WESTERN RANGELANDS — The Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue to block a Trump administration plan to open up to 24 million acres of federal lands in the American West to cattle grazing. The plan calls for opening parts of Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado, and Sonoran Desert National Monument in Arizona.

President Trump implemented the plan through a memorandum of understanding signed in March by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The memorandum uses emergency authority to fast-track grazing in areas where it is not currently allowed, and states that the plan will "deregulate", "streamline" and "incorporate beneficial flexibility." The policy also sets "a goal of a no net loss of Animal Unit Months within allotments" and seeks to maximize "authorization of livestock use" across western rangelands.

The plan includes a provision to establish "immersion and training programs for new and existing federal employees to the daily life, decisions, and dilemmas of ranchers." Some of the lands listed in the memorandum have not been used for grazing for decades.

The Center for Biological Diversity alleges that the administration fast-tracked the plan without consulting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which must review the plan's impact on protected species under the Endangered Species Act. The Trump administration has 60 days to respond to the notice. If it fails to respond, the group would ask a federal judge to order a review of the plan's impact on protected wildlife.

"The federal grazing program is already a disaster for endangered species and the places they live. Expanding grazing across 24m more acres will make that devastation even worse and likely drive more animals and plants to extinction," said Andrea Zaccardi, carnivore conservation legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Zaccardi said there have been isolated requests from individual ranchers for some allotments to be opened, but no industry-wide effort to open allotments that environmental groups are aware of.

"The Trump administration does not appear to care that commercial livestock grazing exacts an enormous toll on native ecosystems and wildlife throughout the American West," said Chandra Rosenthal, a western lands and rocky mountain advocate.

Grazing on public lands accounts for 2% of the nation's beef cattle. Cattle strip land bare of vegetation, eat riparian vegetation along streams' edges that keeps the water cool, and pollute streams with feces, urine, sediment and carcasses. Park rangers and ranchers often kill grizzly bears and other predators that prey on cattle. Of 2,400 stream miles of endangered species habitat surveyed by the Center for Biological Diversity since 2017, about half show damage from livestock.