Trump Admin is Giving Billionaires Your Public Land and It Will Destroy the American West

Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior, is proposing to open 24 million acres of federal public land to cattle grazing, bypassing environmental review, including parts of the Grand Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and other sensitive landscapes.Cattle strip native grasses down to the root, collapse stream banks, flood waterways with manure, and raise water temperatures until native fish can’t survive. Then the government kills wolves and grizzlies to protect the cows that destroyed the land in the first place.Two thirds of all federal grazing is already controlled by just 10% of permit holders, including billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and Stan Kroenke. Less than 2% of American beef comes from public lands and the US imports more beef than it exports, meaning this does nothing for American food security. It is a giveaway to wealthy donors that will destroy your land.Simultaneously, the administration proposed canceling grazing permits held by American Prairie, a conservation nonprofit that spent twenty years growing a bison herd from 19 animals to 952 and sending bison to tribal nations to help restore herds deliberately wiped out as a weapon of genocide against Indigenous peoples.They are evicting bison, the animal on the Interior Department’s own seal, to make room for cattle. The Taylor Grazing Act being used to justify this was passed in 1934 after cattle overgrazing turned the Great Plains into a wasteland, with dust storms reaching Washington DC. Congress passed it specifically to stop this from happening again.The Center for Biological Diversity filed notice of intent to sue in April, arguing the plan will drive wolves, grizzlies, and steelhead salmon toward extinction. The administration has 60 days to respond. Contact your senators and tell them to oppose this.Shout out More Than Just Parks and for being some of the only people reporting on Trump’s attacks on the environment. Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe