land holdings in the West and ensure a productive use for land that is too steep, arid, or rocky for other uses like row crop agriculture. As a federally recognized use, NCBA and PLC continue to encourage the BLM to protect grazing and view ranchers as partners in conservation efforts.
“This rule upends the relationship between federal grazing permittees and the BLM while also opening the door to ending grazing on federal lands,” said PLC President and Colorado grazing permittee Mark Roeber. “PLC will always defend the important role of grazing on federal lands and oppose efforts that would remove grazing and compromise rural communities for the sake of a bureaucratic exercise. Public lands grazing generates over $3 billion annually in valuable ecosystem services, equating to more than $20 per public acre of land grazed by sheep and cattle. Grazing supports the environmental health of the land, reduces wildfire risk, and strengthens rural economies—all valuable reasons to protect public lands grazing in the West.”
NCBA and PLC are joined in the litigation by the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Exploration and Mining Association, American Forest Resource Council, American Petroleum Institute, American Sheep Industry Association, National Mining Association, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Natrona County Farm and Ranch Bureau, Western Energy Alliance, and Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation.
