1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

Investigate the Trump administration's emergency grazing expansion and put a stop to it. The Bureau of Land Management fast-tracked a plan to open 24 million acres of federal land to cattle grazing — bypassing required consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act. This isn't a policy debate. It's an illegal end-run around environmental law, and Congress needs to act. The benefits to the public are essentially zero. Grazing on public lands produces just 2% of the nation's beef supply, and even that won't reach consumers for years — cattle grazing today won't reach slaughter for a minimum of two years. What it does do is destroy the lands the rest of us use — polluting streams with runoff, stripping riparian vegetation, displacing wolves, grizzly bears, and steelhead salmon, and triggering the lethal removal of hundreds of thousands of predators annually. Studies have shown significant livestock damage across half of 2,400 stream miles of endangered species habitat. The plan even opens parts of Grand Canyon and Grand Staircase-Escalante to grazing. So who actually benefits? The ranchers leasing public land at rates far below market value. That's it. The cattle industry didn't ask for this, and the American public gets nothing in return except degraded wilderness. Congress must investigate and put a stop to this giveaway of our public land!