(CNN) — A coalition of 21 attorneys general have sued to block new guidance from the US Department of Agriculture that declares some immigrants, including refugees and those granted asylum, ineligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the coalition of other Democratic attorneys general, said in a statement Wednesday that the Trump administration is illegally cutting off benefits for tens of thousands of lawful permanent residents.
The USDA provided the new guidance to states narrowing SNAP eligibility last month, aligning with rollbacks of the program outlined in President Donald Trump’s domestic policy law that passed earlier this year.
The attorneys general argue in the lawsuit that the memo goes beyond what the law prescribes since it would make anyone who entered the country through humanitarian protection programs permanently ineligible for SNAP benefits — also known as food stamps — even if they become legal residents.
The group of attorneys general warn that the USDA’s guidance, which prompts a swift overhaul of eligibility systems, “threatens to destabilize SNAP nationwide,” and could put significant financial strain on states that would have to shoulder the cost of fines.
The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Oregon to vacate and block the implementation of the USDA’s guidance.
The filing comes just days after a federal judge in Virginia dismissed an indictment against James, whom President Donald Trump has viewed as a political opponent.
A spokesperson for USDA declined to comment on “pending litigation.”
(CNN) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday temporarily paused a lower court order that required the Trump administration to cover full food stamp benefits for tens of millions of Americans in November, siding with the administration on a short-term basis in a legal fight that has quickly become a defining confrontation of the government shutdown.
The upshot is that the US Department of Agriculture will not have to immediately honor a lower court order that required it to transfer $4 billion to the key food assistance program by the end of the day. The decision, while temporary, could put at risk the full benefits for millions of Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to feed themselves and their families.
The order does not resolve the underlying legal questions raised by the case – and the Trump administration has already committed to using the program’s contingency fund to partially pay benefits. Rather, Jackson’s “administrative stay” freezes any additional action by the administration to give an appeals court additional time to review the case.
Jackson is the justice assigned to handle emergency appeals from the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The legal fight over food stamps has emerged as a central pressure point between all three branches during the historically long government shutdown because it is one of the easiest to understand and most tangible impacts of that impasse so far. At stake is food assistance that nearly 42 million Americans rely on.
It’s unclear how the case will ultimately impact the billions of dollars spent in federal SNAP funding.
Complying with the lower court
The Trump administration’s emergency request to the justices came hours after the USDA told states that it was working to comply with the ruling to fully fund the program that was issued a day earlier by US District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island.
This latest legal move has injected more uncertainty into whether food stamp recipients would see their full allotments anytime soon.
The administration had made a similar emergency appeal to a Boston-based federal appeals court Friday morning, but the court had not yet weighed in by the time the USDA sent the guidance, which also said the process to make full funding for November available should be completed later on Friday. The appeals court, in a brief order Friday night, declined to put the payments on hold temporarily while it reviewed the case “as quickly as possible.”
In its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, the administration said, “Such a funding lapse is a crisis. But it is a crisis occasioned by congressional failure and one that can only be solved through congressional action.”
“The district court’s ruling,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court, “is untenable at every turn.”
The administration moved to appeal McConnell’s order after he ruled on Thursday that the government had to provide full SNAP benefits for November, instead of issuing only partial benefits as he had mandated days earlier.
Rushing to fund full benefits
Before the latest legal twist, several states had rushed to start issuing full SNAP payments to their residents. But that has caused problems, according to the administration’s filing to the Supreme Court.
Sauer told the court that Wisconsin immediately filed for 100% of its residents’ benefits to be placed on their electronic benefit transfer cards. But the USDA rejected the request because it had not yet had time to comply with McConnell’s order. That resulted in the state overdrawing its letter of credit by $20 million.
Similarly, Kansas issued full benefits worth nearly $32 million to approximately 86,000 households in the state, Sauer said.
These actions have hurt states that did not move quickly to issue benefits, he continued. They will be unable to receive funding to provide partial payments to their residents under McConnell’s prior order.
Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly reacted to the Supreme Court’s action in a statement Friday night, saying, “Today, in accordance with a court’s order and after receiving guidance from the USDA, Kansas sent full November SNAP benefits to all eligible Kansans. These Kansans, most of them children, seniors or people with disabilities, were struggling to put food on their plates.”
