SPECIAL REPORT PATTERNS OF HARASSMENT - RANGE …FALL 2014 • RANGE MAGAZINE • 37 In April 2014, after years of bluff, bluster, and one-sided hearings in federal courts, the federal

FALL 2014 • RANGE MAGAZINE • 37

In April 2014, after years of bluff, bluster,and one-sided hearings in federal courts,the federal Bureau of Land Management

sent hundreds of armed men, includingSWAT teams and snipers dug in along theridgelines, to barricade roads and attempt toseal off hundreds of thousands of acres southof Mesquite, Nev., in order to confront a sin-gle, 67-year-old rancher, Cliven Bundy.

BLM’s goal might have been to round up

Bundy’s 600 head of cattle and remove themfrom land about 80 miles northeast of LasVegas which his family has been grazing formore than a century. Or its goal might havebeen to lure Bundy into an armed responseto men bulldozing his waterlines, torchinghis water tanks, and shooting his bulls. If he’dresponded that way, they could have jailed orkilled him to serve as an example to otherranchers elsewhere in the West who might betempted to similarly resist the bankruptcywhich looms for all as the BLM continues toannually reduce the number of cattle they’reallowed to graze.

Either way, the agents failed, because thegovernment can no longer control people’saccess to real news. In the old days, all theyneeded to do was make sure the networknewscasters repeated the boilerplate soundbite that this was all about “a trespassingrancher who refused to pay a million dollarsin grazing fees.” But as public outrage at thegovernment’s absurdly heavy-handed tacticsswelled, a thousand supporters, some armed,individually or in small groups, found theirway to the scene to back up a besieged oldrancher and his family.

At the same time, inquiries about the rolein all this of Senate Majority Leader HarryReid, his friends the Red Chinese, and hislined-up-at-the-feed-trough offspring wentviral in ways the Reid team (including BLMboss Neil Kornze, who worked as a “policyadvisor” for Reid from 2003 to 2011) musthave found extremely disturbing. (See “TheReid Connection” on page 50.)

On Saturday morning, April 12, Clark

SPECIAL REPORT

PATTERNS OF HARASSMENTSome say the wealth of America lies in her coal mines and her forests, her wheat fields

and her factories. But they are wrong. I have seen the wealth of America. It lies in the hearts of Cliff Gardner, Cliven Bundy, and the Hage children.

It lies in the spunk with which they will continue to fight their fight for as long as they draw breath. It lives in their naive faith that some judge, somewhere, will hear them out,

answer their questions, acknowledge the limits of his jurisdiction, search his conscience, see justice done.

By Vin Suprynowicz

Onslaught at Gold ButteOnly something funny happened on the way to hanging

Cliven Bundy’s scalp on the lodge pole.

Would you believe this is what folks in Washington now believe representatives of a bureau established to“sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands” should look like? Actually, given thelack of shoulder patches, there’s no way to be sure which agencies are represented among these combattroops, seen deploying near Toquop Wash on April 12 to guard cattle seized from the Bundys in an effortto reduce “productivity” of that land to zero. Bundy and members of Congress insist the BLM has “nopolice powers.”

Bundy supporters in Bunkerville last April. Arethey, as Sen. Reid claims, domestic terrorists?

© S

HAN

NO

N B

USH

MAN

- PE

EK P

RO

MO

TIO

N

© W

ALL/

BOU

LTO

N

FA14 7.13 PM.q_RANGE template.q 7/14/14 1:09 PM Page 37

38 • RANGE MAGAZINE • FALL 2014

County Sheriff Doug Gillespie—who hadlegal authority to stop the BLM from closingoff roads in his county and threatening thecitizens with armed force, but did nothing—tried to “meet with the Bundy family in pri-vate.” But Bundy insisted the sheriff speak infront of the crowd, so they appeared togetheron a makeshift stage on the banks of the Vir-gin River. There the sheriff announced theBLM had agreed to turn tail and withdraw.Hours later, around 3 p.m., about 150 Bundysupporters advanced on a corral in theToquop Wash where the BLM had pennedup nearly 400 head of Bundy’s cattle—theones its contract cowboys hadn’t shot andburied in a secret grave—and set them free.

This is huge. The BLM was not stymiedby Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, who didvery little. They were not forced to back offby the local Clark County sheriff and histhousands of Las Vegas-based police, whotold local residents of the towns of Mesquiteand Bunkerville that they were on their own.Instead, the BLM was stunned to find athousand everyday Americans showing upfrom all across the West—some on horse-back in cowboy hats, many bearing semiau-tomatic .223 rifles. It was a spontaneous andgenuine outpouring of support by peoplewho had had enough. And this militia drove

off the Washington-based invaders withoutfiring a shot, simply by standing next to anold cowboy.

During the previous week, BLM agentshad arrested one of Bundy’s kids for havingthe nerve to take videos of their behavior(they called it “refusing to disperse,” thoughhow a single person can disperse remainsunclear), had tased a pregnant woman and a

few other nonviolent citizens, had threatenedprotestors with attack dogs, and had openedthemselves to widespread contempt by erect-ing remote, fenced-off “First Amendmentzones.” After a week of ridicule, the BLMgoons tucked their tails between their legsand disappeared, with nothing to show fortheir trouble. This prompted Harry Reid,easily the nation’s most unpopular senator

among his own rural constituents, tocackle like a frustrated Rumplestiltskinthat Bundy’s nonviolent supporterswere “violent domestic terrorists” andvow, “It’s not over.”

Oddly, these violent domestic ter-rorists had not opened fire on anyone.They do not stand accused of poison-ing any reservoirs, blowing up anybuildings, hijacking any airliners, steal-ing quarters from blind newsboys, oreven jaywalking. The BLM, on theother hand, was backed up by men infull combat gear who aimed their M-16s at law-abiding civilians. Veteranswho were present on April 12 said, “Ifone person on either side had poppedoff a round, there would have been amassacre.”

And all this over less than $300,000in grazing fees. The BLM charges$1.35 per Animal Unit Month (cost torun a cow and calf for one month),which would add up to either$195,000 or $290,000 over 20 years,depending on whether you useBundy’s estimate of 600 head or theBLM’s highest count to date, which is

900. But such fees have to be based on volun-tary “range-management” contracts. AndBundy stopped signing the contracts in 1993because if he’d signed he would have beenrequired to pull his cattle off the range everyspring, which would have put him out ofbusiness, in which case he couldn’t have paidfees anyway.

NO ONE TO BUY, SHIP OR FEEDAt the Bundy ranch on April 24, Cliven’swife, Carol, told me the blustering Sen. Reidresembles “a little boy who’s had his lollipoptaken away.” She also noted that she and Cliv-en were not in the gully by the Interstate-15overpass on that Saturday afternoon whenthe gate was opened to release the cattle.“Cliven said, ‘If I open the gate then it’s justCliven released the cattle, but if we’re notthere then it’ll be We-The-People whoreleased them.’”

The BLM said it would release the cattlein two more hours. Bundy supporters asked:“Why two hours? If you’re going to releasethem, why not do it now?”

Carol explains: “The BLM was waitingfor reinforcements from Las Vegas and busesthey were going to use to arrest those peopleand haul ’em away to jail. But they couldn’tget through ’cause the highway was blocked

“Everything we tried to do,every time we tried somecompromise, they wantedmore. It was like talking

to a greedy landlord. Everything became lockout

or lockup.”

CLIVEN BUNDY, RANGE, 1999

“There’s a philosophy of life that I have,” says Cliven Bundy. “All these resources—the brush, the game—are puthere for man’s use. They say they want to protect the ecosystem, but man has to be part of the ecosystem. Thisland would be better off if you let people use it and work it and improve it.”

© J

IM U

RQ

UH

ART

/ REU

TER

S



off.” Some Bundy supporters “parked theirtrucks on the highway and took the keyswith ’em so traffic wasn’t moving, and thereinforcements couldn’t get through.”

Carol’s nephew was close to the holdingpen. “He looked at his brother-in-law, whoseeyes were as big as this, pulled his hat downand said, ‘This is a good day to die,’ so theytook a step forward. He said that first stepwas the hardest, facing all those guns. Andthen they took a second step, and each stepgot easier until they got to the pen and letthose cattle go.”

A letter from Utah Gov. Gary Herbertwarned the BLM not to bring any of the cat-tle into his state for sale. That may have con-tributed to the federal withdrawal. Bundy saysthe governor had no choice. “We put him onnotice those were rustled cattle and it wouldhave been illegal for them to sell our brandedcattle in Utah without our permission.”

Former Las Vegas Review-Journal editorTom Mitchell reports on his 4thST8 blogthat the BLM could find no rancher ortrucker in four states to haul their cattle, buytheir cattle, or even sell them a bale of hay.

It was heartwarming to see the BLM andits accompanying “Homeland Security”combat forces back down. It was equallyheartwarming to see state lawmakers fromaround the West gather in Utah the follow-

ing week to discuss state initiatives to regaincontrol of the majority of lands in the west-ern states. The meeting had already beenscheduled, but participants put the failedBundy attack center stage on the agenda. Itwas less heartwarming on Easter weekend,when the Bundys posted photos of a half-dozen cattle killed and buried in a 30-by-50-

foot pit by federal “law enforcers,” the bull-dozed waterlines, the sawed-off pipelineswhere they emerge from wellheads, and evi-dence that torches were used in an attempt tocut up and haul away a 12,000-gallon watertank belonging to Bundy.

