Lytle Denny, a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, developed an intimate understanding of the high-desert landscape in southeastern Idaho from a young age, learning the ancestral homelands’ intricate ecosystems during family hunting trips. While his father pursued deer and elk, Denny found himself drawn to the elusive grouse—blue, ruffed, sharp-tailed, and particularly, the greater sage grouse. He learned to move silently through the silver-green sagebrush, anticipating the sudden, heavy wingbeats of a startled bird, a skill honed by generations of Indigenous stewardship and close observation of nature. His family, hunting as a cohesive unit, understood the interconnectedness of the land, often flushing both birds and larger game, a testament to the thriving biodiversity of a balanced ecosystem.

As Denny matured, however, a stark change became undeniable: the sage grouse populations were visibly dwindling. These chicken-sized birds, with their distinctive white chest feathers and sunbeam-shaped brown tail feathers, hold profound cultural significance for the Shoshone-Bannock people, weaving through their songs, dances, stories, and serving as a traditional food source. The decline extended beyond the grouse; ground squirrels and mule deer, vital components of the sagebrush steppe, also grew scarcer. Denny observed an increasing encroachment of agricultural farms replacing native sagebrush near the reservation, accompanied by a rise in cattle grazing. These pressures, coupled with intensifying drought conditions and more frequent, destructive wildfires, painted a clear picture of environmental degradation.

By his late teens, Denny’s passion for the land solidified into a commitment to pursue a career in fish and wildlife biology. He delved into the complex conflicts between sage grouse and cattle, particularly regarding the birds’ open mating grounds, known as leks. Each spring, male sage grouse return faithfully to these leks to perform one of North America’s most spectacular mating displays: they inflate two large yellow air sacs on their chests, gulping a gallon of air, and strut, creating a unique popping and swishing sound with their stiffened chest feathers and wings. Yet, he witnessed livestock grazing disturbing this ancient ritual; ranchers, in some instances, drove ATVs onto active leks, scattering salt licks for their cows. While sharp-tailed grouse persisted, the more sensitive sage grouse retreated. "I started asking questions like, ‘Why are we letting this happen?’" Denny recalled, reflecting on his burgeoning environmental consciousness. "I didn’t have any stake in livestock. I had value in the land, in plants and animals." Today, at 46, Denny no longer hunts sage grouse but pauses to observe them whenever he encounters one, recognizing their rarity. He now serves as the deputy executive director of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ Natural Resources Division, leading efforts to address the very issues he observed as a youth.

The Shoshone-Bannock and the Burns Paiute Tribe of southeastern Oregon are at the forefront of a critical conservation battle, confronting the pervasive impact of cattle grazing on native plants and animals, including the imperiled greater sage grouse, across the high-desert sagebrush steppe that blankets much of the American West. This vast expanse of land is the ancestral territory of the Shoshone-Bannock, a confederation of the Eastern and Western bands of the Northern Shoshone and the Bannock tribes, or Northern Paiute, whose deep-rooted ecological knowledge offers a path forward.

Since 1965, sage grouse populations across the West have plummeted by an alarming 80%, with the most severe declines recorded in the Great Basin region, encompassing Nevada and parts of Idaho, Oregon, and Utah. These iconic birds, widely regarded as a keystone species, serve as a vital indicator of the overall health of the sagebrush steppe ecosystem. Their plight has fueled decades of legal battles and land-use disputes, leading to repeated, though unsuccessful, attempts to list them under the federal Endangered Species Act. Before the arrival of non-Native settlers in the mid-1800s, an estimated 16 million sage grouse thrived across 13 states and three Canadian provinces. Today, only approximately 350,000 remain, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A staggering half of the species’ original habitat has vanished, replaced by agricultural farms, sprawling cow pastures, invasive grasses, and the expanding footprints of mining and oil and gas extraction.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the federal agency entrusted with overseeing the majority of remaining sage grouse habitat, often attributes this decline primarily to habitat loss and degradation stemming from drought, wildfire, and the proliferation of invasive grasses. However, federal officials frequently omit or downplay the role of livestock grazing—the most widespread commercial land use in the West by acreage—as a fundamental underlying factor. Powerful ranching interests, heavily concentrated among large corporations such as the multinational conglomerate J.R. Simplot Co., a major potato supplier, exert significant influence over federal land-management policies. This influence persists despite the fact that cattle grazing on public lands contributes less than 2% to the nation’s total beef supply. Critically, nearly all remaining sage grouse habitat remains open to grazing, intensifying the conflict.