Other states have also promised beneficiaries would start receiving their full allotments as soon as Friday or over the weekend.
Pennsylvania residents who should have already received their SNAP benefits this month will start seeing their full payments hit their electronic benefit transfer cards on Friday, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced at a press conference earlier in the day.
“We are hoping that by this evening, by midnight or so, that all of those individuals who were owed money over the first week or so of this month, who hadn’t gotten it from the federal administration, are going to get their money,” Shapiro said.
Meanwhile, the governors of Maryland and New York said beneficiaries could expect to start seeing their benefits over the weekend.
The food stamp program has been in legal limbo since last month, when officials said recipients would not receive their payments for November due to the lapse in appropriations for the government.
The decision prompted two lawsuits, with two federal judges ruling last week that the agency must at least tap into contingency funds to provide partial benefits for this month or, at its discretion, use other revenue to fully fund November’s allotments.
The agency opted to fund partial benefits, but warned it could take weeks or months for some states to recalculate the allotments and distribute the assistance. The plaintiffs in the Rhode Island case raced back to McConnell earlier this week to argue that he should require the USDA to fully fund the benefits to get the money out the door quickly.
McConnell obliged. He ruled the administration had not worked fast enough to ensure at least partial benefits reached millions of the program’s recipients and that it had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it decided against providing the full benefits this month.
“People have gone without for too long,” McConnell said during a hearing Thursday. “Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable.”
Under McConnell’s ruling, the government was required to transfer additional unused tariff revenue used to support child nutrition programs in order to pay full SNAP benefits for November.
(CNN) — A federal judge in Rhode Island said Thursday that the Trump administration must fully cover food stamp benefits for tens of millions of Americans in November.
“People have gone without for too long,” US District Judge John McConnell said during a hastily called hearing Thursday. “Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable.”
Nearly 42 million Americans receive food stamps. Payments are made on a staggered basis over the course of a month.
But the US Department of Agriculture took the unprecedented step of halting benefits for November, saying the program had run out of funding amid the government shutdown.
Despite the judge’s ruling, however, many beneficiaries may have to wait a at least few more days to see the assistance. States send food stamp enrollees’ information to vendors every month so they can load funds onto recipients’ benefit cards, often days or weeks before the new month begins. Those steps need to take place before benefits can restart.
McConnell’s order comes days after the administration, in response to an earlier order from him, said it would provide only partial food stamp benefits for November by using $4.65 billion in a contingency fund maintained by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps.
The judge said the administration had not worked fast enough to ensure money reached the program’s millions of recipients and that it had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it decided earlier this week that it would not provide the full benefits this month.
Under McConnell’s new ruling, the government must tap into billions of additional dollars held by USDA in a separate pot of money so full SNAP benefits can be paid. The judge said those payments needed to be made to states, which administer the program, by Friday.
The administration quickly appealed McConnell’s order to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which is stacked with appointees of Democratic presidents.
Throughout the brief hearing, McConnell repeatedly chastised an attorney representing the Trump administration over the government’s failure to ensure SNAP benefits quickly reached the millions of Americans who rely on them, stressing the on-ground-impact nearly a week after recipients began missing payments for November.
“Without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry,” the judge said. “This should never happen in America. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”
On Tuesday, a coalition of cities, non-profits, unions and small businesses that brought the legal challenge complained that the administration was not complying with McConnell’s order from last week. The plaintiffs claimed that since the government admitted in court filings that reduced benefits could take weeks or months to be administered, they were violating his directive that the government work “expeditiously” to ensure November payments are made.
The judge agreed.
“It is clear to the court that the administration did not comply,” he said. “The court was clear that the administration had to either make the full payment by this past Monday, or it must ‘expeditiously resolve the administrative and clerical burdens it described in its papers.’ … The record is clear that the administration did neither.”
The hearing was the latest high-stakes court showdown over food stamps, which the administration had attempted to defund amid the government shutdown, prompting both the lawsuit in Rhode Island and a separate one filed by Democratic governors and state attorneys general in Massachusetts.
In both cases, McConnell and US District Judge Indira Talwani, of the federal court in Boston, made clear last week that the USDA must tap into contingency funds to provide at least partial SNAP benefits this month, but they left it up to government to decide whether to use unused tariff funds meant for child nutrition programs to provide full SNAP benefits for November. Both judges were appointed by former President Barack Obama.