Two valuable bulls were shot, one after itwas penned, shot so many times the Bundyscharacterized it as a “thrill killing.” Why? TheBundys say the range bulls were not aggres-sive. And why attempt to ruin the waterinfrastructure that helps support both cattleand native wildlife including deer and desertsheep on that dry range? If you were evictinga nonpaying tenant—and that’s the way theBLM was at pains to characterize its inva-sion—would you also seek to demolish thehouse you hoped to rent to a “better” tenant?Or was there some other agenda here—likemaking this vast tract of desert permanentlyuninhabitable by and inaccessible to anymember of the human race? And why sched-ule the destructive roundup for spring, whenboth baby calves and baby tortoises are onthe range? (See “Is It All About The Tor-toise?” on page 48.)

The day I visited the ranch, the Bundyshad just found a spring calf that had beenstranded in the desert for two weeks withoutits mother after the panicked animals werepushed long distances by helicopters. The

Bundy’s cows have learned how to use the desert well. “I had to explain to the BLM that when you put cattle out on land like this,” Bundy says, “if theirmommas haven’t taught them what they can eat out here, they starve.” The BLM wanted Bundy to stay off the range for three months in spring, with nowhereelse to go. That would have meant taking them to the closest sale yard in Utah and buying more cattle after the best growing season. It didn’t make sense. It would have been agricultural suicide.

Was there some other agenda here—like making

this vast tract of desert permanently uninhabitableby and inaccessible to any

member of the human race?And why schedule the

destructive roundup forspring, when both baby

calves and baby tortoisesare on the range?

© W

ALL/

BOU

LTO

N

© W

ALL/

BOU

LTO

N



Bundys were giving the calf water as it lay inthe shade in their front yard, and by the endof the day the little critter could at least raiseits head...but it died the next day. In late June,Bundy told me his losses were “at least$100,000” in infrastructure damage and“more than 50 head.”Now, weeks later, even those who object-

ed to the heavy-handed tactics of the Wash-ington bureaucrats still seem reluctant tochallenge the underlying sound bite: thatCliven Bundy owes a million dollars in feesfor grazing cattle on federally owned landwithout proper permits.All this begs many questions.Does the federal government own this

land? Does Cliven Bundy owe more than amillion dollars in grazing fees? What hap-pened to the other 51 families who grazedcattle for generations on Clark County’sother allotments? After all, the BLM wasestablished in 1946 to “promote productiveuse of the land,” including grazing, mining,and lumbering. What is the role of “protect-ing the threatened Mojave desert tortoise” inall this? If Bundy is removed and the hugeGold Butte area is blocked off to humanaccess and turned into a wilderness, wouldthat financially benefit residents of localtowns including Mesquite and Bunkerville?And what about the Harry Reid connection?In how many ways are the fingerprints of thesenator whom mobsters from Cleveland andLas Vegas have long called “Mister Cleanface”all over this mess?In the freedominourtime blogspot, Will

Grigg notes it was in 1993 that the BLM

decreed that the land on which Cliven Bundyand neighbors had long grazed their cattlewas actually the “habitat” of the desert tor-toise, calling for drastic new restrictions onland use by ranchers. “The BLM’s revisionswere imposed during the reign of InteriorSecretary Bruce Babbitt,” Grigg writes, “whoin a letter two years earlier (written while hewas head of the League of Conservation Vot-ers) declared: ‘We must identify our enemiesand drive them into oblivion.’ Babbitt and hiscomrades...in the past 20 years...have all buteradicated cattle ranching in the southwest-ern United States.”In his book, “War on the West,” William

Perry Pendley of Mountain States LegalFoundation observes, “The enormous mightof the federal government has always meantthat the life of the West was in the hands ofstrangers living thousands of miles away.”During Babbitt’s tenure at Interior, Pendleynotes: “[T]he federal eco-jihad specificallytargeted ‘the most enduring symbol of theAmerican West—the cowboy—seeking toprice and regulate the rancher off federalgrazing lands and out of business, destroyingthe economy of rural areas.’ One of the firstinitiatives undertaken by Secretary Babbitt inpursuit of his vision of a ‘New West’ was toseek a 230 percent increase in grazing feescharged to ranchers on federally adminis-tered lands. Although the proposed feeincrease was thwarted by a Senate filibuster,the effort to destroy the ranching industrycontinued.”After the fee increase was proposed, an

Interior Department memo surfaced which

revealed that Babbitt wanted “to use priceincreases as a straw man to draw attentionfrom management issues.” While ranchersfought the fee increase, Babbitt and companycreated “Range Reform ’94,” a cluster of pro-posed federal land-use and environmentalregulations which Pendley describes as “athousand and one ways to get ranchers offfederal land.”Grigg writes: “Of the 52 ranchers in his

section of Nevada, Cliven Bundy is the onlyone who has refused to go back to the reser-vation. So the heirs to Sherman and Sheri-dan have mobilized an army to protect hiredthieves who have come to steal the Bundyfamily’s cattle with the ultimate purpose ofdriving him from the land. Their objective isnot to protect the desert tortoise, but to pun-ish a defiant property owner and entrepre-neur. This potentially murderous aggressionis being celebrated by Progressives as a wor-thy effort to make dangerous radicals ‘feel thesuperior power of the Government.’” Why?Because the feds “fear his continued resis-tance could catalyze a general revolt againsttheir designs for the western United States.”

WHO OWNS THE LAND?Cliff Gardner ranches Nevada’s Ruby Valley,hundreds of miles to the north near Elko. Healso keeps getting hauled into federal courtfor refusing to comply with BLM grazingplans. The late Wayne Hage and now hisfamily have fought the U.S. Forest Serviceand the BLM in court and administrativelyfor 35 years and won major rulings regardingpreexisting property rights that the courtshave upheld on appeal. They and ClivenBundy and many other Nevada rancherswho have been driven into or toward bank-ruptcy over the past 40 years all insist theFounding Fathers went to great pains toblock the federal government from everowning (as D.C. now claims to own) 86 per-cent of Nevada, 57 percent of Utah, 53 per-cent of Oregon, 50 percent of Idaho, 48percent of Arizona, 45 percent of California,or 42 percent of Wyoming. (For comparison,try 0.8 percent of New York and 0.4 percentof Connecticut, where the Greens shoutmost loudly about ranchers “trespassing onour lands.”)“The federal estate is larger than France,

Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the UnitedKingdom combined,” Robert Gordon, asenior adviser for the Heritage Foundation,told the Washington Times in early May. “It istoo big and was never intended to be pre-

The BLM’s hired contractors—“cowboys from Utah”—and its own employees cost Bundy “at least$100,000” in infrastructure damage and “more than 50 head of cattle.”

© W

ALL/

BOU

LTO

N



served as one big park, but the left is stran-gling use of it and with it, rural America.”The ranchers insist they can find “no

authority whatsoever” for the federal govern-ment to “hold and manage lands within anadmitted State” aside from the power grant-ed in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Consti-tution. And that only authorizes the feds topurchase specific parcels “by the Consent ofthe Legislature of the State in which theSame shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Mag-azines, Arsenals, dock-Yards and other need-ful Buildings.” Obviously, that provisionwould hardly seem to apply to millions ofacres of western grazing land.“It is the BLM, not Cliven Bundy, who is

in violation of the law and the Constitution,specifically Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 ofthe U.S. Constitution,” Kurt Nimmo wroteon the infowars.com website on April 11,2014. During the federal convention debatesin September 1787, Nimmo notes, ElbridgeGerry, who later went on to serve as vicepresident under James Madison, contendedthat federal purchase of land “might be madeuse of to enslave any particular State by buy-ing up its territory, and that the strongholdsproposed would be a means of awing theState into an undue obedience.” In order tomake certain the federal government did notabuse the Enclave Clause, the words “by theConsent of the Legislature of the State” wereadded.

LAWLESS BLMImmediately after the April 12 BLM with-drawal, Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stock-man wrote to President Obama, Secretary ofthe Interior Sally Jewell, and BLM DirectorNeil Kornze stating that police actions by theagency would violate the U.S. Constitution.“Because of this standoff,” Stockman

wrote, “I have looked into BLM’s authority toconduct such paramilitary raids againstAmerican citizens, and it appears that BLMis acting in a lawless manner in Nevada.” Hecited the limited powers granted to the feder-al government, noting the bureau has no“right to assume preemptory police powers,that role being reserved to the states,” andexplained that “many federal laws require thefederal government to seek assistance fromlocal law enforcement whenever the use offorce may become necessary.”The letter included a section of the U.S.