Many tribal members and scientists, including Lytle Denny, along with non-Native advocacy organizations like the Western Watersheds Project, advocate for a fundamental reevaluation of extensive public-lands grazing. They argue it imperils not only the sage grouse but the entire sagebrush steppe ecosystem and its rich biodiversity, including mule deer and jackrabbits. Diane Teeman, a Burns Paiute tribal elder and former manager of the tribe’s Culture and Heritage Department, challenges the deeply ingrained settler-colonial perception of the West as "cattle country." She asserts, "Cows are an invasive species," adding that grazing inflicts "permanent damage to a lot of things here." This perspective highlights a clash of values, where traditional Indigenous understanding of ecological balance confronts a system prioritizing economic exploitation.

The threat posed by grazing to sage grouse populations has become even more acute under recent administrative shifts. In July of a prior administration, a BLM policy mandating prioritized environmental reviews of grazing in critical habitats for at-risk species like sage grouse was rescinded. Subsequently, in October, the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture unveiled a plan advocating for the expansion of acres open to grazing on BLM and Forest Service lands. By December, the BLM finalized new sage grouse management plans for several Western states, including Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming, which significantly eased restrictions on oil, gas, and mining operations. These plans also eliminated a previous requirement for ranchers in Idaho, California, and Nevada to maintain grasses at least seven inches tall, a crucial protective measure for grouse nests against predators. Such policy changes underscore the political sensitivity of land management in the West and the persistent pressure from industrial agricultural lobbies.

In contrast to these federal policies, both the Burns Paiute and Shoshone-Bannock tribes are actively developing and modeling innovative approaches to reduce grazing pressure on their lands. The Burns Paiute Tribe has substantially decreased the number of cattle permitted to graze on tribal territories, while the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes are in the process of reevaluating herd sizes on reservation lands. The initial results of these tribal initiatives are highly encouraging, demonstrating how strategic restrictions on cattle grazing can significantly benefit native wildlife, including the sage grouse. However, extending such efforts to vast public lands would necessitate dismantling generations of deeply entrenched beliefs about the role of grazing in the Western identity. As Lytle Denny aptly puts it, cattle are "woven into the very fabric of Western colonial identity," and challenging this tradition "is to go straight against settler-colonial values." This struggle, Denny emphasizes, is fundamentally "whose values are getting precedence over whose."

The sagebrush steppe, often misperceived as a monotonous landscape, is in fact a subtly diverse and critically important ecosystem. Unlike the towering forests of the Pacific Northwest, its beauty thrives closer to the ground, a pastel-green expanse of low-growing, fragrant sagebrush, interspersed with the delicate blossoms of yellow hawksbeard and purple sagebrush mariposa lilies. Crucially, the ground beneath is often adorned with biological soil crusts—miniscule, intricate formations of lichens, mosses, green algae, and cyanobacteria. These crusts function as the ecosystem’s organic armor, playing a pivotal role in retaining moisture, cycling vital nutrients, and preventing the invasion of non-native plants. When these fragile crusts are disturbed or broken, the entire plant community can unravel, highlighting the delicate balance, as Diane Teeman observes, that underpins this unique biome.

In a healthy high-desert landscape, soil crusts form resilient clumps, with sagebrush growing in scattered patterns and native bunchgrasses filling the spaces between. This environment provides ideal habitat for sage grouse, offering protective cover under the modest sagebrush canopy and tall grasses for their speckled ground nests, shielding broods from predators such as ravens and coyotes. Abundant wildflowers support a rich insect population, both of which are critical food sources for adult grouse and their vulnerable chicks.

However, generations of extensive cattle grazing have profoundly transformed this once-thriving landscape. Herds compact the fragile soils, rendering the ground hard, dry, and less capable of retaining water, thereby exacerbating drought conditions and intensifying the wildfire cycle. Boone Kauffman, an Oregon State University ecologist, vividly contrasts the impact: "You walk across a grazed area, and it’s like walking on a parking lot," he describes, whereas an ungrazed area feels "like walking on a marshmallow."

