In an attempt to open up more public land to livestock grazing in the West, the federal government is touting a new plan that they say will cut "bureaucratic red tape” in order to support ranchers and lower consumer prices.
The so-called “Grazing Action Plan” which was first announced last year by the Trump Administration, is a vague, wide-sweeping policy created by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to outline how they plan to prop-up America’s struggling cattle industry.
The push came shortly after ranchers expressed concern that the administration wanted to import large quantities of Argentine beef to reduce food prices. Despite the pushback, Trump signed an executive order solidifying his plan to import more beef from South America in February.
As the name suggests, the new plan aims to make grazing a priority for the Trump Administration by expanding livestock use of public lands and limiting environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act in an effort to support the industry.
Conservationist Brian Nowicki has been keeping tabs on Trump’s new beef plan for the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. He said it will lead to much less transparency and more cow patties.
“They want to open up more of our lands to cattle grazing, and in those places where there already are cattle, they want to put in more cattle, regardless of the impacts to our wildlife and our water,” Nowicki said.
Citing a 70-year low in the nation’s domestic cattle herd, the government wants to incentivize the use of “vacant” grazing allotments left alone to recover from drought and overgrazing or to reduce conflict with native wildlife and ecosystems. Some parcels can also be left empty because they are hard to reach.
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S Department of Agriculture signed a Memorandum of Understanding to get the ball rolling on these policies, especially the expansion of “targeted grazing” for wildfire fuels and “emergency authorizations” to expedite livestock grazing.
“This is taking away habitat for our public goods, and in this case, endangered species that may go extinct if we continue to allow this to happen,” Nowicki told KUNM.
And Nowicki’s claims aren’t without merit. Recently released geographical surveys show that livestock have significantly damaged New Mexico and Arizona’s streams and wetlands over the past decade.
Out of the over 640 million acres of federally owned land in the United States, around 35% of it is already permitted for grazing use. Currently, ranchers can pay a small monthly fee – starting at $1.69 per cow and an accompanying calf – for grazing rights.
While conservationists like Nowicki are concerned with the overarching policy goals of Trump’s beef plan, others are alarmed at how it would alter the standards used to identify if predators, like the endangered Mexican gray wolf, have killed livestock.
“It's a capitulation to the cattle industry and to a lot of the hysterical anti-wolf sentiment that we're seeing coming out of parts of New Mexico,” said Leia Barnett, who advocates for lobo protections for the environmental group WildEarth Guardians.
Ever since the USDA last updated evidentiary standards for lobo kills in 2023, they have been under intense political scrutiny from the agricultural industry.
The overhaul came after a federal whistleblower in 2022 alleged that ranchers and the government were colluding to sabotage Mexican wolf recovery efforts and dole out fraudulent depredation claims.
In the end, the change tightened up the evidence needed to prove that a wolf did, in fact, kill one of their cattle or sheep. At the center of these new standards is some proof of subcutaneous hemorrhaging – or bleeding beneath the skin – and distinct incisor teeth markings after an attack.
Then, ranchers provide this documentation to several government programs that will compensate for the loss based on the current livestock market rate.
Although Trump’s grazing plan also mentions bears and coyotes, it specifically pinpoints kills in Arizona and New Mexico – the very area that Mexican gray wolves are allowed to roam.
“If you're loosening the standards to prove depredation, it allows for potentially more compensation to end up in the pockets of ranchers… but, it could easily just continue to intensify the attacks on wolves and be justification for more lethal removals,” Barnett said.
To strike a balance between recovery and ranching, the government uses confirmed wolf kills to manage the species. When wolves kill too many livestock, officials may relocate or kill the animal to prevent further depredations.
It wasn’t until the past few years that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided it would also give permits to private landowners to kill Mexican wolves on both private and public property. One of these permits was granted without evidence to an outspoken politician and lobo critic.
Despite a booming population that continues to surpass historic milestones, the lobo is still labeled as “endangered” under federal law, and is protected from hunting, trapping, and poisoning.
So, by relaxing the livestock evidentiary standards, conservationists fear that the numbers of logged wolf livestock kills will go up and therefore, the government will grant more permits to legally kill “problem” wolves, circumventing federal statute.
Change is exactly what ranchers in Southwestern New Mexico have been hoping for.
“What happened a couple years ago is that [the USDA] Wildlife Services changed the standards so it's no longer ‘more likely than not,’ it's really ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’” said Tom Patterson, a former attorney and newly minted president of the New Mexico Cattle Grower’s Association. “That's the standard of evidence that would be required to send someone to jail, to incarcerate them,” Patterson said.
Patterson owns a ranch in lobo-rich Catron County, which made headlines last year after county commissioners declared a “state of emergency” following public safety concerns when wolves allegedly started to both wander into residential areas and threaten the local cattle economy.
“I've had Mexican wolves kill steers 300 feet off my kitchen deck, where my grandson plays,” Patterson said.
Patterson said that they are merely asking to be fairly compensated for their livestock losses. He said it can be days, weeks or even months for a rancher like himself to find a carcass – which makes it very hard to prove if it was – or wasn’t – killed by a wolf.
“We have 10,000 acre pastures,” Patterson said. “We don't see these animals every day.”
According to the 2022 USDA Agriculture Census, there were 35,250 cows and calves within Catron County alone. That same year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documented just 140 total wolf livestock kills across both Arizona and New Mexico.
For now, Patterson says he’s working hard to change the evidentiary standards and to convince the federal government that they should also consider public safety issues, the economic livelihoods of ranchers, and impacts on deer and other wildlife, not just the number of wolves present on the landscape.
“I will say in this administration, we're not there yet, but they're at least listening,” Patterson added. “We're talking about a different model for recovery of the Mexican wolf. It's a more sustainable model.”
And, turns out, Patterson might get all he is asking for and more through Trump’s grazing plan and Congressional action. There are several bills snaking through the legislative branch that would delist the Mexican gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act entirely – likely opening the door to state-regulated hunting and trapping.
One of those bills, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), has passed the House and is now moving through its Senate committee assignments.