Code (43 U.S.C. Section 1733, SubsectionC): “When the Secretary determines thatassistance is necessary in enforcing Federal

laws and regulations relating to the publiclands or their resources he shall [not may butshall], offer a contract to appropriate localofficials having law enforcement authoritywithin their respective jurisdictions.” The cri-sis the government has provoked at the

Bundy ranch “is the very type of incidentthat Congress knew could be avoided byrelying on local law enforcement officials,”Rep. Stockman concludes.Cliven Bundy insists, “It’s really about our

constitutional rights and statehood, andwhether this area known as the state ofNevada is owned by the United States gov-ernment or is owned by the sovereign state ofNevada.”The liberal press tends to dismiss such

statements as equivalent to those of someamusing lunatic, dressed in Confederate grayand insisting the Yankees never won the Warof the Southern Secession. But Nimmo con-cludes, “Mr. Bundy, despite a propagandacampaign to the contrary launched by thefederal government and its subservient

media, is absolutely correct.”The BLM got a federal judge named

Johnnie Rawlinson (see “The Reid Connec-tion,” page 50) to embrace its contention thatthe feds own this land because they acquiredit from Mexico in the Treaty of GuadalupeHidalgo in 1848. But, as Cliven Bundy pointsout, that was 16 years before Nevada becamea state (and there is no provision in the treatyfor U.S. government ownership of land).What happens to public lands when a

territory becomes a state? Under the Consti-tution drawn up for us by the Founders(who feared a federal monopoly on power),ownership and control of the public landsmust pass to the state. Otherwise, the fedscould claim to own and wield “plenary”authority over as much as 86 percent (heck,probably 100 percent) of the land area ofArkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Mon-tana, Colorado, and points in between, hav-ing “acquired them” when Thomas Jeffersonpurchased them from a cash-hungryNapoleon Bonaparte as part of the LouisianaTerritory in 1803.

CLAIMS OF RACISMCliven Bundy was all over the media in thetwo weeks following federal withdrawal. Thefeds were obviously desperate to discredithim and change the subject. Once he waslured by a New York Times interviewer intomaking remarks about today’s welfare statebeing equivalent to a slave-owner’s planta-tion, daily papers including the Review-Jour-nal raced to cover the “racist” angle, droppingany discussion of federal land ownership and

“The enormous might of thefederal government has

always meant that the life of the West was in the

hands of strangers livingthousands of miles away.”—WILLIAMPERRY PENDLEY, MOUNTAINSTATES LEGAL FOUNDATION, IN HIS BOOK,

“WARON THEWEST”

Cliven Bundy examines one of the First Amendment Areas set up by the BLM in the Gold Butte areanear Bunkerville on April 1, 2014, using orange plastic snow fencing. The implication was that protesterswere free to gather and exercise their free-speech rights only to the crows and lizards in the windsweptisolation of these remote sites, miles down the road from the “trespass cattle.” The scheme wasuniversally ridiculed and the BLM eventually tore them down.

© A

P PH

OTO

/LAS

VEG

AS R

EVIE

W-J

OU

RN

AL, J

OH

N L

OC

HER



jurisdiction, or why an agency charged with“promoting beneficial uses of the land” isnow trying to entirely shut down cattleranching in the West. Anyone who valuesfacts and logic above synthetic, pantomimedoutrage knows that Bundy is right, and theobservation isn’t even new. Syndicatedcolumnist Star Parker’s book “Uncle Sam’sPlantation: How Big Government EnslavesAmerica’s Poor and What We Can Do AboutIt” (note the use of the word “enslaves”) waspublished in 2003 to largely enthusiasticreviews. Yet no one calls Star Parker a racist,because she’s black.

If following federal orders to the point ofbankruptcy is mandatory, why are theranchers asked to sign contracts? Can a con-tract be valid if it’s not entered into freely? Ifthe feds were to send in armed combattroops to evict citizens of Iowa or Coloradofrom lands their families have farmed orgrazed for a century or more, would mostAmericans just shrug, parroting back thesound bite: “Well, they didn’t pay their fees.After all, those lands belong to all of us; theyshouldn’t get to use them for free”?

Wouldn’t we call that Communism?“Back before ’34, before the Taylor Graz-

ing Act, they started to have range wars,”Cliven Bundy explains. “Instead of settlingboundary disputes in local and state courts,the federal government got involved. It wasthe ranchers’ fault; they never should have

allowed it to start. They started payin’ theTaylor Grazing fees in ’34, to adjudicate theboundaries. The adjudicating went on rightup through the ’60s. Then they neededfences and water. The ranchers paid for thatadjudication, $6 to $10 per animal unit andthey were getting 80 percent of the fees backin range improvements. Twelve-and-a-halfpercent was supposed to go to the BLM foradministration, and then the rest was forrange improvements.”

It was when he finally realized his ownfees and willingness to sign off on their rangemanagement plans were being used to drivehim out of business that Cliven finally firedthe BLM, saying he no longer needed its helpor advice to manage his ranch.

COULD BUNDY PAY UP AND STAY?The clear implication of the BLM claims thatthis is all about Bundy simply refusing to pay“more than a million dollars in grazing fees”is that once this bad, “trespassing” tenant

rancher and his “trespassing cattle” have beenevicted from this piece of “federally owned”desert range, the BLM will go out and findsome “better” rancher who’s willing to paythe fees, and this vital source of income forthe taxpayers will be restored, right? Butthat’s nonsense—a sound bite targeted at theuninformed.

First, what the mainstream media takeno trouble to explain is that here in the inter-mountain West there has developed over thepast 170 years by use, custom and also bylaw, a system of mixed title to the publiclands, whereby the water and grazing rightsto vast swatches of largely uninhabitabledesert scrub can be owned by ranching fami-lies who established these rights through useover the decades, just as the Bundy familyown the water and grazing rights to theMesquite allotment.

Bundy says his rights came down on hismother’s side from the Abbott, Jensen, andLeavitt families and have been in the Bundyname since 1944 when Cliven’s father, DaveBundy, married Margaret Bodel Jensen, whoinherited the property.

In arid Nevada, no rancher can succeedon the 160 or 320 acres his grandparentswere allowed to homestead. In the Mojave,ranchers figure it takes 320 acres of desertscrub to feed one cow and its spring calf. Torun even 300 to 500 head of red Angus—asthe Gardners do in the Ruby Valley—or 600to 700 head of exotic, heat-tolerant Brah-man/Herefords, as the Bundys do south ofMesquite, requires tens of thousands ofacres. Both through paperwork “filings” andthrough years of habit and adverse posses-sion, western ranchers have thus establishedan acknowledged property right which can-not be overturned by bureaucratic whim.

The feds have never challenged Bundy’sownership of these grazing and water rights.Instead, they just keep parroting their lineabout this mythical “more than $1 million”that Bundy supposedly owes in grazing feesfor the past 20-odd years. While the point oforigin for that number is unknown, it wouldsound foolish for the BLM to admit it hiredfreelance cowboys for $966,000 to round upas many as (its estimate) 1,100 head ofBundy cattle as part of a budgeted $5.5 mil-lion operation in order to collect “back graz-ing fees” of less than $300,000. On the otherhand, if the BLM were folding in the arbi-trary penalty of $200 per day per cowimposed by the federal judges (who won’tgive Bundy the trial by his peers that he’s

Members of the Oath Keepers and other constitutional groups guarded the stage on April 12 as SheriffDoug Gillespie (right) told Cliven Bundy the BLM was pulling out.

“We must identify our enemies and drive them

into oblivion.”

—BRUCE BABBITT, LEAGUE OFCONSERVATIONVOTERS BOSS IN 1991, WAS NAMED SECRETARYOF INTERIOR BY PRESIDENTCLINTON IN 1993

© W

ALL/

BOU

LTO

N



guaranteed under Article 3 of the Constitu-tion), then the amount due since 1998 couldbe a laughable $500 million, and the “milliondollar” sound bite would be far too low.

Anyway, if collecting grazing fees on the52 Clark County allotments that were activein 1950 is so important to federal liquidity,what kind of fees is the BLM now collectingon the other 51 allotments it administers insouthern Nevada, where “better ranchers”have presumably been “following the rules”for the past 30 years?

Um...that would be...zero.

NO ACCIDENTCliven Bundy, who runs cattle about as fareast in Clark County as you can go, says, “I’mthe last rancher from here to the PacificOcean.” He believes the only reason he’s sur-vived is that he won’t cooperate with theBLM and won’t allow agents to impose onhim a range management plan which hasbeen a purposeful recipe for bankruptcy forevery other rancher in Clark County andwhich could soon drive every rancher in therest of Nevada out of business as well. (Thepretext in northern Nevada and a dozenother western states is not protection of thedesert tortoise, but the sage grouse.)

What happens to grazing rights as therancher nears bankruptcy? With exquisitetiming, an outfit like The Nature Conservan-cy usually slithers up and hisses in the ranch-er’s ear, offering to buy those rights at heavydiscounts. Since they’re useless to any othergrazer because cattle numbers have beenreduced by the regulators below profitability,no other offer is forthcoming, and the ranch-er usually sells out his family’s ancestral her-itage for peanuts. The environmental groupin question then transfers ownership to thecounty, which offers the federal “species con-servation” gauleiters a deal: “Allow” us todevelop some more land closer to our urbancore, and in exchange we’ll set aside this for-mer cattle ranch in “mitigation” as a “tortoisepreserve”—even though the absence of therancher and his cattle will soon make thearea as useless to tortoises as it is to mankind.Then—who says the bureaucrats have nosense of humor?—the BLM will report in itsofficial documents and on its websites thatthe grazing rights to that land were given upby a “willing seller.” Ha!

