Old grazing permits strain Navajo rangelands
WINDOW ROCK
The grazing permits were written for a different land.
The federal grazing permit system on the Navajo Nation dates to the 1930s and 1940s. Today, permits authorize 455,946 sheep units on nearly 14 million acres of tribal trust land, according to a Bureau of Indian Affairs 2024 carrying capacity report cited by the Navajo Nation Department of Agriculture.
Adjusted for slope and distance to water, the same report found the land can support 133,993 sheep units.
According to the same report, more than 10,280 permittees hold grazing rights to more than three times what the range can carry. That does not include livestock grazed without permits or feral horses, which also compete for forage.
“It’s really bad,” said Jesse Jim, the department manager for the Navajo Nation Department of Agriculture. “And nobody, I don’t think people are getting that information.”
To read the full article, please see the Sept. 10, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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Highway 264,
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