Last spring, the U.S. Department of the Interior published a proposal with the potential to shift priorities on 245 million acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. A public comment period yielded thousands of substantive comments for the BLM to consider.

Jeff and J.C. Siddoway have owned a sheep, elk and bison ranch near Saint Anthony, Idaho, for generations now, and they have tried almost every method of brush management there is. For Western producers, sagebrush is a curse. Some varieties, like Wyoming big sagebrush, can grow tall as a man and wide enough to reach its neighbor, forming a 6-foot canopy over the range.