The US Bureau of Land Management failed to complete environmental analyses for thousands of commercial livestock grazing allotments, conservation groups alleged in a federal complaint.
The BLM has issued 35,000 grazing permits covering 155 million acres across 13 Western states, but didn’t conduct the required reviews for nearly two-thirds of them, Western Watersheds Project Inc. and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility claimed in their suit.
The agency has sidestepped National Environmental Policy Act analyses for allotments that “contain significant environmental resources—sometimes for more than a decade—while still authorizing grazing to continue,” the complaint said.