Dear Guardian, 

It’s long past time to give America’s endangered wolves more room to roam on our public lands and simultaneously give ranchers the ability to permanently retire their grazing permits. 

We’ve got just the tool to help both wolves and ranchers: it’s called grazing permit retirement. But we need Congress to pass legislation to allow this to happen across the western landscape. 

Join us in telling Congress to pass legislation that will allow us to work with more and more ranchers to retire livestock grazing from our most sensitive and valuable public lands in the west. 

Lets give them an exit strategy that will be fair and equitable to everyone. 

On public land across the West, millions of livestock remove and trample vegetation, damage soil, spread invasive weeds, despoil water, deprive native wildlife of forage and shelter, accelerate desertification, and even contribute to global warming. 

Raising cattle generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO₂ equivalent, than transportation. On federal public lands alone livestock account for annual emissions equivalent of 705,342 passenger vehicles. 

Now there is proposed legislation that would provide an equitable solution. The Rural Economic Vitalization Act (H.R. 3410) would begin to alleviate these problems by providing public lands ranchers the option to relinquish their grazing permits in exchange for market-based compensation paid by private parties. 

Tell your representatives in Congress that the Rural Economic Vitalization Act would begin to restore the environmental health of our public lands, while also giving public lands ranchers the flexibility they want and need. 

Learn more about REVA on Facebook.

For the Wild,

 

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

  

photo credit: dollarphotoclub.com