The administration said earlier this week that it opposed using the nearly $17 billion left in the child nutrition fund because it would endanger the nation’s free and reduced-price school meals program, which serves about 29 million children a day. (The agency has transferred $750 million in tariff revenue to the WIC food assistance program for pregnant women, new moms and young children.)
But McConnell ruled on Thursday that the administration’s choice not to make full payments by dipping into the other pot of money at the USDA did not reflect reasoned agency decision-making.
He pointed specifically to the USDA’s decision to pull money from that pot to the fund the WIC food assistance program, saying that move “undermines” their argument against using it for SNAP payments.
“A rationale premised on such legal errors must be set aside as arbitrary and capricious,” McConnell said.
The administration pushed back strongly on claims that it wasn’t complying with McConnell’s earlier order and that it had made a slap-dash decision to only partially fund food stamps this month. It insisted in court papers filed Wednesday that since it had released the money from its contingency fund to states and provided guidance on how state officials can calculate reduced payments, “there is nothing more USDA could do.”
“We resolved all of the burdens that the government is responsible for,” Tyler Becker, a Justice Department lawyer, said during Thursday’s hearing.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Rhode Island case said the new ruling from McConnell was a “major victory” for the millions of Americans who receive the federal food benefits.
“This immoral and unlawful decision by the administration has shamefully delayed SNAP payments, taking food off the table of hungry families,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “We shouldn’t have to force the President to care for his citizens, but we will do whatever is necessary to protect people and communities.”
Recalculating partial benefits
The swiftly changing legal landscape has left states scrambling to catch up and recipients wondering when they would receive any assistance.
The USDA provided states with guidance on Tuesday on how to issue benefits based on cutting households’ maximum allotments in half, which the agency initially said was all it could provide with the available contingency funds.
To provide partial benefits, which has never been done before, states have to reprogram their systems to recalculate recipients’ payments.
Illinois said that beneficiaries would start seeing payments on Friday, while North Carolina and Massachusetts said recipients could expect to get their assistance next week. But Pennsylvania wrote the agency a letter saying that it would take a few weeks to get aid to recipients because of the burdensome process the USDA chose. Other states CNN contacted could not give a timeline for when benefits would be distributed.
By midweek, however, the situation has changed twice in less than 24 hours. On Wednesday evening, the USDA announced it could actually pay 65% of maximum benefits from the contingency fund and issued new guidance to states, which would necessitate another round of recalculations. The next day, McConnell ordered full payments to be made for the month.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
Washington (CNN) — American farmers are having a tough year, in no small part because of President Donald Trump’s trade war. Now, the White House is gearing up to extend them a multi-billion-dollar bailout, sources tell CNN.
Surging costs and foreign retaliation from tariffs have hurt the US agriculture industry — as have immigration-related labor shortages and plummeting commodity prices. Farm production expenses are estimated to reach $467.4 billion in 2025, according to the Agriculture Department, up $12 billion from last year.
Farm bankruptcies rose in the first half of the year to the highest level since 2021, according to US courts data.
Trump’s policies have exacerbated those woes, from the deportation of the industry’s key migrant workforce to renewed trade tensions between the United States and China. And for traditional American crops, such as soybeans, the situation has grown particularly precarious.
“There’s no doubt that the farm economy is in a significant challenge right now, especially our row croppers,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters Tuesday. “So not just soybeans, although I think they’re probably the top of the list, but corn, wheat, sorghum, cotton, et cetera.”
Indeed, the US soybean industry has become the poster child of the farm economy’s plight in the first year of Trump’s second term. The president recognizes these problems, White House officials tells CNN, and has increased pressure on his administration to address them urgently.
Over the past few weeks, the White House has held a series of interagency meetings with the Departments of Agriculture and Treasury as they attempt to finalize a relief package for US farmers, the sources said. Discussions over the best way to aid the agriculture industry are ongoing, the officials said, but they have zeroed in on two options.
“There are a lot of levers we can use to help ease the pain they are feeling,” one of the officials told CNN. One idea, floated publicly by Trump as recently as Wednesday, is to give farmers a percentage of the income the United States is receiving from the administration’s tariffs on goods being imported into the country.
