Environmental groups criticized the USDA’s recent release of its plan to “fortify the beef industry,” saying the plan weakens environmental oversight, expands grazing in sensitive habitats and reduces species protections.
“The administration is advancing a broad-scale giveaway to a handful of politically-connected public lands commercial livestock operators—a sweetheart deal for public land profiteers at the expense of everyone else,” the groups asserted. The plan received mostly positive feedback from industry groups. The greens pushed back against USDA’s plan to work with the Department of the Interior to open up more public lands grazing allotments, along with USDA’s plan to reform depredation compensation.