Newspaper columnists who are essential-ly agents of Harry Reid and the BLM sneer,“Does anyone really believe Cliven Bundywould pay his grazing fees to the state or the

county?” Actually, the Bundys say they’vetried. But there’s a sure way to find out. AllNevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has to do isissue a formal, written offer to accept 20years (heck, 30, up through 2024) worth ofgrazing fees from the Bundys at the old stan-dard rate of between $10,000 and $15,000per year (for 600 or 900 cows), withoutrequiring them to sign any BLM range man-agement plan. Then the governor can offerto transfer that money to the BLM if hewishes, in complete settlement of this matter,thus allowing the BLM to prove once and forall that it’s all about the grazing fees.

Of course, the BLM would then have tospend 87 percent of that money helping

Bundy repair his water tanks, wouldn’t they?In fact, it’s not about the fees at all. If he hadaccepted the BLM permit restrictions, allBundy would have had to do was keep hiscattle off the range in the spring, supposedlyso they wouldn’t “step on the little baby tor-toises.” Note that tortoise mortality caused bycattle has never been documented by anyoneto rival predation by coyotes and (now “pro-tected”) ravens, the killers that ranchers havetraditionally kept in check, which is preciselywhy tortoise populations were so large dur-ing peak grazing years in the 1920s and1930s.

But here in the high Mojave Desert, theonly time the land looks green and the wild-

flowers blossom is after the spring rains. Theonly time ranchers can fatten their cattleenough to make any money out of the back-breaking work is in this season. Where arethese ranchers supposed to put them?They’re not feedlot operators. Anyone cansee the BLM requirement is a good way to gobroke, which is why none of Clark County’sother 51 ranching families from 60 yearsago—the ones who tried to follow the rulesand pay their fees—are still in business. Andthat’s no accident.

It was back in 1999 that I first toured theMesquite Allotment with Clark County’s lastcattle rancher. Needless to say, even then thefeds had been working to drive Cliven Bundy

out of business. Cliven responded by “firing”the BLM. “I don’t sign their contracts and Idon’t pay their fees and I don’t expect anyservices from ’em,” he told me.

At the time, Cliven and I squatted toexamine some mighty spindly ground cover,the lifetime rancher explaining to me howthe browsing of the plant by cattle clearsroom for the new, green shoots to come ineach spring. I must have expressed someamazement at the idea that cattle could sur-vive by eating such stuff in the first place.

“A calf only learns what to eat out herebecause his momma shows him what to eat,”he responded seriously. “At one point the tor-toise people came in here and said I should

Bundy’s cowboys and supporters release cattle back to the desert. They are passing the fence where theBLM soldiers had been positioned.

© S

HAN

NO

N B

USH

MAN

- PE

EK P

RO

MO

TIO

N



just pull my cattle off the range for a fewmonths in the spring, when the tortoiseswere breeding. I told them the only way Icould do that would be to haul my herd toSt. George and sell it, and then buy new feed-lot cattle and put them out here come sum-mer. They couldn’t see why that would be aproblem. I had to explain to them that whenyou put cattle out on land like this, if theirmommas haven’t taught them what they caneat out here, they starve.”

Cliven showed me areas where he’d bull-dozed dirt across an occasional wash, whichthen filled up and became a muddy wateringpond not only for his cattle, but for the quailand other wildlife that subsequently thrivedthere in much larger numbers than had beenseen before. He explained that left in its nat-ural state, the salt cedar moves in and clogs aspring till there’s no more surface water foranything. Only the rancher has the incentiveto dig the spring back to bedrock, install pip-ing, and run the water to a tank where it canbe used by all critters on the range.

CHINESE WATER TORTURECliven explained how the process worksnow. If a farmer grazing the public lands triesto follow the rules when he brings in his ownbulldozer for such a one-day job—or even to

run a piece of galvanized pipe under a dirtroad, he must call the Forest Service or BLM,ask for an officer to come out, do a survey,and sign off that in performing such a “rangealteration” he will not be dangerouslyinfringing on the habitat of any threatenedor endangered species.

In 1990, 596 species were listed as “threat-

ened or endangered” by the federal govern-ment. By 1999, the list had grown to1,205—many of them weeds and bugs. Hav-ing won an “endangered species sign-off” forhis one-day culvert project, the naive ranchermight then assume he could proceed to dothe job (at his own expense, of course). Ohno. “You can’t do a thing till they send outanother guy, who has to do another survey tofind out if you might be damaging any

potential archaeological sites,” Cliven says. “Iused to ask them, ‘Gee, couldn’t that guy havecome along with you at the same time?’ Butno, you have to wait more weeks before yousee that guy.”

Even if we agree the feds are to adminis-ter all these lands, punishing trespassers likeBundy and Gardner, we must still ask underwhat jurisdiction their courts and other offi-cers are to operate as they do so: under Arti-cle III of the Constitution...in which casedefendants like Gardner and Bundy have aright to a trial by a jury of their peers, a rightto due process and equal protection, all guar-anteed by the Bill of Rights? Or is the federaljurisdiction over these lands in fact a “territo-rial” jurisdiction, as established under ArticleIV of the Constitution, which would appearto set no such due-process restrictions on thepower of Congress to “dispose of and makeall Needful Rules and Regulations respectingthe Territory or other Property belonging tothe United States; and nothing in this Consti-tution shall be so construed as to Prejudiceany Claims of the United States....”

Most Nevadans—most Americans—would doubtless respond that folks like Cliv-en Bundy and Cliff Gardner (Americansborn and bred) are citizens of both the Unit-ed States and the sovereign state of Nevada,

Even as Third World nationsnow fight desertification byputting cattle back on theland, many residents of stateswhere federal land control isminimal—who have nevereven seen open range—continue to naively supporteradication of grazing in theWest. But how would theyrespond if Washington startedevicting residents from 84percent of THEIR state, tofacilitate enforcement of someEast Coast Cranberry BogRestoration Act?

MAP DATA SOURCE:U.S. GENERAL SERVICESADMINISTRATION, FEDERALREAL PROPERTY PROFILE 2004,EXCLUDES TRUST PROPERTIES.

“Public lands are a myth.The lands are already privatized. We already

have those rights, and thefederal government doesnot have jurisdiction.”

—WAYNEHAGE (1936-2006)EMBATTLEDNEVADA RANCHER

WHO OWNS THE WEST?Federal land (in red) as a percentage of total state land area.



and that in any action brought against themby the U.S. government of course they enjoyall the constitutional rights to due processguaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighthand Ninth Amendments.

Cliff Gardner kept trying to get federalJudge Howard D. McKibben to confirm that.But whenever Gardner makes a court filingasking for just such a confirmation of his dueprocess rights, Judge McKibben just “lay lowand don’t say nothin’.” Motion denied with-out comment. Motion denied withoutcomment. Motion denied withoutcomment. “Before we can argue abouthow many cows are on the land, weneed to know whether we have consti-tutional rights under the SixthAmendment. Is this an Article III oran Article IV court?” Gardner asks.“We need to know the rules and thejurisdiction.”

I called Howard McKibben. Couldthis be the same Judge McKibben whosentenced an old Shoshone Indiannamed Clifford Dann back in 1993 forparking his truck in the road in orderto stop the BLM from stealing his sis-ters’ cattle from Indian land and gotup in the bed of his pickup, dousedhimself with gasoline, and threatenedto set himself on fire? BLM thugslured him down from the truck, beathim bloody, and hauled him in frontof McKibben, who sentenced him tonine years in prison for “assaulting an officerwith gasoline.” As he pronounced sentence,that federal judge declared that the severity ofthe sentence was intended “to send a messageto journalists, activists, and the WesternShoshone.”

Howard McKibben explained he hadtaken my call as a courtesy, but that he could-n’t answer any questions about a pendingcase. “You could present to me a summary ofhis concerns, and I could take them underconsideration, but I wouldn’t be able to com-ment,” the judge explained.

“And that would include the jurisdic-tion?” I asked. “Mr. Gardner says he can’tget an answer as to whether his case in yourcourt falls under Article III jurisdiction orArticle IV jurisdiction. So when you say youcan’t comment, would that include tellingme whether this case falls under the juris-diction of Article III or Article IV of theConstitution?”

“What it includes is that I can’t commenton the case,” McKibben replied. “You have

expressed to me what his concerns are. I cantell you this, that if you file something incourt, I always prepare an order and you canread that order. But I don’t want to be quotedon that.”

“So you can’t even say whether—justspeaking in general now—all defendantshave their due process rights under Article IIIand the Bill of Rights when they appear inyour court?”

“The canon of ethics prevents me from

speaking about a pending case, and we havean ethical obligation not to do that,” was thejudge’s answer. In other words, he wouldn’tanswer the question. Ironically, McKibbenalso presided over the criminal convictionof the late Wayne Hage for cutting trees inhis 1866 Act historical right-of-way—a con-viction that was tossed out by the 9th Cir-cuit judges.

