Public Lands Council v. Babbitt (2000) 529 U.S. 728, discusses the use of grazing permits as collateral and its importance to the banking industry in the western United States. In its brief, the bank asserted, among other things, that financial institutions hold an estimated $10 billion in loans and related credit transactions to the public land ranching industry, with the grazing preference rights alone worth approximately $1 billion. The Supreme Court concluded that it gave the agency "broad discretionary powers" and thus "at least ordinary administrative leeway to assess `safeguarding' in terms of the Act's other purposes and provisions." Prior to 1934, the public rangelands were unregulated and ranchers freely grazed livestock on the publicly owned range. Lack of oversight, "population growth, forage competition, and inadequate range control all began to have consequences both serious and apparent" for the western rangelands. Over-grazed and suffering from a terrible drought, the range was swept by dust storms. "The devastating storms of the Dust Bowl were in the words of one Senator `the most tragic, the most impressive lobbyist, that has ever come to this Capitol.'" (quoting 79 Cong. Rec. 6013 (1935)). On June 28, 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act, 43 U.S.C. 315et seq., into law authorizing the Secretary of the Interior, for the first time, to manage the rangelands and divide them into regulated grazing districts. Id. The Taylor Grazing Act's stated purpose was both to "stop injury to the public grazing lands by preventing overgrazing and soil deterioration," 48 Stat. 1269, and to "promote the highest use of the public lands." (43 U.S.C. 315.) To manage and oversee the division of the public rangelands into grazing districts, the Department of Interior created district advisory boards comprised of local ranchers. Public Lands Council. The boards became the effective governing body of each grazing district. Id. Nearly three decades after the enactment of the Taylor Grazing Act, however, the Department of Interior had failed to achieve the first of the Act's stated goals, namely, to halt the degradation of the public grasslands. In 1962, 83.4 percent of the public grasslands remained in fair or poor condition. Id. In 1976, Congress enacted FLPMA, 43 U.S.C. 1701 et seq. The stated purpose of FLPMA was to manage the grasslands for "multiple use," id. 1701(a)(7), with an increased emphasis on the management of the public lands "in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource, and archeological values." Id. 1701(a)(8). In 1978, to comply with the new law, the Department of the Interior amended its grazing regulations. Public Lands Council, 529 U.S. at 738, 120 S.Ct. 1815 (citing 43 Fed.Reg. 29,067). Thereafter, the grazing amendments went largely unchanged until 1995. In 1995, the Department of Interior amended the federal grazing regulations in order to, among other objectives, broaden membership on the district advisory boards, "improve administration of grazing permits and leases, to place greater emphasis on stewardship of the rangeland resource," and "to manage the rangeland resource using an ecological approach." (58 Fed.Reg. 43,208; see Public Lands Council, 529 U.S. at 739.) Public Lands Council and other ranching-related organizations with members who held grazing permits sued the Secretary, challenging the new regulations and arguing that they exceeded the Secretary's authority under the Taylor Grazing Act. The Supreme Court held that the amendments did not exceed the Secretary's authority under the Act, and the 1995 amendments went into effect (hereinafter the 1995 Regulations). (Id. at 743, 748, 750.)