GRAZING THAT WORKS

This is an opportunity for BLM to adopt limited, durable, and strategic revisions to the regulations that better allow all partners to optimize ecological and economic benefits for the American public. 

The coalition agrees on the importance of reflecting concretely these shared values in any revisions to the grazing regulations:

1. PROMOTING FLEXIBILITY IN RESOURCE AND LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT

To truly manage for ecological and economic health, the BLM should further promote flexibility in livestock management. The rigidity of existing plans and prescriptive nature of federal programs often prevent managers and producers from responding quickly to the inter-annual variation common in western landscapes. By developing plans tiered to outcomes rather than tied to rulesets, producers can adapt management while meeting rangeland health objectives.

2. OPTIMIZING FORAGE UTILIZATION

Current regulations trap graziers in use-it-or-lose-it management patterns that harm the resource and prevent adaptive management. Resting an allotment, in whole or in part, should be encouraged if doing so benefits the resource and/or the permittee. By acting in the best interest of the resource, permittees should not risk losing their preference or access. At the same time, protections are needed to ensure temporary non-use does not erode the role of these pastures as working grazing lands and the long-term ecological value of grazing on these lands by becoming permanent.

3. ENSURING USE OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF RANGELAND HEALTH

The Fundamentals of Rangeland Health (Fundamentals) are foundational range management principles for the Bureau that should guide all management decisions and apply to all permitted users of BLM lands.

We ask the BLM to reinforce their importance by including language in the regulations of other permitted uses, including grazing, to the requirements of these Fundamentals. Doing so will 1) reinforce their application at watershed or other appropriate landscape scales; 2) help better distinguish the impacts (beneficial, neutral and detrimental) of one use from another, and; 3) create room for broader application of flexible and adaptive management to adjust use as conditions and circumstances require. 

Finally, we encourage the federal government to match the mission with the resources required to achieve it. We believe improving the current regulations can create better outcomes for people, the environment and all uses of our public lands. It is essential that the BLM utilize its funding to hire, train and retain a talented workforce capable of fulfilling obligations to manage for rangeland health and provide for flexibility within livestock grazing permits and leases.