“We’ve made so much money on Tariffs, that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers. I WILL NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN!” Trump wrote on social media this week. The other is tapping into a “slush fund,” as the officials described it, at the Department of Agriculture.
The Trump administration also dipped into the fund, known as Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP), in March to similarly provide assistance to farmers. USDA at the time issued $10 billion in direct payments to eligible agricultural producers of eligible commodities for the 2024 crop year.
The administration has also discussed implementing a combination of the two, depending on where they can most quickly pull the funds from, one White House official said. The current range of aid they are looking to offer ranges from $10 billion to $14 billion.
“The final figure will depend on how much farmers need and the amount of tariff revenue coming in,” the official told CNN.
Trump himself as privately been applying pressure on his team to ensure that American farmers, many of whom the Trump administration credit for helping the president win the November 2024 election, are protected. But the other reason they are making the agriculture industry such a priority, officials say, is because the Trump administration views protecting farmers as a national security issue.
“We need to grow our own food. We can’t rely on imports from other countries, that poses a problem for national security. And right now, the government is subsidizing a lot of that process,” one Trump administration official argued.
US soybean industry in crisis
An issue complicating the Trump administration’s goals revolve around soybeans — America’s largest agricultural export, valued at more than $24 billion in 2024, according to USDA data.
Last year, about half of those exports went to China, but since May, that’s dropped down to zero as a result of an effective embargo China has placed on US soybeans in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on the country. China has implemented 20% tariffs on US soybeans, making the crop from other countries significantly more attractive.
That couldn’t come at worse time for soybean farmers, with the harvest season in full swing and some farms reporting strong yields. And their luck might not change anytime soon, with Beijing ramping up its reliance on South America — inadvertently aided the US Treasury’s financial lifeline provided to Argentina in recent weeks.
A combine harvester during a soybean harvest at a farm outside St. Peter, Minnesota. Credit: Ben Brewer/Bloomberg / Getty Images via CNN Newsource
Last week, the Trump administration said it would arrange a $20 billion lifeline to Argentina’s central bank, which would exchange US dollars for pesos to help stabilize Argentina’s financial market. Argentina also temporarily scrapped export taxes on grains to help stabilize the peso, but China didn’t waste any time.
Beijing purchased “at least 10 cargoes of Argentine soybeans,” according to a report from Reuters. Brazil has also helped meet China’s demand for soybeans, with both countries announcing a pact in July to deepen agricultural trade ties.
As a result, America’s hobbled soybean industry is calling on the Trump administration to finish its trade negotiations with China.
“US soybean farmers have been clear for months: the administration needs to secure a trade deal with China. China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said last week in a statement.
Pressure on Trump
Many farmers say time is of the essence as they start to bring in this year’s crop.
“We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are moving forward, but yet with harvest here, patience may be running thin,” one Indiana farmer told CNN, describing the industry’s many challenges, which also include the deportation of key workers.
Trump has heard the calls for action.
On Wednesday, Trump blamed China for the pain soybean farmers are facing, arguing Beijing is refusing to buy soybeans for negotiating purposes amid the two countries’ tariff dispute. He added that he plans to make soybeans “a major topic of discussion” when he meets face-to-face with China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea next month.
Part of the reason Trump has given the issue so much attention, White House officials say, is because Rollins has forced the issue with not only the president, but also one of his closest advisers: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
On Tuesday, a photo of Bessent’s phone captured by the Associated Press went viral, showing a text from a contact named “BR,” presumed to be Rollins. Her messages illustrated panic within the Trump administration over the soybean industry’s woes, which worsened over the Argentina ordeal.
During this “time of uncertainty” for farmers and ranchers, Rollins said that she is in “constant communication” with the White House and partners across the government. Rollins also called Trump’s idea of temporarily giving tariff revenue to farmers “a very elegant solution.”
“To this moment of uncertainty, the ability to offset any payments to the farmers through potential tariff revenue is really where the president wants us to head, and that’s what we’re looking at,” she added.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The Biden administration has doled out more than $2 billion in direct payments for Black and other minority farmers discriminated against by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the president announced Wednesday.
