A newly released report shows widespread livestock grazing is destroying streamside habitats in New Mexico and Arizona.

The conservationists who released it say the federal government has failed to protect the endangered plants and animals living in these riparian zones.

Based on eight years of field surveys, the report takes a look at 178 Forest Service and 35 Bureau of Land Management grazing allotments in Arizona and New Mexico.

Overall, half of the roughly 2,400 miles surveyed since 2017 show significant damage to critical habitat from livestock grazing, while 14% of the area has no damage whatsoever.

Chris Bugbee, an advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity , which authored the report, said the findings are significant because very few areas are deemed essential for species conservation.

“Riparian zones all together make about 1% of the land area, and so critical habitat designations within these riparian zones are a subset of that tiny percentage,” Bugbee said.

In the Gila National Forest, for example, approximately 26.2% of the total land surveyed is either moderately or significantly impacted by cattle according to an analysis by KUNM.

The Gila and its surrounding areas are home to the endangered Mexican gray wolf, Mexican spotted owl, and fish like the spikedace , and loach minnow – along with critically imperiled plants like the Hess' fleabane , which is only found in Southeastern New Mexico.

A total of 114 species and subspecies in the region are included on New Mexico’s list of threatened and endangered wildlife.

KUNM reached out to the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association and the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau for comment on the report and will update this story if we hear back.

In addition to wild cows that roam the Gila, the federal government allows ranchers to graze their livestock on both Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land starting at $1.35 per month for a cow/calf pair, or five total sheep or goats.

That fee has been unchanged since 2019, when the BLM under the first Trump Administration lowered it from $1.41 . Adjusting for inflation, the current rate is cheaper than it was around 40 years ago .

Environmentalists bashed Former President Joe Biden for not raising the rate, calling it a “failure in stewardship.” Bugbee echoes that sentiment.

“It's really a head scratcher as to why these practices continue, and why they continue to be prioritized when it just doesn't add up,” he said.

In fact, a 2019 congressional investigation found that a grazing lease for similar livestock grazing on private ranchlands in the West was much more expensive – at $23.40 per head per month in 2017.

Recent scientific studies show the economic and environmental costs from grazing cattle are 26 times greater than annual grazing fees collected by the federal government.

A single cow can belch about 220 pounds of methane annually, producing, by conservative estimates, 1/10th of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. They also destroy fragile ecosystems by trampling vegetation and soils.

“It's unfortunate there are a vast variety of threatened and endangered species that are competing with commercial cattle operations for what is basically the limiting resource in the Southwest, which is surface water,” Bugbee said.

This report comes on the heels of a lawsuit brought against the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last summer for failing to protect endangered species on the Valles Caldera Preserve .

The suit alleges the government neglected to fix damaged barbed wire fences meant to keep trespassing livestock off protected lands.