Cattle are also vectors for the spread of invasive cheatgrass, an aggressive annual that outcompetes native grasses and paints entire hillsides maroon in spring. Sage grouse and most other wildlife actively avoid areas heavily infested with cheatgrass, which began its spread across the West in the late 1800s. Livestock contribute to its proliferation both directly, by carrying seeds on their hooves and hides, and indirectly, by breaking up soil crusts and overgrazing native grasses, creating ideal conditions for cheatgrass germination. Cows further degrade critical riparian areas—natural oases in the desert—by devouring bunchgrasses, exposing grouse nests, trampling streambanks, and consuming wildflowers, willows, and aspens, which are essential for diverse plant and animal life. Roger Rosentreter, a retired BLM Idaho state botanist, lamented that "Every riparian area in the West has been hammered."

Beyond habitat destruction, grazing infrastructure poses direct threats. Water troughs built for cattle can become drowning hazards for sage grouse and other birds, while barbed-wire fences injure grouse, snagging their wings and sometimes even decapitating them. The widespread use of insecticides to protect forage for cattle inadvertently kills grasshoppers and crickets, crucial protein sources for grouse chicks, further undermining population health. These cumulative effects, as Rosentreter states, "are sealing the coffin on so many of our native wildlife."

Ranching’s dominance over the American West began in the mid-1800s, fueled by cattle barons, federal westward-expansion policies, and the forcible removal of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. Hundreds of thousands of cows subsequently grazed the tall bunchgrasses of the sagebrush steppe, a landscape newcomers and the government termed "the range," a term that evolved into "rangeland." While some rangeland scientists consider it an ecological term, others, like Nathan Sayre, a geography professor at the University of California, Berkeley, argue it is inherently colonial, writing in a 2023 book that "Rangelands are inescapably implicated in the conquest and settlement of North America."

Rangeland science itself developed in close association with the livestock industry. By the early 1900s, livestock herds had severely depleted native vegetation across the West, prompting ranchers to seek assistance. A 1934 U.S. Department of Agriculture report indicated that only 16% of public rangeland remained in good condition. In response, USDA scientists began researching non-native grasses and forage crops suited for the high desert, and universities across the West established range-management programs to support the struggling livestock industry. This federally backed research significantly shaped the laws and policies that continue to govern Western rangelands today. A key component of early government programs involved seeding depleted lands with non-native crested wheatgrass, favored by ranchers for its palatability to livestock and resilience to heavy grazing. Federal agencies also eradicated sagebrush on millions of acres across Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, Nevada, California, Utah, and Wyoming, employing herbicides and then reseeding with crested wheatgrass, transforming the silver-green landscape into gold. This dramatically increased grazing capacity, by as much as 800% in Elko, Nevada, according to a 1954 USDA report.

While contemporary rangeland science has begun to incorporate more ecological considerations, its foundational economic ties to livestock persist. For example, Oregon State University’s rangeland science extension center in Burns openly states its mission to "help maintain a robust and sustainable cattle industry in Oregon." Both Rosentreter and Kauffman confirm the difficulty of securing funding for studies that investigate the ecological impacts of grazing. Kauffman recounted that after publishing two studies demonstrating grazing’s degradation of public land in 2022, local cattle industry leaders called for his removal from Oregon State University. "There’s a real pressure, and probably unprecedented pressure at the moment, on state and federally funded scientists to not go against the cattle industry," he observed.

The livestock industry has also directly funded rangeland science. A June 2025 report by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Idaho’s Rangeland Center, which concluded that livestock grazing on federal land in Idaho did not negatively impact sage grouse nesting success, received significant in-kind donations of equipment—including trucks, ATVs, and laptops—from two ranching advocacy groups, the Public Lands Council and Idaho Cattle Association, according to a co-author. Even before its publication, in March 2024, these groups urged the BLM to incorporate the report’s findings into its sage grouse management plans, which the agency subsequently did in the finalized December plans. While the BLM stated it "does not rely solely on any single publication," it declined to comment on industry pressure. Kaitlynn Glover, an executive director of government affairs for both industry groups, claimed on RFD-TV that the report scientifically validated ranchers’ long-held belief that grazing improves landscapes and sustains sage grouse.

