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Cliven Bundy Saddles up!

Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy said Thursday he is once again “ready to do battle” with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over his cattle the government contends are illegally grazing on federal land.

Bundy said he learned recently from Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie that the BLM is planning “soon” to enforce a federal court order issued last fall to seize his cattle if he hasn’t removed them from the Bunkerville Mountain/Virgin River area southwest of Mesquite; something he has no intention of doing.

“The county sheriff told me it was going to happen but he just hasn’t told me when,” Bundy said.

Erica Haspiel-Szlosek, communications chief for the Nevada BLM office in Reno, confirmed Thursday the BLM is in possession of a federal court order telling Bundy to remove his cattle within 45 days, “and we are well past that time.”

“I don’t think we have a final date because there are many things still in flux,” Haspiel-Szlosek said. “We’re still evaluating the situation. Before we can impound any cattle, he will have to be notified in writing about the general time frame.”

Although Bundy said the only notice he received notice from the BLM was the August court order giving him 45 days to move his cattle off Gold Butte, he still believes it could happen any day.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my life, liberty and property,” the 67-year-old rancher said. “I don’t know what it will take. I guess a lot of media, family, friends, whoever will stand with me. The state and local government has fumbled this thing so far.”

Bundy and the BLM have clashed repeatedly since the early 1990s about his cattle roaming the Gold Butte area.

Among other contentious disagreements, the government insists the area is important habitat for the endangered desert tortoise and Bundy’s cattle eat the vegetation that would otherwise sustain them.

Bundy disputes first that the tortoise is an endangered species and, second, that there’s plenty of food for both animals.

He also maintains his cattle aren’t “trespassing” since the federal government has no claim on the land, and his animals are feeding on grass that’s growing land owned by the state or county not the federal government.

“I can’t believe a federal judge wouldn’t recognize the sovereign right of the state of Nevada,” Bundy said in May.

Bundy said Thursday the latest skirmish with the BLM could be solved without any problem if Sheriff Gillespie would simply step in.

“I think the sheriff could shut this whole thing down,” Bundy said. “All he has to do is say, ‘No.’”

When queried about Bundy and the BLM via email, Metro Police responded, “The LVMPD is not involved in any scheduled cattle round up concerning Cliven Bundy.”

“Is the sheriff going to sit on the sidelines to keep the peace?” Bundy said. “If so, he’s not protecting me. He’s stopping me from protecting my property. He’s got to make a decision which side of the fence he’s on.”

The BLM’s plan, if Bundy continues to refuse to remove his cattle, is to hire a contractor to round them up and confiscate them. The process requires that every animal be checked by a state brand inspector.

“As I understand it, one of the reasons we went to court (instead of confiscating the cattle last fall) was so the state brand inspector would be on-site. That’s what the problem was last year,” Haspiel-Szlosek said.

Apparently, the confiscation order was too vague.

“The state brand inspector now has all the necessary legal documentation to inspect the animals we confiscate,” she said.

Bundy said the brand inspector should refuse to work with the BLM.

“All he has to say is ‘no,’” Bundy said. “The problem is the federal courts have been running the show. The state has never got into it.

“These state brand inspectors work for me as a citizen of Nevada, not the feds,” Bundy said. “They don’t have any order from a state court.

“I want to give fair warning,” Bundy said. “I will hold the state and county officials accountable and liable. I will also make any cowboy contractor who collects the cattle legally accountable. That means I’ll sue ‘em.”

However and whenever it occurs, no one wants to see violence.

“Guns are not my intent,” Bundy said.

Haspiel-Szlosek agrees.

“It’s hard to say what the circumstances might cause,” she said. “We certainly hope it doesn’t escalate to violence. We really don’t think Mr. Bundy will do that.”

