1-5 IAN Grazing Rights
A $915 billion omnibus spending bill. Had very important ramifications for livestock producers in Idaho.Here is Dustin Van Liew, Public Lands Council (PLC) executive director and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) director of federal lands: 1st and foremost was a further extension of for the next 2 fiscal years actually the grazing rider which allows the Department of Agriculture and Department of the Interior, those secretaries to renew grazing permits in light of the NEPA backlog so as not to interrupt grazing on those permits while the agencies try to catch up with their NEPA backlog. That is a national environmental policy act which requires the additional environmental documentation. Other priorities that we have in there and of particular concern to Idaho is trail and crossing permits where recently the Bureau of Land Management had decided that they were going to go through a full NEPA process on processing those trail and crossing permits which are a temporary use of the federal land to move livestock to and from those federal grazing permits. Well, this would have blocked our members from being able to trail their livestock on and off of their permits so we asked Congress to provide language in the appropriations act to exempt the agency from having to complete NEPA so that those crossing permits can be issued and regular business can occur in the next grazing season.
