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Upon investigation and inquiry, the Bundy family could learn little. No evidence was found justifying the removal of livestock. What evidence was uncovered indicated that tortoise had been greatly benefitted by the advent of grazing throughout the southwest. Investigations into the history of the region indicated that desert tortoise were nearly non-existent at the time of first exploration and settlement. It was not until later, after sheep and cattle were placed upon the lands that desert tortoise began to appear on a regular basis.

Other questions arose as well. Why were the Bundy’s rights to graze not being recognized. Why were their rights to the use of waters found upon the public lands not being recognized? Why were the Bundys not being afforded due process?

Further investigation raised other questions. No one working for the Bureau of Land Management or Justice Department could quantify jurisdiction. No one seemed to be able to show why it was, that the federal government hold unlimited jurisdiction over the vast majority of lands that lie within western states.

As near as Cliven was able to determine, under our constitutional form of government, it is the responsibility of State and local governments to resolve public needs issues. History is clear,
bureaucratic/socialistic planning and decision making has never worked no matter where its been tried - not in the Soviet Union, not in Chile, not in Argentina. Nowhere has centralized planning worked - either in resolving social issues, in protecting the environment, or in producing needed wealth and production. Free markets cease to function properly when centralized planning is implemented - individual rights are trampled and freedom is lost.

It’s no wonder there’s been such turmoil regarding public lands issues for so long now. At no time has decision making regarding public lands management been allowed at the local level. At no time have effected families been afforded the right of due process. Never has it been shown that the removal of livestock from Nevada’s rangelands will benefit desert tortoise or any other species of wildlife. Yet, on and on we go, with one environmental groups and those working within the agencies claiming that grazing was causing undo declines in range land condition.




I and others, who have run cattle on Nevada’s rangelands for most of our lives, will never know all there is about resource management - that is for certain - but one thing we do know is, the reductions that have been going on throughout our state during these last few decades is not helping wildlife.

There is not nearly as many song birds around as there were thirty years ago. Numbers of deer are down, sage grouse are down - even a lowly jack rabbit is often hard to find. And what of the desert tortoise? What’s happened to them, now that they have had all the “protection” for all these years? Has anyone come up with any figures showing population trends? Of course not. No one is going to do that - for, as most of us already know, whatever government manages falls to ruin.

What Cliven Bundy has been telling us all these years is correct. We need to proceed as the founders of this nation intended for us to proceed. Its not livestock or the private sector that has been hurting wildlife. Its bureaucracy and the environmental mentality that has permeated society during recent times that is the problem.

Take our refuge systems lands for example. During those years when it became popular to champion the removal of livestock and predator control practices throughout the country, those managing our nations wildlife refuges were the first to implement restrictive policy. Consequently, it was on these same refuges, where we first witnessed declining wildlife populations - on the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge - at Hart Mountain - on the Malhure National Wildlife Refuge - and at Ruby Lake. Wildlife use and production has been declining more rapidly on refuge system lands than elsewhere within the Great Basin.

We should demand that justice be done. We should demand that a study be completed for the purpose of assessing wildlife abundance and resource condition on lands that are now being grazed by Bundy cattle as compared to wildlife abundance and resource condition on adjacent lands where no livestock have been grazed for a number of years.

Not that I would want government alone to oversee such a study. What I am suggesting is, that people from both the private sector and public sector be involved. That way, we know that everything will be on the up and up.