Watch the Grazing Without Guardrails webinar from Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians above. Public comments are due by July 13, 2026. Find everything you need to take action here.
When the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced it was rewriting its federal grazing regulations this spring, it described the proposal as a long-overdue effort to modernize an outdated system. But beneath the bureaucratic language lies something completely different.
These proposed regulations would reshape how roughly 155 million acres of America’s public lands are managed. They would weaken safeguards for wildlife and water quality, set up roadblocks for the public to participate in decisions about public lands, reduce accountability when livestock damage public lands, and further entrench one industry’s control over landscapes we all hold dear.
Perhaps most troubling, the regulations appear to have been shaped by an Interior Department official whose career has been dedicated to advancing the interests of the public lands livestock industry: Karen Budd-Falen.
Before joining the Department of the Interior, Budd-Falen spent decades as an attorney representing ranching interests in disputes – like Cliven Bundy’s renegade cattle – over federal land management. During the first Trump administration, Budd-Falen signed an ethics agreement promising to recuse herself from grazing matters. Today, she occupies one of the most powerful positions at the Department of the Interior. On March 11, 2026—the very day an outlet questioned the department about her involvement in grazing policy—Interior’s ethics office issued her a conflict-of-interest waiver allowing her to participate broadly in matters involving grazing and permitting. Financial disclosures show that she and her husband own multiple ranching operations that rely on federal grazing permits, while Budd-Falen herself has publicly described rewriting the grazing regulations as the work “closest to her heart.”
Production-Oriented
Just days before the regulations were proposed, the Interior Department revoked the nonprofit American Prairie’s permits to graze native bison and restore the prairie on several federal allotments in Montana. Years earlier, while still in private practice, Budd-Falen had represented livestock interests challenging those very permits.
The regulations that followed would take that approach even further.
Among their many changes is the elimination of the regulatory provision allowing grazing permits for native species like bison. Instead, grazing permits would be limited to “production-oriented livestock,” reinforcing the idea that public lands exist primarily to support commercial livestock production rather than broader conservation purposes.
Just so we’re clear, this means that bison, the native animals on the seal of the Department of the Interior, the ones that shaped our prairies, who were eradicated during the time of manifest destiny, would no longer be permitted to provide their ecological benefits to public lands.
Land Health Standards
Current regulations require grazing management to help meet land health standards, including protecting water quality. The new proposal removes water quality from the fundamentals of rangeland health and rescinds existing BLM water quality standards developed under the current regulatory framework.
Livestock grazing is one of the leading causes of degraded streams, contaminated waters, and riparian habitat across the West. Cattle trample streambanks, remove streamside vegetation, increase erosion, and contribute pathogens to waterways. Healthy streams are critical for native fish, amphibians, birds, and the communities downstream that depend on clean water.
Rather than strengthening protections, these regulations shift responsibility away from the BLM and leave enforcement largely to state agencies, many of which lack the resources—or political willpower—to regulate the industry responsible for much of the damage.
The proposal also weakens accountability when grazing harms public lands.
Under current regulations, if livestock are found to be causing an allotment to fail land health standards, the BLM must take corrective action before the next grazing season. The proposed rule replaces that direct connection with a broader framework that evaluates all possible causes of landscape conditions before action is considered. The agency would be permitted to take up to three years to come to a decision as to what to do. And even when livestock are identified as a significant cause of degradation, permit modifications would no longer be required if the rancher is complying with the terms of the permit.
In other words, the land can be deteriorating, wildlife can be suffering, all while the grazing that’s causing the damage continues.
Public Participation
At the same time, the proposal makes it harder for the public to participate in decisions about lands they own.
Current regulations broadly recognize members of the “interested public.” The proposed rule narrows that definition, making a general interest in public lands, wildlife, or healthy ecosystems insufficient for participation. Conservation groups, local communities, hunters, anglers, and other public land users could find themselves excluded from decisions that directly affect landscapes they care deeply about.
Ranchers, meanwhile, retain their obvious financial stake and continued access to tighten their stranglehold on the process.
Targeted Grazing
The proposal also embraces another claim that deserves scrutiny: that expanding livestock grazing will reduce wildfire risk through “targeted grazing.” This argument has become increasingly popular, but the scientific evidence tells a far more complicated story.
A comprehensive review of cheatgrass research published by Western Watersheds Project found that livestock grazing is not the solution to cheatgrass invasion—it has been one of its primary drivers. Decades of grazing disturbance have helped replace native perennial grasses with highly flammable invasive annual grasses that burn more frequently and spread more aggressively after fire. Under the extreme weather conditions that produce the West’s largest wildfires, researchers have found that targeted grazing has little meaningful effect on fire behavior.
Yet these regulations repeatedly present grazing as a wildfire solution while proposing policies that expand the very land use many scientists identify as contributing to the problem.
Environmental Review
Despite the sweeping nature of these changes, the BLM proposes to implement them without preparing an Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. Instead, the agency argues that the rule is merely administrative.
That claim is difficult to reconcile with reality as these regulations would reshape how 155 million acres of public land are managed. They affect wildlife habitat, water quality, public participation, grazing accountability, and the future of native species like bison. Previous grazing rule revisions underwent extensive environmental review because their consequences were understood to be significant. This one should as well.
Whether you care about clean water, healthy ecosystems, native wildlife, or simply transparent government, these proposed changes deserve close attention.
If you’d like a deeper look at what’s in the proposal, watch our Grazing Without Guardrails webinar above. Then, before the July 13 deadline, submit your comments. We’ve included a toolkit below with background information, talking points, and everything you need to make your voice heard.
Because once these rules are finalized, they’ll be far harder to undo than they are to stop today.