WAR OF RELIGIONSTim Findley, former chief investigativereporter for the San Francisco Chronicle andassistant editor for Rolling Stone, died threeyears ago at the age of 67. He had been cov-ering the Gardner case for RANGE formore than a year when I spoke to himabout it in 2001. He told me the strugglebetween ranchers like Gardner and Bundyon one side and federal regulators and landmanagers on the other amounts to a war ofreligions.

“Both Bundy and Gardner are Mor-mons,” Findley pointed out. “They believe

that taming the wilderness is a noble cause,and raising their children close to the landhas been good for their families and theirsociety. On the other side we have the arro-gant practitioners of an environmental reli-gion endeavoring to use federal force—inblatant violation of the First Amendment—to establish and impose across the West thereligion of environmentalism, which holdsthat cattle—and lumbering and mining, forthat matter—are unnatural desecrations of

nature’s temple, a wilderness fromwhich all human activity must bebanished so that the lands can be heldin permanent trust in their wildsplendor.”

I mentioned to Findley the fervorwith which Cliff Gardner will showhis slides at the drop of a hat—shar-ing the photographic evidence gath-ered over decades, before-and-afterphotos demonstrating that the landsare in better shape where they’ve beengrazed by cattle than where they’vebeen fenced off for years as sterilewilderness.

“Cliff has more than anecdotal evi-dence for his claims,” Findley respond-ed. “He’s been out there taking picturesfor more than 20 years and he has builta very convincing case. Cliff contendsthese forage plants evolved to needlarge ungulates to graze them, whetherthat be cattle or some other animal,

and the cattle are a vital part of the ecosys-tem. They can demonstrate that. Where thecattle graze you see an enormous beneficialgrowth of the game species, the deer herdsand so forth. Where they fence the cattle offthe land you see the land go to waste; you seea buildup in fuel so you get more and harsh-er range fires.

“These [federal] people...really don’tunderstand what they’re doing to destroy thelives of people with equally good hearts. TheNature Conservancy had grabbed off two-thirds of that land near the Gardner Ranchin Ruby Valley and they desperately wantCliff’s chunk. It’s really extortion. And all youget from the federal side is arrogance.”

WHAT’S RIGHT?Has Bundy won—as his supporters hopeand believe—or will the feds just lick theirwounds before coming at him on someother front? Both the Mesquite City Counciland the Clark County Commission haveexpressed support for a plan to turn the

What happened to the other 51 families who grazed cattle

for generations on Clark County’sother allotments?

© D

IAN

E M

ALLI

STER



entire Gold Butte region into a “federal con-servation area.” Mark Andrews, a local pho-tographer who’s frequented the area for 35years, says: “The BLM and the Friends ofGold Butte group have removed countlessmiles of road and open land access from freeuse. Places I used to go for decades are nowblockaded. These are roads that are nearly100 years old and in steady use. And thisactivity has become very aggressive and pro-nounced in the last 24 months. They seem tohave a deep agenda regarding it.”

Bundy says that the area south of

Mesquite “is really the only public area ClarkCounty has left that’s not designated forsome conservation area, or preserve, ormonument, or whatever. I’m really the onlyresource user who’s still got any interest usein the land.”

Attempting to cooperate with their feder-al overseers, “year by year their operationswere crippled by rising fees and reductions inAUMs,” wrote Findley in RANGE, Summer1999. “The numbers of actively used allot-ments were rapidly diminishing. The cattle-men took their cases to court, and won, butthe BLM simply imposed new ‘force andeffect’ regulations. More ranchers gave up.”

The right amount of grazing, in theminds of Bundy’s adversaries, is no graz-ing. The real plan here is to turn hundredsmore square miles into another federalconservation area, if not outright wilder-ness. How is that supposed to generate anymore federal revenue, let alone significant

local economic activity?The Las Vegas Review-Journal regularly

receives letters to the editor which are essen-tially form letters, though they bear differentsignatures. Typical is one received in 2012from Terri Rylander, a member of Friends ofGold Butte, in which she identifies herself as“a business owner living in Mesquite.” Herbusiness is marketing and Web page design.In a piece of boilerplate common to most ofthese letters, hers asserts: “People may visitspecial places like Red Rock Canyon andGold Butte for different reasons—camping,

hunting, hiking, bird-watching—but all visi-tors spend money in our communities atrestaurants, hotels, gas stations, and retailstores. Protecting Gold Butte as a nationalconservation area with wilderness will putthis unique area on the map, drawing visi-tors...and ensure a steady stream of revenueto local communities like Mesquite.”

Researchers at the Jon M. HuntsmanSchool of Business, Utah State University,disagree. “We find that when controlling forother types of federally held land and addi-tional factors impacting economic condi-tions, federally designated wildernessnegatively impacts local economic condi-tions,” wrote USU researchers Brian C. Steed,Ryan M. Yonk, and Randy Simmons in June2011. “Specifically, we find a significant nega-tive relationship between the presence ofwilderness and county total payroll, countytax receipts, and county average householdincome.”

Why? Wilderness is the most restrictiveof all federal land-use designations, theresearchers point out: “To preserve wildcharacteristics, the wilderness designationprohibits roads, road construction, mecha-nized travel, and the use of mechanizedequipment. Wilderness also impacts extrac-tive industries such as mining, logging, andgrazing.” In a footnote, the researchersexplain: “Grazing is expressly allowed inwilderness areas, but administrators maymake ‘reasonable regulations’ including thereduction of grazing to improve range con-ditions.... The argument often stated by theenvironmental community that wilderness isgood for local economies is simply not sup-ported by the data. If the test for whether ornot to designate wilderness is economic,wilderness fails.”

Nor is it clear that cattle grazing damagesthe range. In fact, there’s plenty of evidencethat ranchers—with their drip lines andwater tanks supporting quail and deer andother populations as well as cattle and theungulates themselves, cropping the grazeclose enough to the ground to allow newgreen shoots accessible to the tortoise whilereducing the fuel buildup that fosters wild-fires—are a net benefit to the country, beforewe even consider our need for wholesome,free-range beef.

In his RANGE profile back in 1999, Find-ley reported that Cliven Bundy in the 1970swas willing to embrace the “multiple use” ofthe rangelands then being promoted. “Hewas patient and tried to cooperate withadvice from those he considered his friendsin the BLM,” Findley wrote.

“But everything we tried to do—everytime we tried some compromise—theywanted more,” Bundy told Findley. “It waslike talking to a greedy landlord. Everythingbecame lockout or lockup.”

Findley then referred to former NevadaDistrict Court Judge and rancher Clel Geor-getta, who for the first time in his 1972 book“Golden Fleece in Nevada” presented thethen “almost subversive” legal doctrine thatclaims by the federal government to morethan 86 percent of the land of Nevada“amounted not only to a violation of theintention of Lincoln’s administration in pro-moting Nevada’s statehood in 1864, but ofprevious constitutional findings on the ‘equalfooting’ of states admitted to the union.”

Thus was born the Sagebrush Rebellion.Legislation introduced by then-state Sen.Dean Rhoads in 1979, directing the state

Cliven Bundy (right) and son Ryan demonstrate how grazing reduces fire risk by cropping back drybrush, while encouraging new growth closer to the ground. This benefits desert tortoise.

WAL

L/BO

ULT

ON



attorney general to sue the federal govern-ment for control of all federal lands notspecifically set aside for federal forts, postoffices, or Indian reservations “is still a part ofNevada law,” Findley reported, “backed evenmore by a statewide referendum in 1996 inwhich voters overwhelmingly supported theidea of state control of public lands.”So why hasn’t it happened? “The Nevada

attorney general has never taken the argu-ment to federal courts,” Findley explained.The last state attorney general to specifically,personally promise this writer that he wouldbring the “no jurisdiction” claim to federalcourt (specifically, regarding Yucca Moun-tain) and then fail to do so? Current Gov.Brian Sandoval.

