Interior Department Ignores Thousands Fired In Reviewing Its Week

By

Kurt Repanshek

Published Date

February 17, 2025

Interior Secretary Celebrated the "Gulf of America" while ignoring 2,300 fired employees/NPS

Interior Secretary Celebrated the "Gulf of America" while ignoring 2,300 fired employees/DOI

It was a great week at the Interior Department: the "Gulf of America" was crowned, grazing fees on public lands remain absurdly low, and U.S. Geological Survey staff helped rescue cold-stunned sea turtles in Florida.

Those 2,300 Interior employees — including 1,000 from the National Park Service — whose Valentine's Day greeting were termination notices? Not a mention in Interior Secretary Doug Burgum's "This Week At Interior" email sent Friday to review what Interior was up to last week. The video was removed early Monday.

The grazing fee — the amount charged ranchers for allowing their livestock to graze on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands — for 2025 is $1.35 per month per cow-calf combination. That's the lowest it can drop under the 1978 Public Rangelands Improvement Act and under a 1986 presidential Executive Order.

Grazing fees on private lands are much, much higher. For instance, in Montana last year they ran $31.50 per cow-calf unit, and in South Dakota $42.

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