Awesome Video!!! 


http://video214.com/play/o9viwoJxxS0Qzhx3dY8Fig/s/dark

^^^^^ CLICK TO WATCH ^^^^^^

OPEN FORUM: Perspective On Nevada Day

 November 6th, 2013 |  Author: vrobison

By CLIVEN BUNDY

Thanks for reminding! Home Means Nevada to me! (From the Editor’s Desk, Remembering the Reason For Nevada And, For That Matter, Which Day It Is: Progress, October 30, 2013)

Fifty years ago, all Nevada schools were invited to participate in a Nevada Day Display Contest having to do with celebrating the centennial of admission of Nevada into the Union. The Project was turned over to the Virgin Valley FFA and then given to me.

I went to the scrap iron bin in the back of the school shop and started to pull steel out. After a time of piecing, cutting, welding and cutting bark off an old cottonwood tree to make the buckhorn handgrips, I had built a gun at school. It was an eight foot replica of an old .45 caliber pistol, only this one was a 600 caliber.

It was displayed in front of Virgin Valley Elementary and High School offices for several months to remind us that that year, 100 years ago, We the People of the territory of Nevada were admitted as a state to join the Union of the United States of America, under the equal footing, with sovereignty, equal representation in Congress, and with borders or state lines around us, with subdivisions (county government closest to We the People) and a county sheriff to protect our life, liberty and property. We now have the U.S. Constitution, declared by President Lincoln to be admitted equal what-so-ever to the original 13 states.

Mr. Ed Presley stated in a recent court document, “It doesn’t matter what happens in the enabling act. It’s what happens at the moment of statehood that matters.”

Nevada is a state. Its people have the fullness of the inspired U.S. Constitution. We no longer live under territory law, (USC ar. 4.3) where Congress has unlimited power to make all rules and regulations. No, we cannot ask the executive branch of our government to give our public land back, nor can we ask legislative, nor would or could the judicial courts.

It is not ethical or moral to ask for something WE ALREADY HAVE guaranteed to us: We the People of the great state of Nevada, home that we love.

On this day, October 31, and throughout this 150th sesquicentennial year, we should remember our pilgrim fathers that left their home countries seeking freedom, liberty and agency to be able to develop a soul of love and knowledge. After 200 years on this continent they still had not sought after these attributes. England’s strong central government had ruling power, with the strongest armies on the earth. So We the People fought and we won. We the People formed the U.S. Constitution, giving the Unites States limited power, reserving the power to the states and to its people. Only 10 miles square of this continent was set aside for the U.S. government.

We should not ask, nor can we be given what WE ALREADY HAVE. Let us act like the GREAT STATE that we are!

The gun that was built at school did win the state contest.

Cliven Bundy is the last cattle rancher still standing in northeastern Clark County. He resides in Bunkerville, Nevada.

Home, Home on the Range: 
Where the Desert Tortoises Roam?
Cliven Bundy is a man on a mission. He’s been battling the federal government — specifically, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) — for more than 20 years, and he’s determined to win this David-and-Goliath battle.

Bundy’s family has raised cattle on the land around Mesquite since the 1870s, and he now owns about 500 cattle roaming through the desert rangeland. He tends them, brands them, and drives them to market much like his ancestors did. It’s a hard way of life, but he’s carrying on the family tradition. Now 67, Bundy hopes to someday pass it on to his 14 children.

The only problem is that Bundy doesn’t own the land his cattle are grazing on. Like more than 85 percent of Nevada, that land is owned by the federal government and managed by the BLM, which leases grazing rights to ranchers for an annual fee. Since 1993, Bundy has refused to pay the fees, claiming that his Mormon pioneer family settled the area long before the BLM even existed. He also insists that the land belongs to the state, not to the federal government, which has no right to order him around or fine him. The government at first wanted him just to pay the fees, then cancelled his grazing rights altogether and demanded he remove his cattle from “their” land. The BLM keeps winning judgments against him in court, where he defends himself, and Bundy keeps ignoring their orders.