PUBLIC LANDS ARE A MYTHIn his 1989 book, “Storm Over Rangelands,”Nevada rancher Wayne Hage detailed howranchers, miners, and others possess split titleto western lands. Though a foreign concepteast of the Rockies, here in the arid West it’snot unusual for different parties to own, say,the grazing and water rights versus the min-eral rights to overlapping parcels of land,while neither claims to “own” all the landoutright. This system,deemed appropriate to thelandscape, has been estab-lished over 170 years, andfederal attempts to regulatethose long-establishedrights out of existence vio-late basic constitutionalrights, Hage argued.“Public lands are a

myth,” Hage wrote. “Thelands are already privatized.We already have those rights, and the federalgovernment does not have jurisdiction.” TheBLM confiscated Hage’s cattle in MonitorValley northeast of Tonopah in 1991. Hefought them through the courts for years—and won. But the feds continue to relentlesslyharass the Hage family.In fact, Chief Judge Robert C. Jones of

the Federal District Court of Nevada inAugust 2012 ruled the BLM had beenengaged in a decades-long criminal “con-spiracy” against the Wayne Hage family, fel-low ranchers and friends of the Bundys.Among other things, Jones accused thebureaucrats of racketeering under the feder-al RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrup-tion Organizations) statute, and accusedthem as well of extortion, mail fraud, and

fraud in an effort “to kill the business of Mr.Hage.” In fact, the government’s actions wereso malicious, said the judge, as to “shock theconscience of the Court.” Judge Jones grant-ed an injunction against the agencies andreferred area BLM and Forest Service man-

agers to the U.S. Attorneyfor prosecution.“Has Attorney General

Eric Holder prosecuted anyfederal officials for criminalactivity and violation of theHage family’s constitution-ally protected rights?” asksWilliam P. Jasper at the-newamerican.com website.“No. Has Sen. Harry Reiddenounced this lawlessness

and criminal activity by government officialsand called upon President Obama andAttorney General Holder to protect the citi-zens of his state from the depredations offederal officials under their command? No.”Wayne Hage died soon after winning his

court fight. His children continue the strug-gle. (Check RANGE’s award-winning serieson Hage at rangemagazine.com. Click on“Special Info/News on Hage Case,” bottomof Home Page.)Findley’s old RANGE piece has President

Ronald Reagan asking his Interior secretary,James Watt, why the federal governmentcouldn’t end its dominion over nearly one-third of the nation’s lands by selling them offor transferring them back to the states. Watthad to explain to the president that wasn’t

really what the ranchers wanted. Years later,addressing a 1994 cattlemen’s meeting,Demar Dahl, former head of the state cattle-men’s association, said, “Watt said Nevadasabotaged the Sagebrush Rebellion. When itcame down to it, a lot of the big rancherswere afraid of losing their allotments.” Localpoliticians also find it “hard to turn downthat $5 million or whatever” that Uncle Samroutinely showers on local municipalities.“My side don’t have much cash,” Bundyacknowledges. “But the other side has put us,what is it, $60 trillion in debt.”Indeed they have.

DESTROYING A PROUD CULTURE“There’s a philosophy of life that I have,” saysCliven Bundy, blue eyes sparkling beneathhis Navajo-silver hatband. “All theseresources—the brush, the game—are puthere for man’s use. They say they want toprotect the ecosystem, but man has to bepart of the ecosystem. If man manages thepredators so they only eat half the quail, andhalf are left for man, think of all the Dutch-oven meals that makes. Everything here onthe earth is made for man. This land wouldbe better off if you let people use it and workit and improve it.”In the snide phrases of the coffeehouse

environmentalist, these families that haveworked from dawn to dusk for 130 years—no calling in sick when it’s 30 below or 115 inthe shade—are “welfare ranchers,” takingadvantage of the rest of us by leasing federal-ly controlled scrubland for “less than market

The real plan hereis to turn

hundreds moresquare miles intoanother federal

conservation area,if not an outright

wilderness.

AT TOP: SWAT team and Clark County Sheriff’s deputies at the beginning of the fiasco. ABOVE: BLM agents retreated after the agency decided to hand back Bundy’s cattle and stand down.

PHO

TOS

© W

ALL/

BOU

LTO

N



rates.” But no one else is chafing at the bit topay good money to use this godforsakenscrub, risking their savings against the bank,the sheriff, and the bankruptcy court.

Mark my words: within 30 years, unless awhole lot more Americans decide this istheir battle, not just that of one old rancherwho won’t pay his fees—the range cattle willbe gone, just as the BLM plans and plots, andAmericans will finally grow sick of eatingnothing but hormone- and antibiotic-lacedfeedlot meat. At that point, there will be apopular movement to bring back cattleranching in the West—a rich culture andproud way of life and a source of healthier,more nutritious, locally produced organicfood, a culture willfully and spitefullydestroyed during our current era, with all theironies of our supposed celebration of “mul-ticulturalism.”

The problem is, no one will rememberhow to do it. And because of the genera-tional links being broken with the deaths orforced retirements of old-timers like WayneHage, Cliff Gardner, and Cliven Bundy, therewill be no one left to show us how.

Some say the wealth of America lies inher coal mines and her forests, her wheatfields and her factories. But they are wrong. Ihave seen the wealth of America. It lies in thehearts of Cliff Gardner, Cliven Bundy, andthe Hage children. It lies in the spunk withwhich they will continue to fight their fightfor as long as they draw breath. It lives in theirnaive faith that some judge, somewhere, willhear them out, answer their questions,acknowledge the limits of his jurisdiction,search his conscience, see justice done.

The funny thing about their kind of faithand strength is that you cannot steal thesethings away. You cannot load them up in atrailer and alter their brands and claim themfor your own. Instead, when they have fin-ished driving the Bundys off this land, theywill find that the America they claim to beprotecting...is gone. ■

Vin Suprynowicz was an award-winningcolumnist and assistant editorial-page editorfor the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal formore than 20 years. His position was elimi-nated in 2013 as the new management soughteditorials and columns more sympathetic tothe Obama administration. He is the authorof “Send in the Waco Killers,” “The Ballad ofCarl Drega,” and the novel “The BlackArrow.” His next book, “The Testament ofJames,” is due in late 2014. His column ongun rights appears monthly in Shotgun News.

Is It All About The Tortoise?More cattle equal more tortoise. What’s the problem? By Vin Suprynowicz

The feds contend they’re doing all this toprotect the threatened desert tortoise,

though I’ve documented again and againover the years, citing such experts as VernonBostick, that government wildlife expertsadmit the desert tortoise is “at saturation lev-els” in the wild, and that all evidence demon-strates the tortoises do better when cattle areon the land, with the ranchers putting indrips and tanks and maintaining the waterfeatures.

Cattle’s presence on the land benefits tor-toises in many ways. Ranchers make someeffort to reduce the populations of coyotesand ravens, which are the tortoises’ mainpredators. Ranchers also clear out springsand pipe water to remote tanks, so both theranchers themselves and their wanderingcattle bring water to areas where deer anddoves and quail—and especially tortoises,which can’t travel as far in a day—wouldotherwise find none. Cattle also graze downbrush, reducing the severity of range firesand causing tender new shoots to grow incloser to ground level where tortoises canmore easily reach them.

Bostick published “The Desert Tortoisein Relation to Cattle Grazing” in the Societyof Rangeland Management’s Rangelands inJune 1990. His credibility is very high indeedamong the people-off-the-land gang whenhe’s saying things they like to hear—as whenhe confirmed the presence of “protectable”bighorn sheep in the mountains south ofHoover Dam years ago. He telephoned me inmid-June 2008 to discuss the matter.

“They claim cow dung is nutritionallydeficient,” Vernon laughs. “It’s high in nitro-gen and that’s USDA Bulletin No. 49. Cowsabsorb 20 percent, pass 80 percent of thenutrients through their system. And theygraze stuff too tough for tortoises to masti-cate.... Each cow makes 12 deposits a day andit’s 90 percent water. Remove the cattle andthe tortoises are dependent on rainfall; theyhave to hold their urine...which can result inillness and, eventually, death.”

Bostick has a master’s degree in biologyfrom the University of Nevada, Las Vegas,and a bachelor’s in range management fromColorado State. He wrote the text for acourse in judging range condition and trends

Mature male desert tortoises face off in a slow-motion battle over the boundary of their respectiveterritories. The showdown begins with a display of neck stretching, head bobbing, and push-ups. Wildlifeexpert Vernon Bostick says, “In every case, elimination of cattle grazing resulted in a smaller tortoisepopulation.” And Cliven Bundy’s son Ryan said, when BLM took over their range with trucks and ahelicopter: “We found several places where their trucks have caved in tortoise dens. Talk abouthypocrisy.”

© R

ON

WO

LF/T

OM

STA

CK

& AS

SOC

IATE

S



(whether the range is improving or deterio-rating) taken by all U.S. Forest Service per-sonnel working in Arizona and New Mexico.“I will call History as my first rebuttal

witness,” Bostick writes. “Before there wereany cattle grazing on the western range thedesert tortoise was extremely rare. The firstSpanish explorers found roasted shells at oldIndian camps but never saw a live tortoise.They concluded that this unique reptile wasextinct.... Spanish colonists brought cattlewith them. Cattle and tortoise have sharedthe same range for more than three centuriesin some places and for more than a centuryeverywhere....”In her book, “Tortoises for Tomorrow,”

Kristin Berry writes: “Longtime desert resi-dents in California noted extraordinary den-sities [in the early ’30s...when cattle numberspeaked] that could have been as high as2,000 per square mile.”Bostick says that a member of the survey

party in Antelope Valley in 1933 saw over100 tortoises in one place at one time. Hetold Kristin Berry that tortoises “were every-where...all over the ground” (and so werecow pies). “From the early ’30s to the mid-’80s the number of cows grazing on federalrange was reduced about 90 percent.... Fromthe early ’30s to the mid-’80s tortoise densi-ties declined from 2,000 per square mile to65 (97 percent) in response to reduced cattlegrazing. Kristin Berry used this drasticreduction in tortoise population to get thedesert tortoise listed as an endangeredspecies. Then she used this listing to ‘get ridof the cows.’ Mission accomplished.”Bostick’s 1987 report reviews all cases

where cattle grazing was eliminated and tor-toises had exclusive use of the range. “Inevery case elimination of cattle grazingresulted in a smaller tortoise population.” Hesays the most complete data is from theBeaver Dam Mountains. “Woodbury andHardy reported a tortoise population densityof 150 per square mile in 1948. BLM reducedcattle grazing a few years later and eliminatedcattle in 1970. Coombs reported a tortoisedensity of 39 per square mile in 1974. Inthese 26 years cattle use was reduced 100percent and tortoise numbers were reduced74 percent. These tortoises were doing sopoorly a veterinarian, Dr. Jarchow, was con-sulted. He reported all six specimens weresuffering from osteoporosis caused by a pro-tein deficiency in their diet. Dr. Jarchowexamined five specimens from the samemountains that shared their range with cat-

tle. He reported these specimens were allhealthy and well nourished.”According to Bostick, the historical

record proves conclusively that tortoisethrive when cattle are on the range withthem and without cattle grazing they arealways malnourished and unhealthy andtheir numbers plummet. “The tortoise

recovery program is based on a popular butfalse premise that the desert tortoise isendangered because of competition withcattle for forage,” Bostick concluded. “Therecovery team has had a lot of time and theyhave spent a lot of money. I think we shouldhave an accounting. How many tortoisepopulations have they recovered and to whatextent?”

