Defend Public Lands from Trump’s Damaging Grazing Rules

Take Action by Monday, July 13 at 8:59 p.m. PDT

Oregon’s high desert is renowned for its vast sagebrush grasslands, serene mountain meadows, magnificent canyons, and diversity of wildlife. The health of these public lands relies on science-based management practices that carefully balance the region’s many uses and values.

Now, the Trump administration wants to dramatically shift that balance—prioritizing increased extractive use of public lands at the expense of desert lands, waters, and wildlife.

Livestock grazing is the most pervasive use of public lands, occurring on 12 million acres of Oregon’s high desert. Without science-based management, strong oversight and good monitoring, grazing threatens wildlife, degrades watersheds, erodes soils, spreads invasive species, and even contributes to climate change.

Trump’s proposed changes would:

• Eliminate critical safeguards that minimize the impacts of grazing without conducting the legally mandated environmental analysis assessing those consequences.
• Reduce opportunities for the public to participate in public lands grazing management decisions.
• Mandate excessive livestock grazing on public lands, including in sensitive habitats that have been protected from grazing for decades.
• Disregard long-standing scientific information about the impacts of livestock grazing on public lands, biodiversity, wildlife, habitat and clean water.

Learn more about cattle grazing in Oregon’s high desert.

To defend Oregon’s high desert from the proposed changes to grazing regulations, we ask you to submit a public comment before the Monday, July 13 deadline at 8:59 p.m. PDT.

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Submitting a Comment

Suggested points to include in your personalized comment:

While we recommend touching on all of the following points, it is important to write your comment in your own words. Check out our Make Your Comment Count page for additional guidance.

Start your comment by introducing yourself. Share your name, the state you live in, your relationship to the affected public lands, and that you are deeply concerned with the proposed changes to grazing regulations.

Key points to include in your comment:

• The proposed changes should be accompanied by a comprehensive assessment of their environmental impact. When federal land management agencies extensively change regulations, they are required to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that examines how the changes will affect the land, water, and wildlife of the impacted ecosystems.
• The proposed changes eliminate opportunities for public participation. Current policy invites any interested person to participate in each and every phase of grazing management decisions. The proposed changes all but exclude the public from an array of decisions, depriving the public of the input and collaboration essential to balancing grazing with other uses and values on public lands.
• The proposed changes should not allow the BLM to reintroduce livestock in sensitive habitats that are currently closed to grazing. These changes undermine decades of local collaborative decision-making that have balanced uses of public lands by protecting fragile habitats from grazing damage.
• The proposed changes prioritize grazing over other uses of public lands. The BLM’s own data shows that livestock grazing has already degraded millions of acres of public lands. Grazing regulations should require immediate adjustments to grazing in areas where science-based monitoring indicates that livestock are damaging habitat and ecosystems.

Conclude your comment by sharing your personal connection to public lands. Include why healthy public lands are important to you.

Instructions for submitting your comment: 

1. Click the “Take Action” button below.
2. Fill out your information and click “Submit”. This will route you to the submission webpage.
3. Write your comment in the box under “Comment.” You may want to write your comment in a separate document first, then copy and paste it in the comment section.
4. Enter your email address under “Email Address”.
5. Under “Tell us about yourself!” select “An Individual.”
6. Click the “Submit Comment” button at the bottom and you’re done!