Livestock grazing won’t

be allowed this year on four eastern Oregon

allotments formerly grazed by Hammond

Ranches. The Trump administration recently

abandoned its appeal of a 2019 court ruling

overturning then-Secretary of the Interior

Ryan Zinke’s decision to renew the father and

son’s grazing permit.

Judge U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon’s

2019 decision stands with no grazing

there until the Bureau of Land Management

does an environmental analysis to issue a new

grazing permit.

The BLM revoked the Hammonds

Ranches’ grazing privileges in 2014 after

Dwight and Steven Hammond were convicted

of arson on federal lands in 2012 and

sentenced to five years in prison. Trump pardoned

the Hammonds in 2018. Later that year,

Zinke, on his last day in office during a government

shutdown, ordered BLM to renew

the Hammonds’ permit, citing the pardons as

“changed circumstances.” BLM complied

shortly after the government shutdown ended.

After Western Watersheds Project, Center

for Biological Diversity and WildEarth

Guardians sued and won, the BLM began its

appeal.