AT SATURATION LEVELSBack in the 1990s, native Las Vegan HarryPappas was appointed to the BLM’s Citizen

Advisory Council by then-CongresswomanBarbara Vucanovich. He later representedthe State Rifle & Pistol Association on theClark County Tortoise Advisory Council.“They said anyone who found a tortoise

had to turn it in to Clark County authori-ties,” Pappas recalled back in 2001. “So whathappened? They got so overrun with tortois-es being turned in that they told us they weregoing to have to start euthanizing them. Isaid, ‘Why don’t you just drop them out inthe desert?’ They said, ‘Oh no, they’ll fightwith the native tortoises that already live outthere and they’ll kill each other, because allthese lands are already at saturation levels.’”Pappas recalled a wildlife biologist from

California who, more than a decade ago,spoke before the Citizen Advisory Council,bringing in two huge plastic garbage bags fullof baby tortoise shells. “There had to be hun-dreds of them, probably thousands. Everyone of these shells had a hole peckedthrough the top where the ravens had carriedthem off and pecked through the shell andeaten the baby tortoise right out of the shell,and he said they picked these up in middensaround the raven nests, just thousands ofthem.”When blame started to be placed on the

cattle, Pappas asked that the wildlife biologistwith his bags full of baby tortoise shells bebrought back. “They said they didn’t have theslightest idea who I was talking about; theyclaimed they’d never heard of him.”People who find desert tortoises wander-

ing around southern Nevada are supposedto turn them in. The tax-funded shelter col-lected 10,000 desert tortoises and finallystopped accepting any new ones, with offi-cials admitting they euthanize—“putdown”—any that develop respiratory infec-tions, a few hundred so far. At the moment,the tortoise protection officials’ biggest cur-rent concern is “unlimited breeding of anendangered species in captivity.” Marci Hen-son, of Clark County’s Desert ConservationProgram, says they have to find a way to stopthat because, in trying to “recover” thespecies, animals in shelters or kept as pets inpeople’s backyards “don’t count,” so they’rejust a problem.This is like saying the common house cat

is an endangered species, because eventhough millions of them live in our homes,those don’t count–-all that matters is therearen’t “enough” of them (a number never tobe defined) left in the Egyptian desert fromwhich they originally came. ■

© A

LAN

HAR

T

Even though there are millions of ravens, they areprotected by the Migratory Bird Act. Sadly, ravensare the greatest threat to desert tortoise, eatingbaby tortoises right out of their shells.

The BLM was established in 1946 to “promoteproductive use of theland.” In 1990, 596species were listed as

“threatened orendangered” by thefederal government. By 1999, the list had

grown to 1,205—many ofthem weeds and bugs.



Sen. Harry Reid, who actually lives in afancy hotel in Washington City, returns

to Nevada every six years to don a pair ofblue jeans and get his picture taken sitting ona hay bale and fondling the .22 rifle withwhich he recalls once shooting rabbits as akid. He consistently wins reelection to Con-gress in close races by carrying only two of

the state’s 17 counties—Mineral in the north,which is depressed but still heavily dependenton federal funding for its military ammodump, and massive and increasingly Demo -cratic Clark County, home of Las Vegas.Reid has had several supposedly “mini”

strokes and often says odd things that—ifthey emerged from the mouth of a publicfigure on the political right—would be mer-cilessly ridiculed by the leftist commentariat.When the latest BLM effort to round upBundy’s cattle or prompt a shoot-out back-fired and had to be called off, Reid made itpersonal, branding Bundy’s nonviolent sup-porters “violent domestic terrorists” andvowing, “It’s not over.” He then went further.A few days later Reid, sounding like a cheapgangster, predicted “something would hap-pen” to Cliven Bundy.Why would the most powerful man in

the U.S. Senate want so badly to get rid ofCliven Bundy’s little herd of cows?Well, the federal judge who in 2001 stun-

ningly ruled that the federal government“owns” 86 percent of Nevada, Johnnie Rawl-inson, was nominated for that post by Reid.And the boss of the BLM, who doubtlessapproved the big Bundy raid, was a chiefReid staffer from 2003 to 2011. So it wouldhave been difficult for the senator to shrugand say, “All I know is what I read in the

papers.” But there’s more going on here.Former Review-Journal editor Tom

Mitchell wrote on his 4thST8 blog on April11, 2014: “For some reason a Web page theBLM had once posted listing its reasons forthe confiscation of Cliven Bundy’s cattle inthe Gold Butte area has been taken down,but a cache of the page is still extant. Thatpage states: ‘NonGovernmental Organiza-tions have expressed concern that the region-al mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake SolarEnergy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the loca-tion for off-site mitigation for impacts fromsolar development, and that those restora-tion activities are not durable with the pres-ence of trespass cattle.’” Mitchell wrote—though of course he

does. “I have no idea what any of that meansin English.” It means the feds have alreadyaccepted the planned “Gold Butte Conserva-tion Area”—the fenced-off Bundy ranchwithout its cattle—as an acceptable replace-ment for the acres of supposed “tortoise

habitat” that would be destroyed by the bigRed Chinese solar plant planned for the DryLake bed between Las Vegas and the BundyRanch—a plant which could not be builtwithout the Red Chinese somehow makingHarry Reid their friend, since it would alsorequire both federal subsidies and a Nevadastate legislative mandate that local monopolyutility companies buy a certain percentage oftheir power from high-priced solar sources,even though this drives up local power bills. “So, cattle bad. Solar panels good,” Mr.

Mitchell concludes. “Got to save the tor -toises. Or is it the solar panel companieswhich contribute to Reid’s campaigns?”Another long-term Reid donor and sup-

porter, Harvey Whittemore, didn’t havemuch trouble getting an exemption fromtortoise protection rules when he wanted toput a big residential development at CoyoteSprings, in the empty desert northwest of theBundy grazing allotment. Whittemore waslater convicted of making illegal campaigncontributions to Sen. Reid, though of courseno culpability for accepting the donations inany kind of quid pro quo arrangement wasever assigned to Mister Cleanface. The Coy-ote Springs development appears to have

died on the vine with the big housing marketcollapse of 2008.Who’s the lawyer who appears to be

doing pretty well promoting that Dry LakeSolar Energy Zone, which has had a fantasticrun of luck in seeking exemptions or “miti-gation” approval for the tortoise habitat itssolar panels will supposedly destroy?Um...that would be Harry Reid’s son, Rory.Unfortunately for the Reid Machine, it

appears the senator’s good friend, Red Chi-nese energy billionaire and solar tycoonYusuo Wang, pulled the plug on the big DryLake solar farm in the summer of 2013. EvenSen. Reid’s arm twisting had not proved suf-ficient to win commitments from monopolyCalifornia and Nevada energy providers tobuy hundreds of megawatts of high-pricedChinese solar power. ■

This only scratches the surface of the Reidmachine. For more, check:http://patriotpost.us/opinion/25014.

The Reid ConnectionWhy would the most powerful man in the U.S. Senate want so badly to get rid of Cliven Bundy’s little herd of cows? By Vin Suprynowicz

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 16, 2013,accompanied by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM). Dubbed “Mr. Cleanface” bymobster Joe Agosto, Reid predicted on Las Vegas TV after the BLM stand-down that “something wouldhappen” to Cliven Bundy. RIGHT: Typical western solar farm. How many critters can live here?

© J

OSE

LU

IS M

AGAU

A / R

EUTE

RS

VIA

INTE

RN

ET



“With a wave of his pen under the controver-sial American Antiquities Act of 1906, Presi-dent Obama announced the creation of anational monument in southern New Mexi-co—the 500,000-acre Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.”

