Federal transfer delays leave Apache County ranch short on salt and pay

Gene Shepherd has kept showing up at Padres Mesa Demonstration Ranch near Chambers even as the ranch ran out of salt about three months ago, ran out of mineral even longer, and went months without paying the hands who keep the cattle alive. The animals had begun licking metal, chewing old bones and tearing at halters as the feed-and-supplement shortage spread through the operation in Apache County.

The ranch was built in 2009 with Navajo-Hopi relocation funds and was meant to give relocatees and the broader community a hands-on look at ranching while helping build a Navajo Beef brand. In 2022, branding day there drew public attention when ranchers sorted 84 spring calves, and Shepherd said the ranch had 95 calves ready to sell, with the herd marketed together instead of one animal at a time.

The Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation formally transferred its obligations and authorities to the Bureau of Indian Affairs through a memorandum of understanding, but the transition was delayed by the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history and complicated by ONHIR records that were never digitized and remain archived in Riverside, California.

ONHIR is an independent federal agency created under the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974, and the commissioner post has been vacant since 1994. A 2021 Interior inspector general review put the grazing footprint tied to the New Lands at 352,000 acres in Arizona.

In September 2025, President Buu Nygren asked for $75,000 in emergency funding to cover three months of ranch costs, calling Padres Mesa and the New Lands livestock program essential to relocatees and consistent with the intent of the settlement law. By March, the Nation was still seeking action on pending relocation applicants, housing obligations, roughly 13,000 acres of land selections, a $16 million federal loan, and the remaining relocation funds and property interests.

A February 2026 listening session with BIA officials, followed by a site visit to Padres Mesa, focused on relocation certification backlogs, grazing administration, land selections, trust fund issues and the ONHIR-to-BIA transition. At Padres Mesa, unpaid labor and missing mineral are threatening the ranch's ability to keep producing cattle for Navajo families and the broader Native American Beef network. A June 2025 presidential release put half of Navajo beef through Direct Source Meats under Labatt Food Service’s Native American Beef program, which began with Navajo ranchers at Padres Mesa and later expanded to Pueblo, Apache and Hopi ranchers.