In July, the U.S. district court ruled that if Bundy didn’t remove his cattle by August 23rd, they could be seized by the BLM. The government also wants him to remove all his improvements, including water tanks and wells. The deadline came and went, and so far (as of press time), the cattle are still on the land and Bundy still refuses to pay the fees, which may now total more than $300,000. He has declared himself willing to do whatever it takes to defend his property, which seems to have scared off the feds.

Bundy says he has “fired” the BLM, whose so-called experts said he would be permitted to run his cattle on the range only from mid-summer through winter. As a rancher, Bundy knows that spring is the only time cattle fatten up, but the BLM was concerned that cows might step on baby tortoises when they emerge in the spring, and as everyone knows, the desert tortoise is an “endangered species”.

Range biologists demonstrated years ago that desert tortoises actually do better on land that’s being grazed by cattle and managed by ranchers. People who have lived in Southern Nevada awhile know that this business of “protecting the desert tortoise” is an example of government interference at its worst. In the 1990s, the feds insisted that tortoises were in danger of extinction. They blocked off huge areas of land from development, and charged exorbitant fees to developers, which were used to establish a Desert Tortoise Conservation Center. You may have read recently that the center was so overcrowded with tortoises that they had to euthanize many of them. They couldn’t release them into the wild because that would cause overcrowding in the native population. How can an endangered animal population be overcrowded? That’s government logic for you.

Cliven Bundy may be on the wrong side of the law according to the courts, but to my way of thinking, we need more citizens like him to stand up to the federal government instead of giving in to their insatiable power grabbing. Let the cattle graze and the cowboys ride the range, and if they occasionally step on a tortoise, that’s a small price to pay for living free.

By: Lyle Brennan

No One Asked Me But…

 October 2nd, 2013 |  Author: vrobison

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… I received an e-mail from a hero of mine, Cliven Bundy. I have only met the man once; however, I have followed his extended fight with the Bureau of Land Management.

The federal agencies are upset about his grazing of a few cows on thousands of acres of land that the government claimed when Nevada became a state. The e-mail I received from him was a copy of a press release Cliven Bundy apparently has sent to a number of news outlets in Nevada. I asked and received his permission to print it in its entirety.

Cliven Bundy offers to take in all Desert Tortoises marked for senseless killing and have them brought to his ranch where he grazes his cattle on Nevada State Public Lands. He says they can range on his ranch while the Nevada State Officials establish an adoption program to place these Tortoises scheduled to be killed by the federal Tortoise caretakers.

Bundy Ranch is a perfect habitat for the Desert Tortoise, proper elevation, proper climate, proper terrain; the Tortoise’s diet is the same as the Brahma Cow’s. It is a well-established scientific fact that the Tortoise lives well on cattle droppings (cow pies) because the cow does not digest very much of the nutrients in the grass they eat which leaves much protein still for the Tortoise to live on.

“I am happy to share my forage and water rights in order to save the devastating euthanization of this innocent and interesting critter,” Bundy notes.

For thousands of years the Desert Tortoise could have wandered to the mountain areas, or they could have traveled to the lower wetlands and meadows, but they chose to live in this rough desert habitat which has been designated as “critical”.

Bundy says, “I’m not doing this because of some phony Endangered Species listing of the Tortoise, not at all; I’m doing this for the humanity of preventing the senseless killing of innocent wildlife that is the property of the State of Nevada and its Citizens. It’s very clear now that it was always about money and never the betterment of the Tortoise.”

It is well established that the Bundy Ranch has served for several generations a well-managed safe haven for wildlife due to the extensive range stewardship implemented by Bundy in his continued development of his water out here on the dry desert. All forms of wildlife have flourished along with much plant life as well. Cliven is an animal and plant lover and for his entire life on the ranch as he continues on into his late 60’s to cultivate the soil to grow the best melons around and put up the finest hay for his cattle. The Bundy Ranch has also for several generations been providing food for public consumption and one more batch of wildlife to come onto the Bundy Ranch for sustenance and salvation like that of this Desert Tortoise will be no bother at all.

