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In the western U.S., millions of hectares of perennial grasslands, shrublands, and forestlands are held in the public domain and managed by state and federal agencies for multiple land uses, including livestock grazing. Society has strong contemporary expectations for stewardship of public rangelands to balance agricultural goals with social, cultural, and conservation goals in a changing environment. Since the mid-20th century, public grazing lands policy and management paradigms have moved to increasingly integrate agricultural and conservation goals. While there is clear evidence that livestock can be managed to conserve and enhance ecosystem services in grazed landscapes, there is also clear evidence that unmanaged, excessive grazing can degrade ecosystems and associated goods and services. Modern conservation management strategies (e.g., adoption of annual grazing standards or disturbance limits) have been implemented to better balance conservation and livestock production objectives. During the period 2000-2015, livestock animal unit months on federal lands has been reduced by 15% on average across the 11 western states, with extremes of 67% and 36% in Wyoming and California respectively. We propose that to achieve balance between agricultural and conservation goals, public lands grazing strategies must (1) establish and co-value measurable production and conservation objectives; (2) have real-time management action triggers to safeguard ecosystem services; and (3) be adaptive to accommodate spatially and temporally variable, site-specific conditions.