PRESIDENTIAL PROCLAMATION, MAY 21, 2014

The Cliven Bundy story is just the tip ofthe iceberg. These announcements are

coming with alarming rapidity, and federaldepartment overreach is at epidemic levels.Here are a few other examples of takings’attempts in the years since the Obamaadministration took control, or perhapssome would say lost control, of its domesticland-management agencies, includingBureau of Land Management, U.S. ForestService, National Park Service, NationalMarine Fisheries, and Environmental Proec-ction Agency.

■ California: Drakes Bay Oyster Company(DBOC), a National Stewardship Award-win-ning leaseholder in the Point Reyes NationalSeashore, was denied renewal of its 40-yearlease, even though the park superintendenthad encouraged owners to invest $300,000 inrenovating facilities. DBOC sued over thedenial which included justification based onfabricated science and failure to produce aNational Environmental Policy Act report.Even though more than 90 percent of residentsin Marin County want the farm to stay open, asplit 9th Circuit panel sided with the govern-ment, ruling that courts may not review regu-lators’ decisions against renewing leases onfederal property. The family is petitioning theSupreme Court to review the case.

■ Oklahoma/Kansas: State attorneys gener-al file lawsuit against Interior Department andU.S. Fish & Wildlife Service over attempts byWildEarth Guardians to restrict all economicactivity in a five-state area including Okla-homa, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, andKansas, in deference to and disregarding stateconservation efforts for the lesser prairie chicken.

■ Texas/Oklahoma: The Red River chan-

nel migrates, as do all river channels. Privatelandowners in Texas and Oklahoma havewrangled since 1919 over lands bordering theriver. Now the Oklahoma BLM is formulatingnew land-management plans for 116 miles ofRed River borderlands for which privatelandowners in Texas have paid hundreds ofthousands of dollars [to pay for property or intaxes?], and the BLM says it belongs to the gov-ernment. “The land in question belongs nei-ther to Texas or Oklahoma, even if locals havebought it from one another and continue topay taxes on it.”

■ Otero County, New Mexico: Forest Ser-vice fences off a water source owned, accordingto New Mexico law, by a ranching family. TheForest Service, attempting to protect the NewMexico meadow-jumping mouse at the behestof WildEarth Guardians, refuses to open thegates while Otero County commissionersdemand the sheriff cut the locks. As for the micethat are supposedly being driven out by thethirsty herd, their presence isn’t exactly well-known among locals. “I’ve never seen one ofthese mice, and the Forest Service claims itcaught one last year,” Commissioner TommieHerrell told Reuters. Standoff continues as wego to press.

■ Nevada: State BLM director Amy Lued-ers reports that ranchers voluntarily relin-quished 400,000 AUMs to temporary nonusein deference to drought conditions in the state.This represents an average 20 percent cut toranchers statewide, and a loss of income of $40million this year, not including hay, pastureand potential restocking costs. BLM requestedvoluntary cuts in February 2014, monthsbefore spring rains fed grasslands, resulting inlush regrowth of millions of acres of potentialfuel for wildfires. Some district managersworked with permittees to allow them to con-tinue grazing based on spring data. Others, likeBattle Mountain district manager Doug Fur-tado, used the drought designation to advancehis well-known personal animus towardranchers. In Furtado’s district, the droughtplan resulted in a not-so-voluntary reduc-tion of 156,634 AUMs (animal unitmonths), compared to 29,886 AUMs in theWinnemucca District, and only 2,271 AUMsin the Ely District. Each of these districtscontains approximately 11 million federallymanaged acres. Local rancher Pete Tomeraresponded by rallying support and showing offthe Argenta allotment in May on a grass tourto more than 200 people, including local politi-cians and congressional representatives. Furta-do did not attend and was forced to back off hisposition. The Tomeras were allowed back ontotheir allotment for a year.

■ Kevin Borda, a Nevada BLM permitteewith allotments in both the Ely District andFurtado’s Battle Mountain District, wasshown massive and arbitrary cuts in his permit

More than 200 interested citizens turned out in May to tour Pete Tomera’s Argenta BLM allotment. Springrains brought the onset of abundant cheatgrass, an annual which livestock are most likely to eat in springwhile it is still green. As temperatures rise, cheatgrass dries out, turns red, and becomes extremely flammablefor wildfire later in the season. Resting cheatgrass does nothing for the landscape except allow it to reseedand multiply for the following growing (and fire) season. BELOW: Pete Tomera’s cows, at first deniedturnout on the range by BLM’s Doug Furtado, knee deep in grass.

More Federal TakingsThe feds will not be satisfied until they have control of all private property—and not only in the American West. By Julian Stone

© L

EE R

AIN

E

© M

ARY

BRAN

SCO

MB



SPECIAL REPORT: PATTERNS OF HARASSMENT© RANGE magazine, P.O. Box 639, Carson City, NV 89702

1-800-RANGE-4-UYou can download this special report via www.rangemagazine.com/Special Reports/Fall 2014.

when he went in to pay his grazing fees on apermit that was supposedly not in question.BLM range conservationists told him that theyhad been advised by its legal team not to accepthis check, telling him, “If we don’t accept themoney, you don’t have a permit.” Furtado alsothreatened Borda with trespass if he allowedhis cattle to water on his permit. “How can hetell me not to turn on my pump to run thewater I have rights to?” Borda asked.These are not just isolated incidents of

individual administrators flexing their mus-cles. There is implicit permission as well asnational direction to this landgrab. Evidencecomes from the BLM’s 2010 internal memoon Treasured Landscapes (see “Move Over,Bruce Babbitt” by Dave Skinner atwww.rangemagazine.com, Fall 2010), whichoutlines how BLM plans to wrest control ofprivate lands from “willing sellers” over thenext 25 years. (The willing seller language isstraight off the anti-cow Western WatershedProject Web page.) Roughly equivalent insize to Wyoming and Colorado combined, inorder to “facilitate the transition from thecurrent land-management system which isbased on jurisdictional boundaries, to amodern landscape-level management sys-tem, the BLM proposes to designate, ratio-nalize, and manage at-scale” itstreasured-landscape holdings. Management categories include: ■ National Landscape Conservation Sys-

tem (27 million acres): National Monuments,Wilderness Study Areas, National Scenic andHistoric Trails, etc.

■ “Special Areas” identified through theland-use planning process (75 million acres):Areas of Critical Environmental Concern,Globally Important Bird Areas (does this meanflyways?), Significant Caves, and others.

■ Critical habitat, designated by FWS (25million acres): Listed and sensitive plant andanimal species.

■ Wild Horse Preserves (no specificacreage): Targeted for the Midwest and theEast.BLM recommends establishing new

national monuments by using the Antiqui-ties Act, “which allows the president to act

quickly”; BLM wants to use the land-useplanning process to promote conservationvalues—rather than the multiple-use direc-tion that is embedded in current law. It justi-fies massive adverse economic impacts bysuggesting that we measure the value of BLMlands in “the amount of carbon sequesteredby a stand of trees or native grasslands”rather than in timber sales or livestock pro-duction.BLM aims to consolidate its checker-

board landholdings, particularly in Nevada,Oregon, California, Utah and Wyoming,seeking to acquire properties “to preserveecosystem integrities.” It plans to use theLand & Water Conservation Fund (LWCF),the Federal Land Transfer Facilitation Act,

and a new program of renewable energy off-sets. BLM estimates LWCF would need $75million a year for the next 10 years to financeits landgrab. That could be your privateproperty it wants. Here’s a partial list of fed-eral and environmental priorities. The readerwill recognize a few:

■ Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks (near-ly 500,000 acres) was declared a nationalmonument in southern New Mexico on May21, 2014

■ Gold Butte, Nevada (in dispute thanksto the Bundy debacle)

■ El Rio Grande del Norte, New Mexico■ John Day Basin, Oregon: 10,000 acres

of new wilderness■ Dolores River Basin, Colorado: poten-

tial for 500,000 acres of protected publiclands, old-growth ponderosa forest, 63,000acres of wilderness

■ Hidden Gems, Colorado: 400,000 acresof wilderness, both FS and BLM.

■ Montana’s Northern Prairie: 2.5 mil-lion acres

■ Heart of the Great Basin: a swath ofcentral Nevada with undesignated acreage

■ Sonoran Desert, Arizona: 500,000 acres■ Owyhee Desert, Oregon and Nevada

And the list goes on. ■

“The president is going downthe list, and sealing off vastswaths of the West on behalfof his special interest allies,who view our states as their

personal playground.”

—THE WESTERN CONGRESSIONALCAUCUS, DESCRIBING THE 2010 BLM MEMO

LABELED “INTERNAL DRAFT—NOT FOR

RELEASE” AS A PLAN TO GRAB

MILLIONS OF ACRES OF WESTERN LAND

Pete Tomera and neighboring ranchers in the Argenta allotment were cut by 11,000 AUMs in the springof 2014. That’s a lot of cattle and could devastate the ranchers. Here Pete asks the photographer after hewas finally allowed to turn his cattle out in May: “No grass? After our spring rains, this is great!”

© L

EE R

AIN

E


Documents

SPECIAL REPORT PATTERNS OF HARASSMENT - RANGE …FALL 2014 • RANGE MAGAZINE • 37 In April 2014, after years of bluff, bluster, and one-sided hearings in federal courts, the federal