This sent me to researching some of the past articles on this issue in the Las Vegas papers. The original statement by the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, the agency established to protect the tortoise, was that they were closing due to lack of funds. They would, therefore, euthanize the tortoises in their care.

When there was a public outcry; not about their closing but about killing the animals that they were paid to protect; the conservatory explained they would only kill the sick tortoises. They indicated that they had 1,400 tortoises in their care and 700 were suffering from a respiratory virus.

In the boom days of Las Vegas, the organization extorted over a million dollars a year from local builders. However, when the depression hit Las Vegas, their yearly take dropped to $290,000 a year.

The conservatory states it has been bringing in over 1,000 tortoise a year for twenty years. Tortoises have a life expectancy of somewhere between sixty and one hundred years. Tortoises produce 5-12 eggs each year.

Now I am not much of a mathematician but that would suggest the conservatory should; unless they are releasing or killing more than a 1,000 tortoises a year; have a whole lot more than 1,400 tortoises.

This organization states, “It is illegal to touch, harm, or harass the animals and the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center has tried to increase the population since they were added to the endangered species list in 1990.” However, it was also indicated that they separate the tortoises by sexes. That sounds a whole lot like harassment to me.

I am getting really old but I do believe I remember if you separate any species by sex, you probably are not going to have any increase in that species. One might suspect these are the same people or at least the same policies that have protected the Moapa Dice to the edge of extinction.

I would suggest that we take Mr. Bundy up on on his offer. Take the 700 healthy tortoises that will need a home when the conservatory closes and release them on the hundreds of thousands of acres from which the government wants to force Mr. Bundy to remove his few hundred cattle. Let the cattle and tortoise co-exist. Then, come back in five years and see how they fare.

If the experiment fails, the tortoises will be no worse off than if they had remained in the control of the government that has been killing them on a regular basis. It would be a far better place that the test site filled with nuclear radiation where they released a bunch last year.

Those of you who have followed Cliven Bundy’s attempt to protect his cattle from federal rustlers will understand that the real endangered species here is not the tortoise but Americans like Mr. Bundy who stand against an oppressive overbearing government.

If you believe Mr. Bundy’s fight with this bunch of bureaucrats with support from a minority of influential eco-nut Reid-ites should be his alone, you might take a moment to remind yourselves that these are same effete snobs, with the support of Harry Reid, that want to remove you from the area also.

Thought of the week… A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights.

– Lance Morrow

Nev. rancher the ‘last man standing’

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is skeptical about claims that range cattle are out to get the native desert tortoise. The court has agreed with him. But still every rancher in Clark County (51 to be exact) and their cattle, except Bundy, have been removed in an effort to protect the shelled creature. Or so the story goes.

“Our tri-county cattle association sued the government and won. The court said there was no evidence that the cows interfered with the tortoise,” Bundy explained. “That should have solved the problem but the environmentalists said that there ‘may be’ a problem like a cow stepping on a tortoise sometime in the future, so the tortoise got placed on the endangered species list.” And the cattle population, along with the ranching culture and industry in that part of the world has been nearly wiped away.

Actually, Bundy claims, the declaration of the desert tortoise as an endangered species, and the following habitat protections “pretty much eliminated all ranchers from Arizona west to the Pacific Ocean.

“I was too stubborn to just give up my rights, and I said ‘no’ to their plan,” Bundy explained in a soft-spoken voice. “The feds don’t really own this land. I said ‘no’ and then later I said ‘hell, no,’ I’m not going to pay the BLM to manage my ranch out of business so I fired the BLM and quit paying their fees,” he explained.