Today, over 200 million acres—a staggering 85%—of Western public lands are grazed by livestock, predominantly beef cattle. Industry leaders frequently assert that ranchers are crucial to sage grouse conservation, arguing that both cattle and grouse benefit from open foraging land. Oregon rancher Tom Sharp popularized the tagline, "What’s good for the bird is good for the herd," a sentiment echoed by some scientists like Skyler Vold, a sage grouse biologist at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, who believes "livestock grazing (is) very compatible with sage grouse conservation."

Some rangeland scientists and the BLM contend that modern grazing practices have advanced to a point where they no longer degrade the landscape. Brian Hires, the BLM’s press secretary, stated that "well-managed livestock grazing is not considered a threat to greater sage-grouse habitat or survival." However, the definition of "well-managed" remains highly contentious. Erik Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds Project, a nonprofit focused on grazing’s ecological impact on public lands, retorts, "There is so little well-managed livestock grazing in the American West, I don’t even know why we’re talking about it."

Land managers and scientists classify grazing levels as light, moderate, or heavy based on the amount of vegetation consumed by livestock on a BLM grazing allotment annually. Yet, accurately measuring this across vast federal allotments, some exceeding 250,000 acres, presents significant challenges. The BLM typically relies on "ocular assessments," or visual estimations, which Molvar dismisses as "a wild guess." The BLM, however, asserts it "employs multiple data collection and assessment methods," varying depending on available resources.

The BLM commonly permits cattle to consume 50% of native plants annually on most federal allotments and 60% of non-native species like crested wheatgrass. A frequently cited 1999 paper, still considered relevant by scientists like Rosentreter, concluded that a 50% utilization rate might be "moderate" in areas with higher precipitation, such as the Southern pine forests of Georgia, maintaining landscape conditions. However, in semi-arid ecosystems like the sagebrush steppe, this level of consumption actively degrades the land. The study defined moderate grazing in dry areas as 35% to 45% of vegetation. To truly improve rangeland conditions in these environments, cattle would need to consume even less—30% to 35%—approximately 40% less than the BLM currently permits. Notably, the recent University of Idaho study, which ranching interests championed, found no harm to sage grouse when cattle consumed an average of just 22% of plants, a level considered light grazing and rarely practiced on public lands.

Research from Oregon State University’s extension center in Burns suggests that targeted grazing can effectively reduce invasive grasses. This method, however, demands ranchers confine cattle to small, fenced pastures and move them frequently, a practice common on private land but logistically challenging on vast public allotments. Mark Salvo, program director for the Oregon Natural Desert Association, acknowledges that "Sometimes the research is pointing to or identifying tools that are, under our current system, almost impossible to implement." Austin Smith, natural resources director and a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs in central Oregon, explains that for grazing to combat invasive grasses, it requires careful management: cows are allowed to graze invasive grasses in early spring but then "you get them off the landscape and with enough time for these other plants to come in and grow." On BLM lands, he adds, "they just hammer the heck out of it."

Science indicates that grazing can both harm and potentially help sage grouse habitat, depending on management practices, as Nada Wolff Culver, former principal deputy director of the BLM during the Biden administration, noted. Yet, for decades, the BLM has lacked the necessary staffing and resources to adequately manage its vast grazing allotments. Data obtained by the nonprofit watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) revealed that 56.7 million acres—approximately 37%—of federal grazing allotments failed to meet BLM land-health standards between 1997 and 2023, primarily due to livestock grazing. In a 2023 federal lawsuit against the BLM, PEER and the Western Watersheds Project alleged that the agency had failed to conduct environmental reviews for nearly two-thirds of its grazing permits, leading Diane Teeman to conclude, "I think it’s a failed system."

