Wildfires and Grazing Permits

Wildfires have spiked across the West, and while grazing is often a valuable tool in managing land, current challenges are creating issues for grazing permittees. Kaitlyn Glover, Executive Director of the Public Lands Council, explains,

“Over the last 20 years, really, we've seen a massive explosion in catastrophic wildfires. Fire generally can be a really good tool, right? We use prescribed fire. We recognize that fire has an important ecosystem role, but when they burn so hot, so fast, and so large, you see again, sort of a conversion of some of these landscapes into annual grasses. Do you see challenges to tree regeneration in some of these more forested ecosystems? And so PLC has been really focused on a few things, and has successfully worked with a number of members of Congress on a bipartisan basis to include more direction and more facilitation to the agencies to do targeted grazing, to do prescribed grazing, to use grazing as that fine fuels management tool.”

Federal grazing permittees often wear many hats, according to Glover, but most are also first responders. PLC is working to expand tools and resources for them, and a major focus has been on strengthening partnerships with the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. Glover discusses more in tomorrow, we'll have more from Glover on this issue in tomorrow's show.