More than 23,000 farmers were approved for payments ranging from $10,000 to $500,000, according to the USDA. Another 20,000 who planned to start a farm but did not receive a USDA loan received between $3,500 and $6,000.
Most payments went to farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.
USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters that the aid “is not compensation for anyone’s loss or the pain endured, but it is an acknowledgment by the department.”
The USDA has a long history of refusing to process loans from Black farmers, approving smaller loans compared to white farmers, and in some cases foreclosing quicker than usual when Black farmers who obtained loans ran into problems.
National Black Farmers Association Founder and President John Boyd Jr. said the aid is helpful. But, he said, it’s not enough.
“It’s like putting a bandage on somebody that needs open-heart surgery,” Boyd said. “We want our land, and I want to be very, very clear about that.”
Boyd is still fighting a federal lawsuit for 120% debt relief for Black farmers that was approved by Congress in 2021. Five billion dollars for the program was included in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package.
Handy Kennedy Jr of AgriUnity speaks during a tour of the Bugg Family Farm on Monday, May 15, 2023 at Pine Mountain, Georgia. (Photo: Itoro N. Umontuen/The Atlanta Voice) Credit: Itoro N. Umontuen / The Atlanta Voice
But the money never came. White farmers in several states filed lawsuits arguing their exclusion was a violation of their constitutional rights, which prompted judges to halt the program shortly after its passage.
Faced with the likelihood of a lengthy court battle that would delay payments to farmers, Congress amended the law and offered financial help to a broader group of farmers. A new law allocated $3.1 billion to help farmers struggling with USDA-backed loans and $2.2 billion to pay farmers who the agency discriminated against.
Wardell Carter, who is Black, said no one in his farming family got so much as access to a loan application since Carter’s father bought 85 acres (34.4 hectares) of Mississippi land in 1939. He said USDA loan officers would slam the door in his face. If Black farmers persisted, Carter said officers would have police come to their homes.
Without a loan, Carter’s family could not afford a tractor and instead used a horse and mule for years. And without proper equipment, the family could farm at most 40 acres (16.2 hectares) of their property — cutting profits.
When they finally received a bank loan to buy a tractor, Carter said the interest rate was 100%.
Boyd said he’s watched as his loan applications were torn up and thrown in the trash, been called racial epithets, and was told to leave in the middle of loan meetings so the officer could speak to white farmers.
“We face blatant, in-your-face, real discrimination,” Boyd said. “And I did personally. The county person who was making farm loans spat tobacco juice on me during a loan session.”
At age 65, Carter said he’s too old to farm his land. But he said if he receives money through the USDA program, he will use it to get his property in shape so his nephew can begin farming on it again. Carter said he and his family want to pitch in to buy his nephew a tractor, too.
Jewel Bronaugh, the No. 2 person at the US Department of Agriculture and the first Black woman in the position, will leave the department on Tuesday after a two-year tenure in which she led agency efforts to diversify its workforce and provide relief to farmers of color who say they have been discriminated against over the years.
Bronaugh announced last month that she was leaving the agency in order to spend more time with her family. Xochitl Torres Small, the under secretary for rural development, has been nominated to succeed her.
Along with helping steer a department that boasts 29 agencies and more than 100,000 employees across the country, Bronaugh has played a central role in the USDA’s efforts to remedy decades-long discrimination that has impacted farmers and ranchers of color. Most notably, she has co-chaired an independent commission that has examined the USDA’s policies and programs for factors that have contributed to historic discrimination against farmers of color and identify disparities, inequity and discrimination across the agency.
“I understood as a Black woman, coming into the role as deputy secretary, the weight that went with that. The responsibility that went with that. The people who for years have not been able to get resources from USDA. The history that that has had on farmers and landowners and people who live in rural communities, I knew that I had a responsibility,” Bronaugh explained in an interview with CNN.
“I knew coming in that there was a lot of work to be done and I was going to have to be real to that commitment, not only to everyone that USDA serves but specifically as a voice for people who have felt like they had not had a voice that represented in their interactions with the USDA. It was my responsibility to carry that.”
Born and raised in Petersburg, Virginia, by educators, Bronaugh at first had aspirations to become an educator herself and earned a bachelor’s degree in education from James Madison University.
