The First Major Overhaul of Public Lands Grazing Regulations in a Generation Looks to Cut Out Public Involvement

[Coventina]

The federal government is rewriting its rules governing ranching on public lands to increase the number of cattle, sheep and other livestock grazing on 155 million acres in the West, an area twice the size of New Mexico.

Public lands grazing is overseen by a nearly century-old system that heavily subsidizes some of the wealthiest Americans while doing little to address its harms to the environment, ProPublica and High Country News found last year.

Even though rangeland management experts say overgrazing has degraded public lands, the new rules being drafted by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management — the first overhaul since 1995 — would instead expand the practice.

The proposed rules would also ratchet back public participation in the agency’s decisions to allow grazing on federal public lands. The BLM’s proposed updates would strictly limit who has a say and when they can object, eliminating many steps where the public has been able to observe and comment on decisions to issue or renew permits.

https://www.propublica.org/article/public-land-livestock-grazing-ranching-access

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PLEASE stop eating beef and end this insanity!!

[2naSalit]

1. Yup...

Forest Service Moves to Reduce Public Oversight and Public Comments on Its Policies
by Our Public Lands & Waters
July 11, 2026

https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2026/07/11/forest-service-moves-to-reduce-public-oversight-and-public-comments-on-its-policies/

On Tuesday, June 30, the U.S. Forest Service proposed a quiet but potentially far-reaching rewrite of how it governs itself—one that could make many of the agency’s internal rules easier to waive, easier to revise and, in some cases, easier to remove from public view before the public has a chance to weigh in.

Published as a proposed rule by the Department of Agriculture, the measure would amend regulations governing the Forest Service’s Directive System.

EDIT----------------------------------------

The rule goes further. It would state that the “rescission or removal of directives” is not covered by the public-comment process.

In other words, while creating or revising certain binding directives may still require public notice, deleting directives would not necessarily trigger the same obligation.

For public lands advocates, that may be the most consequential sentence in the proposal.

Much more at link where there are other links.
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This is a BIG problem for OUR PUBLIC LANDS and OUR SAY in what is done with them. The American public would effectively be silenced.

https://substack.com/@ourpubliclandsandwaters

https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2026/07/11/forest-service-moves-to-reduce-public-oversight-and-public-comments-on-its-policies/