Recently, the Department of Interior joined the U.S. Forest Service to hold a Grazing Roundtable in Riverton to exclusively listen to permittee interests and concerns. At this Roundtable, permittees had the opportunity to visit with DC-level grazing program employees that listened to concerns. This is unprecedented access to high-level agency officials who would like to improve their programs to help federal land ranchers. WyFB, along with other trade organizations, are hopeful this opportunity opens the door for more frequent direct communication between agency decision makers and permittees moving forward.

Leading to the next opportunity for engagement on policy issues, DOI released their proposal to clean up grazing administration regulations that have not been successfully amended in over 30 years. The primary reason for cleaning up the regulations is to provide a return to common-sense, collaborative landscape scale management that hasn’t been present in the agency through.

Some items are clerical, while others would provide large-scale analysis to monitor and accurately asses changes to landscape health instead of defaulting to livestock use as a causal factor. The proposed changes in grazing administration are very much geared towards focusing grazing permits on production livestock per federal land mandates seen in the Taylor Grazing Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. The DOI wants to hear from all permittees whether or not these rules are workable and an improvement over current management conditions.

WyFB staff plans to visit with interested parties at the Policy Review Committee Meeting on June 1 in Casper as time allows. But in the meantime, please reach out to Kelly at 307-721-7728 with any questions or concerns. The comment period ends on July 13, 2026. For more information visit : https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/12/2026-09387/revision-of-regulations-for-grazing-administration-exclusive-of-alaska