Support Legislation Reinforcing the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule

I am writing to urge you to support and reinforce the Bureau of Land Management's 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule through legislation. This rule does not threaten ranching on federal lands. Instead, it provides the framework necessary to ensure ranching can continue sustainably into the future by restoring the soil health and water resources that livestock operations depend on. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 established that conservation, land health, watershed protection, and wildlife habitat legally stand on equal footing with grazing, mining, and energy development. The 2024 Rule simply clarifies and enforces these existing legal requirements. It did not create new priorities but attempted to honor a mandate Congress established nearly fifty years ago. The current situation on Western public lands is unsustainable. Over 56 million acres of public land fail to meet land health standards, primarily due to chronic livestock overgrazing. Streams are degraded, waterways are overheated, and sage grouse populations continue declining. These are not abstract environmental concerns. They represent the deterioration of the very resources that ranching operations need to survive. Continuing past practices that have tradition behind them but not science will make ranching on federal lands impossible in the future. Degraded soil produces less forage. Diminished stream flows reduce water availability. The 2024 Rule represents the minimum action needed to protect federal lands and help them recover from decades of overuse. It is not anti-ranching. It is pro-sustainability. Major agricultural organizations including the American Farm Bureau Federation, National Cattlemen's Beef Association, and Public Lands Council are working to eliminate this Rule. Their opposition protects a system where grazing receives preferential treatment through federal subsidies and regulatory exemptions, but it does not protect the long-term viability of ranching itself. I ask you to support legislation that reinforces the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule and ensures BLM can fulfill its legal mandate under FLPMA. Our public landscapes must be shaped by ecological reality and sound science, not by industry pressure that prioritizes short-term interests over long-term sustainability.