A Republican U.S. senator added his voice Wednesday to
critics of a federal cattle roundup fought by a Nevada rancher who claims longstanding
grazing rights on remote public rangeland about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas
Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada said he told new U.S. Bureau of
Land Management chief Neil Kornze in Washington, D.C., that law-abiding
Nevadans shouldn’t be penalized by an “overreaching” agency.
Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval pointed earlier to what he
called “an atmosphere of intimidation,” resulting from the roundup and said he
believed constitutional rights were being trampled.
Heller said he heard from local officials, residents and the
Nevada Cattlemen’s Association and remained “extremely concerned about the size
of this closure and disruptions with access to roads, water and electrical
infrastructure.”
The federal government has shut down a scenic but windswept
area about half the size of the state of Delaware to round up about 900 cattle
it says are trespassing.
BLM and National Park Service officials didn’t immediately
respond Wednesday to criticisms of the roundup that started Saturday and
prompted the closure of the 1,200-square-mile area through May 12.
It’s seen by some as the latest battle over state and
federal land rights in a state with deep roots in those disputes, including the
Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and ’80s. Nevada, where various federal
agencies manage or control more than 80 percent of the land, is among several
Western states where ranchers have challenged federal land ownership.
The current showdown pits rancher Cliven Bundy’s claims of
ancestral rights to graze his cows on open range against federal claims that
the cattle are trespassing on arid and fragile habitat of the endangered desert
tortoise. Bundy has said he owns about 500 branded cattle on the range and
claims the other 400 targeted for roundup are his, too.
BLM and Park Service officials see threats in Bundy’s
promise to “do whatever it takes” to protect his property and in his
characterization that the dispute constitutes a “range war.”
U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, noted that BLM
officials were enforcing federal court orders that Bundy remove his animals.
The legal battle has been waged for decades.
Those who say Bundy is a “deadbeat” are making
inaccurate claims. Bundy has in fact paid fees to Clark County, Nevada in an
arrangement pre-dating the BLM. The BLM arrived much later, changed the details
of the setup without consulting with Bundy — or any other rancher — and then
began systematically driving out cattle and ranchers. Bundy refused to pay BLM,
especially after they demanded he reduce his heard’s head count down to a level
that would not sustain his ranch. Bundy OWNS the water and forage rights to
this land. He paid for these rights. He built fences, established water ways,
and constructed roads with his own money, with the approval of Nevada and BLM.
When BLM started using his fees to run him off the land and harassing him, he
ceased paying. So should BLM reimburse him for managing the land and for the
confiscation of his water and forage rights?