Collin Williams, a non-Native wildlife biologist for the Burns Paiute Tribe, observed the surprisingly dry ground on BLM land east of Burns, Oregon, in April, typically a muddy season due to snowmelt. Despite recent heavy snowpack from the Strawberry Mountains, which had even flooded parts of the tribe’s reservation, bringing hope for wildflowers and insects for grouse, the landscape quickly dried. Williams and his colleague, Matthew Hanneman, the tribe’s non-Native wildlife program manager, quietly moved to a vantage point at dawn to tally sage grouse. They scanned several leks with binoculars, observing about 60 males performing their signature mating dances, appearing spherical in the near-freezing air, their white and brown feathers stark against the beige bunchgrasses.

Biologists for the Burns Paiute Tribe have diligently counted sage grouse in the area since the early 2000s, collaborating with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. These leks are roughly five miles from Jonesboro, a tribally owned property—a former ranch—where some sage grouse spend their summers. In 2000, the tribe reacquired these 6,385 acres of unceded ancestral lands, along with an additional 1,760-acre property called Logan Valley. Tribal officials have since embarked on extensive restoration efforts for wildlife, including grouse, mule deer, and elk, ensuring tribal members have access for traditional hunting and gathering. Diane Teeman articulated the Paiute approach to ecosystem stewardship: "We don’t just consider the management of things in terms of their value to us," she explained. "The management is really about how to give everything its due rights and personhood, as opposed to how BLM or any of the other Western-oriented management systems work where everything is a resource."

Before the tribe acquired the Jonesboro site, decades of livestock grazing had severely degraded it, with weeds choking out native vegetation. Federal fire-suppression policies and overgrazing had also led to an expansion of juniper trees. Since reacquiring the property, the tribe has actively worked to reverse this colonial legacy, demonstrating strategies applicable to federal lands. In the early 2000s, some fencing was removed. Tribal staff, including Williams and Hanneman, have overseen projects to cut junipers, clearing space for grouse that avoid forested areas, and planted native sagebrush, yarrow, rabbitbrush, and buckwheat. Weed removal has been the most intensive undertaking, involving mowing, burning, herbicide application, and even carefully managed grazing to combat cheatgrass and medusahead.

The Jonesboro site came with 21,242 acres of BLM allotments and 4,154 acres of state grazing allotments. The tribe subleases these permits to local ranchers, generating some income, but their primary focus is not beef production. "Our focus is definitely wildlife and wildlife conservation," Williams affirmed. Grazing is strategically employed to target weeds and clear thatch when native grasses are dormant, but the tribe permits only one-third of the cattle allowed under its BLM permit. Williams noted that only certain areas, typically near streams or springs, are suitable for grazing, and these are often critical habitats for sage grouse and other wildlife. With fewer cows, native animals have more forage. The tribe also implements regular rest periods for Jonesboro pastures; cattle graze in small, 40- to 60-acre fenced pastures on tribal land for approximately 10 days before being removed. On larger federal pastures subleased to local ranchers, the tribe mandates removal after one to two months. These concerted efforts are gradually revitalizing the property, as evidenced by tribal biologists’ photographs from 2007 to 2018, which show a visibly greener landscape, with riparian vegetation reclaiming abandoned roads and an increase in bunchgrasses.

In southeastern Idaho, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, under Lytle Denny’s leadership, are similarly evaluating strategies to reduce grazing impacts. Their Natural Resources Division is studying 320,000 acres of rangeland on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation to reassess permitted cattle numbers. While much of the reservation is grazed, only a third of the animals belong to tribal members, some of whom come from ranching families. Approximately 20,500 acres of the reservation’s rangelands are already designated as off-limits to grazing, and the tribes own an additional 33,000 acres of conservation land where grazing is prohibited, according to Preston Buckskin, the tribes’ land-use director. They are also considering barring cattle from specific sage grouse mating sites.

Buckskin acknowledges the long-standing challenge of reconciling traditional tribal values of conservation with the economic realities of ranching, which sustains many families. Tribal cattlemen have historically influenced land-management decisions on the reservation. The tribes’ Office of Public Affairs emphasized that while grazing’s impact on sage grouse habitat is significant, "effective conservation outcomes depend on collaboration among producers, land managers, and tribes rather than placing responsibility on any single group."

As a potential compromise, the tribal land-use department is exploring a program that would compensate landowners for ceasing grazing activities. Non-Native conservation organizations like the Western Watersheds Project have advocated for similar approaches on federal lands for years. Most recently, Democratic Representatives Adam Smith, Jared Huffman, and Eleanor Holmes Norton reintroduced legislation in October that would allow ranchers to voluntarily relinquish their grazing privileges in exchange for buyouts from private individuals or groups.

