Idaho Statesman – by MARTIN GRIFFITH
A day after blinking in a showdown on the range, federal land managers pledged to pursue efforts to resolve a conflict with a southern Nevada rancher who has refused to pay grazing fees for 20 years.
Bureau of Land Management spokesman Craig Leff said the agency would continue to try to resolve the matter involving rancher Cliven Bundy “administratively and judicially.” Bundy owes more than $1 million in grazing fees, according to the bureau.
“The door isn’t closed. We’ll figure out how to move forward with this,” he said Sunday. He declined to comment on possible options.
Bundy did not respond to requests for comment.
The fight between Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management widened into a debate about states’ rights and federal land-use policy. Bundy does not recognize federal authority on land he insists belongs to Nevada.
On Saturday, the bureau released about 400 head of cattle it had seized from Bundy back to him only hours after announcing a premature halt to the roundup due to safety concerns. The operation, expected to take up to a month, ended after only a week.
The cattle were freed after hundreds of states’ rights protesters, some of them armed militia members, showed up at corrals outside Mesquite to demand the animals’ release.
Las Vegas Police Lt. Dan Zehnder told The Associated Press that Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie was able to negotiate a resolution after talking with Bundy.
But Leff stressed that the bureau did not take part in the negotiations.
“The BLM and National Park Service did not cut any deal and negotiate anything,” he said. “There was no deal we made.”
The several hundred cows gathered during the roundup were short of the BLM’s goal of 900 cows that it says have been trespassing on U.S. land without required grazing permits for over 20 years.
The showdown over Bundy’s cattle was the latest chapter in the Sagebrush Rebellion, which was launched by Nevada lawmakers in the 1970s in an attempt to turn control of federal land to the states.
Environmentalists accused the bureau of capitulating to threats of violence from armed Bundy supporters and urged them to pursue action against the rancher.
“The BLM has a sacred duty to manage our public lands in the public interest, to treat all users equally and fairly,” said Rob Mrowka, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Instead it is allowing a freeloading rancher and armed thugs to seize hundreds of thousands of acres of the people’s land as their own fiefdom.”
“The BLM is setting a dangerous precedent in announcing that it will pick and choose who has to follow federal laws and who it will reward for violating them,” he added.
Leff declined to comment, reiterating that the bureau’s top concern was the safety of its employees and the public.
In April 2012, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the bureau for canceling a planned roundup of Bundy’s cattle at the last minute.
The dispute that ultimately triggered last week’s roundup dates to 1993, when the bureau cited concern for the federally protected desert tortoise in the region.
The bureau was implementing two federal court orders issued last year to remove Bundy’s cattle after making repeated efforts to resolve the matter outside court.
Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2014/04/13/3132972/blm-to-pursue-effort-to-end-dispute.html?sp=/99/101/531/#storylink=cpy
““The BLM has a sacred duty to manage our public lands in the public interest, to treat all users equally and fairly,” said Rob Mrowka, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Instead it is allowing a freeloading rancher and armed thugs to seize hundreds of thousands of acres of the people’s land as their own fiefdom.”
“The BLM is setting a dangerous precedent in announcing that it will pick and choose who has to follow federal laws and who it will reward for violating them,” he added.”
HANG ‘EM!!!!!
From the website of Center for Biological Diversity (CBD):
“Global warming presents the gravest threat to life on Earth. Meat production is a major contributor to the rising temperatures that are further altering or eliminating habitat, reducing food sources, and causing drought beyond the immediate demands of raising livestock.”
Agenda 21 at your service, with CBD and BLM hand in hand. A lot of the staff at CBD are British Accredited Registry scum: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/staff/index.html
The Bundy family originally purchased grazing rights to the land. No one but a long, long line of disgusting money changers would think you should pay rent for something you already purchased.
The unidentified people in government can change the rules when ever they want, then we are expected to snap into compliance.
The rancher is right and the Bureau of Land Management is little more than a band of enforcers for the federal crime syndicate.
Article 1, Section 8 provides that, in addition to land for a national capital, the federal government can exercise authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock yards, and other needful buildings:
The great land grabber, Teddy Roosevelt, proved himself to be an enemy of America and the Constitution when he stole the land from the States to set up the “National Parks.” You won’t find authorization for that in the Constitution, unless by a twisting of the twisted minds of nine black robed gangsters, a National Park becomes a “needful building.” Maybe the tortoise shells are considered “needful buildings,” but if that is the case shouldn’t restrooms for tourists be provided in each? Clearly, the Bureau of Land Management is an enemy of our Constitutional Republic.
Another gang that deserves to be listed as America’s enemies is Bob Mrowka and the Center for Biological Diversity. The reference to “the people’s land” sounds like this gang would like to see America become a “Peoples’ Republic.”
An error corrected: “an attempt to turn control of federal land to the states” should read “an attempt to return control of State land to the States.”
““The BLM has a sacred duty to manage our public lands in the public interest, to treat all users equally and fairly,” said Rob Mrowka, senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “”
Sacred duty? He’s joking, right? Since when did BLM become god?