The Welfare Cattle Empire That Controls Your Public Lands

How a 22,000-member lobby bought 248 million acres of your public land for $1.35 a month, and why we’re still paying for it.

Here’s the question we should be asking about public lands grazing.

Why are we still paying for this?

In March 2025, we first laid out the basic absurdity of the system. Privately owned cattle graze 248 million acres of your federal land for the price of a gas station coffee. Bison, the native animal that built those grasslands, gets fenced in, hazed by helicopters, or slaughtered if it wanders. We thought it was the most infuriating public lands story we’d ever told.

Thirteen months later, the Trump administration proved us right by trying to make it worse. In January 2026, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum moved to revoke American Prairie’s bison grazing permits after Montana’s Republican delegation asked him to. The BLM finalized that decision in May 2026, ordering the removal of bison from 63,000 acres of federal public lands by September 30. We covered the eviction in detail. We’re not retelling that story.

We’re telling the one underneath it. The federal grazing program isn’t a quirk o…