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Public Lands Grazing
Public Lands Grazing
The majority of the American public does not know that livestock grazing in the arid West has caused more damage than the chainsaw or bulldozer. In an effort to recover the West’s wild lands and rivers, along with the native species that call those lands and waters home, ONDA is working with ranchers to reduce the impacts of public lands grazing in areas where domestic livestock grazing causes serious widespread and continuing damage to landscapes, particularly to riparian and other wet areas that are so critical to native fish and wildlife.
ONDA supports a market-based approach allowing for the voluntary permanent retirement of federal or state grazing permits at a fair market value. The administrative or legislative retirement of such permits would allow for the reallocation of these lands for conservation or recreation interest on allotments where public lands grazing has proven uneconomical or unsustainable.
Through our Sagesteppe Defense Program, ONDA implements rigorous, strategic, and thoughtful enforcement of environmental laws to safeguard Oregon’s deserts. Employing the full range of legal tools, we work to hold federal land management agencies accountable, ensuring that Oregon’s arid lands and waterways receive the protection they so richly deserve.
Our legal efforts have played an important role in protecting Oregon’s desert lands and rivers. In 1992, ONDA filed a lawsuit that forced the removal of livestock grazing from Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuge. Free from the impacts grazing, Hart Mountain’s meadows and streams have shown a remarkable recovery, and the refuge’s pronghorn population has increased dramatically. In 1997 and 1998, additional ONDA lawsuits forced BLM to prohibit grazing along the Wild and Scenic Owyhee and Donner and Blitzen River corridors. Time and again, our legal efforts have provided necessary protection for Oregon’s high desert gems.