The feds then responded with a lawsuit of their own, Bundy explained, and got a court decision from a U.S. district court telling him to remove his cattle and pay trespass fees. “I continued to graze my cattle and told them ‘if you continue to push me, I’m going to fight the endangered species act and the state sovereignty thing,’” he said. “They left me alone for about 20 years.” But about a year and a half ago, the Las Vegas City Life publication wrote a story about his situation, which ‘stirred up the environmentalists again,’ and they threatened a lawsuit if Bundy wasn’t forced, by the federal government, to remove his cattle, he explained.

Bundy went on to say that his cattle, which run like “wild deer or elk” over several hundred thousand acres, aren’t exactly easy to gather on an evening or even a weekend. “They sent a cowboy with helicopters, along with agents and cops to gather my cattle,” he said. But Bundy had his own line of defense. “I volunteered by county sheriff to protect my life, liberty and property. This is one way I defend myself, with notice to the proper authority. It is their responsibility to protect me.”

The BLM “got right to the last day” before calling off the gathering plans, calling the county sheriff, and postponing the gathering. “When I talked to my county sheriff afterward, he told me to ‘go to ranching.’” Bundy said proudly. “That’s been over a year ago and I’ve been ranching ever since.”

But the agency didn’t leave him alone. “The government filed a lawsuit against me and for the last year and a half I’ve been fighting that,” Bundy said. “They got a judge to say they could seize and impound my cattle.”

The agency continues to work on obtaining a restraining order against Bundy “so I couldn’t protect my cattle….they want a restraining order against the sheriff, state brand inspector and me,” he said, but explained that the issue remains before the judge and hasn’t been granted.

Bundy will appeal on two fronts. “I’m going to appeal the endangered species…there is an administrative regulatory error in their law. The desert tortoise doesn’t qualify under the Endangered Species Act. The other appeal is on the disclaimer clause. This is Nevada state land. The Constitution clearly spells that out. The State of Nevada owns this land, not the federal government. I don’t know why most people assume the federal government owns this land.”

According to an August 2013 AP story posted on Bundy’s blog, “Federal funds are running out at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center and officials plan to close the site and euthanize hundreds of the tortoises they’ve been caring for since the reptiles were added to the endangered species list in 1990.”

According to a recent LA Times story, “Bundy believes big government is trying to sabotage his plans to one day hand over the ranch’s reins to his [heirs,] by stripping Bundy of land-use rights his family spent a century earning. He says overregulation has already driven scores of fellow ranchers out of business in sprawling Clark County, leaving him as the last man standing.”

“When the pioneers came here, the first thing they did was unbuckle the harness on their horses and what did the horses need, they needed a drink…and at that time they started to make beneficial use of that resource,” explained Bundy. “They didn’t have a bale of hay, they grazed forage and they started to make a beneficial use of that forage.” Bundy said that many pioneers continued doing the same thing, claiming for themselves rights to the resources. “Some of the neighbors quit using the land and they traded or sold it, so when it came to my generation, we’ve either bought or inherited the grazing rights through an accumulation of the original pioneers. We’ve since created fee land rights. This has been the basic use for it and we are still using it.”

Bundy said he is familiar with a pipeline running from Wyoming to California. Almost $1 billion in litigation fees had to be paid by the pipeline because it was passing through the habitat of the desert tortoise. “They said half the cost of the pipeline was mitigation fees, so now how much more does your gas cost you? They’ve been blackmailing us, they’ve (the environmental organizations) committed fraud on the American people and it’s time someone held them accountable and I’m up in front to keep them accountable, I just don’t know how long I can do this.”

“The thing I want people to understand is that this battle is over jurisdiction and authority,” Bundy said. “I don’t want to talk about anything but county right now. I believe that this land is county public land. It is not United States public land, it belongs to the state of Nevada…so this land should be administrated by the county commissioners.” Bundy said the county sherrif is elected and paid by the people of the county and should be expected to carry out the responsibility of protecting life, liberty and property.
http://www.tsln.com/news/8201064-113/bundy-cattle-county-tortoise
Carrie Stadheim
Managing Editor and Staff Journalist 
Tri-State Livestock News