Furthermore, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes are developing a new land-use plan that would reclassify certain areas on the reservation, currently zoned as "rangelands," as "wildlands." This change aims to recognize and prioritize the land’s inherent value for wildlife and tribal hunting. "Words shape expectations," Denny stated, explaining that "‘Rangeland’ implies that the land is for livestock. It carries a meaning imposed by a different way of thinking. I prefer the term ‘sagebrush steppe.’" This semantic shift underscores a profound reorientation of values.

In the early 1990s, the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in southern Oregon presented a stark example of severe overgrazing. When then-manager Barry Reiswig made the highly controversial decision to prohibit cattle on the property, he faced intense local opposition, characterized by some as the "epitome of evil," as depicted in the 2019 documentary Rewilding a Mountain. Reiswig recalled the immense pressure to "compromise, to kind of look the other way" regarding grazing’s impact. However, the landscape, grazed for 120 years, remarkably began to repair itself within a short period. A 2015 study by Forest Service and Oregon State University researchers found that in just 12 years, aspen cover increased by 64%, and wildflowers multiplied by 68%. Within 23 years, bare soil decreased by 90%, and rushes and willows quadrupled.

Today, the Hart Mountain Refuge stands as one of the largest ungrazed areas in the Great Basin and a crucial breeding ground for sage grouse in the West. Female grouse are commonly observed with their chicks, scurrying across gravel roads and foraging in wet meadows. The 2015 study concluded that "Simply removing cattle from areas may be all that is required to restore many degraded riparian areas in the American West."

The highly politicized nature of grazing makes open discussion difficult for scientists and state and federal agency officials, Lytle Denny noted. "We’ve got to get uncomfortable talking about the truth," he asserted, suggesting that tribes can lead this crucial conversation and provide models for reconciliation. "We can use our homelands as, like, ‘This is the model for how you navigate this.’"

Ultimately, meaningful progress hinges on the federal government’s willingness to reform its entrenched policies, a challenge starkly illustrated by events on Burns Paiute land. Just north of the Malheur River’s headwaters, nestled in a forest clearing below the snowy Strawberry Mountains, a small population of sage grouse has unexpectedly found a summer home in a portion of Logan Valley, now tribal land. The birds’ preferred mountain big sage grows on a gentle slope above a nearby creek, and last year, by mid-May, bluebells and yellow groundsels—wildflowers favored by grouse—were beginning to bloom in the mountain meadow.

The origin of these grouse remains a mystery to Hanneman, given that the open valley is surrounded by lodgepole and ponderosa pines, a dangerous environment for sage grouse due to predators like Cooper’s hawks and goshawks. The nearest known lek is 10 miles away. To unravel their movements, the tribe secured a grant from the Oregon Wildlife Foundation for transmitters, which will be placed on grouse this summer. The resulting data will inform conservation efforts for their migration corridor. Historically, cultural burning, a traditional Indigenous practice, was prohibited by the federal government over a century ago, leading to conifer encroachment. The tribe has since hand-cut 60 acres of pines to maintain open sagebrush habitat for grouse and other wildlife, and they hope to reintroduce prescribed fire to the meadows.

Most of the 1,760-acre Logan Valley property has been ungrazed since the tribe reacquired it in 2000. Cattle are permitted only on a 300-acre meadow to control a non-native grass introduced by settlers for hay and forage. However, the tribal property shares a border with federal land, forming a "Y" shape along creeks that merge into the Malheur River. The Forest Service, which manages the land between these waterways, allows cows to graze from June to October.

Trespassing cattle have been a persistent issue for years due to old, inadequate fencing. The tribe erects a temporary fence at the end of May to protect its land once cattle return to the neighboring federal property in June. During a mid-May site visit, Hanneman drove a dirt road cutting through the property and slowed abruptly. "I did not know they put cattle out already," he remarked as a dozen black cows stared at him. The cattle had arrived two weeks early, before the temporary fence could be erected, underscoring the ongoing challenges and the critical need for federal policy alignment with tribal conservation goals.