But after earning a master’s degree and doctorate in vocational education from Virginia Tech, she stepped into agriculture when she took a job as a 4-H extension specialist at Virginia State University, a historically Black college and university. She also became dean of the College of Agriculture at Virginia State University and was executive director of the university’s Center for Agriculture Research, Engagement and Outreach.
In May 2018, she was appointed commissioner of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and made history as the first Black woman in the position. She was confirmed to her current role in May 2021.
At USDA, Bronaugh led international agricultural trade missions in the United Kingdom and countries in East Africa to help US farm businesses and organizations strengthen export and trade relationships.
She also helped create a chief diversity and inclusion office within the Office of the Secretary and has focused on diversifying USDA’s workforce, which has seen a slight uptick in the number of employees of color over the course of her tenure. According to USDA data, 73% of USDA employees are White, 28% are employees of color and 11% are Black. Forty-five percent of USDA employees are women.
Her very presence atop the department has been inspiring for current and former Black USDA employees, including Shirley Sherrod, who was the USDA’s director of rural development in Georgia before being pushed out under controversial circumstances in 2010.
“The fact that she is the first Black woman to hold the position means a lot to us. It gives us hope for the future,” Sherrod, who is also a member of the Equity Commission, told CNN. “When you look at the US Department of Agriculture and you look at all of the actions we have suffered as Black people trying to get the programs that should have been available to everyone, to access them and feel that they were being implemented fairly – to actually have someone in the second position … really helping to oversee that and have a voice in places we don’t normally get a chance to be in, just to me meant a lot.”
As Bronaugh prepares to leave the agency, one of her final orders of business will be to release the Equity Commission’s interim report on its findings on Tuesday, which she hopes will provide a blueprint for acting on the inequities she has tried to address during her time at USDA. She said there is no time frame on when the agency will begin implementing the recommendations but she is hopeful it will happen immediately. If confirmed by the Senate, Small would be tasked with presenting the commission’s final recommendations to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack later this year.
“Being able to get the Equity Commission to a set of interim recommendations has been huge for me,” Bronaugh said. “That is going to give us an opportunity to look at, you know, where we have discretion, where we have authority and where we have resources to immediately start to address some of the historical inequity issues here are USDA.”
Aerial shooting of the cattle will take place from February 23 to February 26, according to the news release. The service told CNN via email that they would “lethally dispatch as many feral cattle as we are able to during this operation” and that “it is likely that additional operations, using lethal and non-lethal methods, will be necessary to eliminate the feral cattle population.”
The feral cattle have created problems in the Gila National Forest since the 1970s, when a rancher abandoned cattle on the Redstone Allotment within the Gila Wilderness, according to a memo from the Forest Service. The memo defined feral cattle as cattle that don’t have brands, ear tags, or other signs of ownership.
“These cattle have not been husbanded, cared for by private owners, or kept or raised on a ranch for several generations, and are thus not domesticated,” the service said in the memo.
The difficult terrain of the forest as well as the “wild, uncooperative nature of the animals” makes capturing the cattle alive challenging and dangerous for both the animals and humans involved, according to the memo.
According to the service, the problem posed by the untamed cattle is twofold. First, the cattle are aggressive towards humans. In the memo, the service said hikers in the Gila Wilderness have been charged by feral bulls.
Second, the herbivores’ intensive grazing habits have damaged the environment and harmed native species’ natural habitats, according to the memo. The cattle’s trampling and eroding stream banks have also damaged the water quality.
“This has been a difficult decision, but the lethal removal of feral cattle from the Gila Wilderness is necessary to protect public safety, threatened and endangered species habitats, water quality, and the natural character of the Gila Wilderness,” Gila National Forest Supervisor Camille Howes said in the news release.
“The feral cattle in the Gila Wilderness have been aggressive towards wilderness visitors, graze year-round, and trample stream banks and springs, causing erosion and sedimentation,” Howes continued. “This action will help restore the wilderness character of the Gila Wilderness enjoyed by visitors from across the country.”
Some cattle ranchers are concerned some of their branded cattle could have strayed into the Gila Wilderness over the past few years, according to the news release. The service said it is “committed to continued efforts toward collaborative solutions” and that it would work with ranchers to locate and remove their branded cattle.
