{"id":346777,"date":"2018-02-04T14:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/feds-still-ignoring-illegal-grazing\/"},"modified":"2018-02-04T14:00:30","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T13:00:30","slug":"feds-still-ignoring-illegal-grazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/feds-still-ignoring-illegal-grazing\/","title":{"rendered":"Feds Still Ignoring Illegal Grazing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/Images_2018_02\/2018_0203_Bundy.jpg\" alt=\" Rancher Cliven Bundy (2nd R) speaks during a news conference along the Virgin River near his ranch on April 24, 2014 in Bunkerville, Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management and Bundy have been locked in a dispute for a couple of decades over grazing rights on public lands. (Photo by David Becker\/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\"> Rancher Cliven Bundy speaks during a news conference along the Virgin River near his ranch on April 24, 2014 in Bunkerville, Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management and Bundy have been locked in a dispute for a couple of decades over grazing rights on public lands. (Photo: David Becker \/ Getty Images)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is shirking promises it made to crackdown on the misuse of public lands.<\/p>\n<p>Released documents show that the agency has completely shelved planned regulations to\u00a0root out ranchers engaged in illegal cattle grazing on BLM lands.<\/p>\n<p>The internal records show that throughout 2017, the agency&#8217;s timeline for implementing the new rules on cattle grazing slipped from &#8220;ongoing&#8221; to &#8220;on hold.&#8221; The regulations are now missing entirely from BLM&#8217;s 2018 regulatory agenda.<\/p>\n<p>The Government Accountability Office previously found that BLM didn&#8217;t record the vast majority of illegal grazing incidents.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Agency staff told GAO that they handle most incidents informally &#8212; their preferred practice &#8212; and do not record them in databases or consistently in paper files, because, in part, they do not consider it a priority,&#8221; a 2016\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peer.org\/assets\/docs\/blm\/7_18_17_GAO_Grazing%20Trespass_Report.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" data-slimstat=\"3\">report<\/a>\u00a0found.<\/p>\n<p>Following those findings, the BLM agreed to a number of GAO recommendations to better monitor ranchers illegally exploiting public lands. The newly released documents, however, show the agency no longer intends to comply.<\/p>\n<p>The latest records were released Thursday by the watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). They were obtained following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Grazing trespass is a form of theft against the public that BLM chooses to ignore,&#8221; PEER Advocacy Director Kirsten Stade said in a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peer.org\/news\/news-releases\/blm-still-mia-on-grazing-trespass.html\" target=\"_blank\" data-slimstat=\"5\">statement<\/a>\u00a0blasting Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When he suggests that federal grazing programs are well regulated, Secretary Zinke is talking through his hat,&#8221; Stade added.<\/p>\n<p>PEER also noted that the lack of rules &#8220;compounds the embarrassment&#8221; already suffered by BLM at the hands of one of the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/43423-bundy-reigns-feds-still-ignoring-illegal-grazing\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rancher Cliven Bundy speaks during a news conference along the Virgin River near his ranch on April 24, 2014 in Bunkerville, Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management and Bundy have been locked in a dispute for a couple of decades over grazing rights on public lands. (Photo: David Becker \/ Getty Images) The US Bureau [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":346778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-346777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}