Dear Guardian, 

Public lands are not feedlots for the livestock industry.

After years of conservation agreements that retired allotments or reduced the number of cattle grazing in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Congress is now writing laws to reverse this progress and allow cows back on fragile landscapes still healing from decades of abuse!

Senator Orrin Hatch is trying to reverse voluntary grazing retirements of grazing privileges completed in Grand Staircase-Escalante. If his meddling bill passes, it will be virtually impossible to retire other grazing leases across the west.

Please write or call your Senators and ask them to oppose S. 365, with the Orwellian title, “A bill to improve rangeland conditions and restore grazing levels within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah.”

Tell the Senate reducing grazing on public lands is an important tool to lessen social conflicts, restore native carnivores and heal damaged lands.

Voluntary buyouts of grazing permits have already diminished grazing conflicts in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, in the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument and Badlands Wilderness in Oregon, at Great Basin National Park in Nevada, and in the Missouri Breaks National Monument in Montana. This is a critical tool we cannot afford to lose.

Grazing retirement has helped wolves, grizzlies, bighorn sheep, sage grouse, and imperiled fish. Not to mention world-class recreation areas.

Join us in sending a clear, strong message that you are tired of the cattle industry’s monopoly on federal, public lands.

 

Bryan Bird
Wild Places Campaign Director
WildEarth Guardians
bbird@wildearthguardians.org

 

 

 

photo credit: WildEarth Guardians