USFS quietly rewrites protections for imperiled species, hides new biological documents from public

Weakened BiOps green-light grazing violations, abandon science, and leave iconic threatened species at risk

Privately-owned cattle in the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Cyndi Tuell/WWP

The U.S. Forest Service has quietly reissued biological documents governing livestock grazing on the Santa Fe National Forest, replacing protections that offered meaningful safeguards for some of the region’s most imperiled wildlife with documents so scientifically questionable that the agency chose not to announce them to the public. WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project, and Caldera Action learned of the new biological assessments and subsequent biological opinions — commonly called “BiOps” — through their ongoing litigation against the agency, raising serious questions about the Forest Service’s commitment to transparency.

The new BiOps govern grazing on several allotments on the Santa Fe National Forest that share a boundary with the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The BiOps ultimately determine how the agency balances livestock operations against its legal obligations to protect threatened and endangered species, including the Jemez Mountains salamander, which, as the name implies, can only be found in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico, and the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse.

BiOps are issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to apply additional conservation measures to enhance the conservation and recovery of listed species, and are based on biological assessments provided to the wildlife agency by the Forest Service. Conservation groups say the reissued documents represent a dramatic step backward — trading a framework that, while imperfect, provided metrics for monitoring the impacts of livestock grazing on imperiled species for a set of conclusions with little scientific foundation and no meaningful mechanism for enforcement.

“The Forest Service didn’t announce these new biological opinions, and there’s a reason for that — they’re probably embarrassed by them,” said Leia Barnett, New Mexico Conservation Lead at WildEarth Guardians. “The agency has quietly dismantled protections for some of our most vulnerable wildlife and hoped no one would notice. We noticed.”

A Blueprint for Ignoring Impacts of Cattle Grazing

At the heart of the new BiOps is a conclusion that ongoing livestock grazing poses no significant threat to listed species — a conclusion that conservation groups say is not supported by scientific evidence and flies in the face of documented conditions on the ground.

Ranchers on this section of the Santa Fe National Forest have a history of violating grazing regulations: allowing their cows to trespass into the Valles Caldera Preserve, overgrazing Forest Service allotments, failing to move livestock, and causing ongoing damage to riparian areas and critical habitat. Under the new BiOps, the Forest Service will allow those violations to occur without consequence, effectively rewarding noncompliance while imperiled species pay the price.

”There has long been an assumption by the Forest Service that livestock grazing should be the priority and dominant use of this land with species and watershed values and recreation taking a backseat,” said Tom Ribe, executive director at Caldera Action. “We seek more balance and accountability through honest science driving management decisions, even if it reduces commercial activity on these public lands.”

For two years before the groups filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in 2024 for violating the Endangered Species Act by allowing – and ignoring – the impacts of trespass livestock on protected wildlife in the Valles Caldera National Preserve, the groups had been asking the Forest Service to disclose the impacts of trespass livestock as part of their grazing program. The groups specifically asked the Forest Service to document these impacts in a Biological Assessment, which would then be used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a BiOp.

“Despite nearly a decade of documented trespass into the National Preserve from Forest Service managed grazing allotments, impacts to wildlife habitat, and despite our repeated requests, the Forest Service ignored these impacts in their Biological Assessments, which misinformed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s assessment of the true impacts of cattle grazing on wildlife,” said Cyndi Tuell, the Arizona and New Mexico director at Western Watersheds Project. “As the saying goes for analyzing data and impacts of activities, garbage in equals garbage out, and that’s what has happened here. The Forest Service provided the Wildlife Service with bad information in their Biological Assessments, resulting in bad determinations in the BiOps,” said Tuell. “It’s disappointing, but not surprising.”

No Monitoring, No Accountability, No Limit

Perhaps most alarming, the new BiOps removed previous limits on “take” for threatened and endangered species — thresholds that, if exceeded, would require the agency to stop and reconsider its approach — and replaced them with standards that are almost impossible to enforce. At the same time, the Forest Service revised its policy to monitor compliance with these limits, making it less likely that grazing impacts will be detected in time to prevent serious ecological damage.

Secrecy Raises Legal Concerns

The Forest Service’s decision to hide these biological opinions from the public — and not notify groups with a direct interest in the agency’s Endangered Species Act compliance — compounds the underlying scientific failures with a troubling lack of transparency. Conservation groups have long raised concerns about the adequacy of the agency’s compliance with the Endangered Species Act on Forest Service lands that border the Valles Caldera, and the quiet issuance of documents affecting that compliance raises serious legal questions.

“Monitoring had revealed overgrazing in protected species’ habitat, so the Forest Service weakened its monitoring program instead of fixing its grazing problem,” explained Guardians attorney Erin Hogan-Freemole. “The new plan seems designed to avoid catching violations like this. The Forest Service is signaling that it won’t hold irresponsible ranchers accountable or act to protect public lands.”

What’s at Stake

The Jemez Mountains salamander and other iconic New Mexican species found on the Santa Fe National Forest have persisted despite mounting pressures from drought, habitat loss, climate change, and climate-driven wildfire. The protections established in prior consultation frameworks, however imperfect, at least acknowledged the fragility of these populations and set guardrails around the agency’s discretion. The new BiOps abandon that framework without scientific justification — substituting agency convenience for the rigorous analysis the Endangered Species Act demands.

WildEarth Guardians, Western Watersheds Project, and Caldera Action will continue to press for accountability and for BiOps that reflect the best available science and provide genuine protection for the region’s imperiled wildlife.