Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum signed a Secretary's Order to expand grazing opportunities, improve the health of federal rangelands, and provide critical support for America's ranchers. The order implements President Trump's Executive Order on "Supporting America's Ranchers" and takes aggressive steps to increase domestic meat production and lower costs for consumers.
Prioritizing Ranchers Amid Record-Low Cattle Herd
The order directs bureaus within the Department of the Interior to prioritize the needs of the domestic livestock industry at a time when the national cattle herd is at a 75-year low. It formalizes the Rangeland Health Initiative to further identify and open additional lands for grazing, reinstate suspended grazing allotments, and use new technologies like super intelligence to eliminate the backlog of grazing permit renewals.
Swift Deadlines for Action
The order establishes an agency lead for the initiative, sets forth a series of deadlines for bureaus to report progress and implement these changes swiftly, and expands the initiative to all Interior bureaus with grazing lands. This includes a 30-day deadline to identify new lands for potential grazing and a 60-day deadline for the Bureau of Land Management to present a plan to eliminate its permit renewal backlog.
Expediting Wildfire Recovery Projects
With extreme wildfire activity exhausting all available federal firefighting resources and the national wildfire system operating at its highest level of readiness, the Department of the Interior has finalized two categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act to expedite Bureau of Land Management timber salvage and forest thinning projects.
