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All aboard Uncle Sam’s crazy train

Cliven Bundy sounds like a name belonging to the star of some backwoods horror flick, but in fact, the name belongs to a very real man starring in a very scary reality show.

Bundy, a cattle rancher in Nevada, managed to mobilize some of America’s most rabid militia groups after the federal government started seizing his cattle. Many of the extremists screamed his cattle were being rounded up because the government was protecting the desert tortoise, but the truth is much more complex than that. Sadly, extremists don’t usually have much appetite for truth or context.

Bundy had been grazing cattle in areas referred to as Gold Butte and Bunkerville allotment for many years. He did own some deeded land, but relied on lease land for most of his grass, which is administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In 1993, some of the regulations changed, which stopped grazing on Bunkerville, and reduced grazing at Gold Butte. In part, the decision was made because of the desert tortoise, but the sensitive area overall was overgrazed and the forage mismanaged.

Bunker claimed the regulation changes would force him to reduce his herd by 90 per cent, down to 150 head. He stopped paying his grazing fees for Gold Butte, and did not remove his cattle from Bunkerville. His case went to court numerous times, and each and each time he was defeated. He tried to argue he was grandfathered grazing rights, although such a thing doesn’t exist in his case. He asserted that federal lands really aren’t federal, and belong to the state of Nevada. There were appeals and new cases. The result was always the same – Bundy’s cattle were trespassing, and he wasn’t paying fees for the cattle grazing Gold Butte. In 1998 he was ordered to remove all of his cattle from all of the BLM lands and to pay up. He didn’t.

Fast forward to April of 2014 – a full 20 years since Bundy paid for any grazing rights – and an aerial survey shows he’s running about 900 head of cattle. After threatening to for 15 years, the BLM took action, impounding 400 head. And that’s when the proverbial cowpie hit the fan.

Bundy started sending letters with the catchy header, “Range War Emergency Notice and Demand for Protection” to all levels of government and solicited support from various extremist groups. A clever man, he used terms associated with the sovereign citizen movement to spur the militias into action. Much of his support base came from groups that even the Tea Party considers too hardcore… and that’s like the Pope refusing to visit a city because it has too many Catholics.

Along with presumably more balanced protestors, these militias showed up with all manner of guns – handguns, semi-automatics – you name it. In response the BLM sent law enforcement agents to help control the scene.

That’s when it started to get really crazy. Angry “sovereign citizens” threatened to disarm federal bureaucrats, and demanded the cattle be released. Protesting marksmen with sniper rifles got into position, aiming their weapons at law enforcement officers and BLM employees charged with seizing the cattle. Citizen soldiers marched along the highway, at times stopping traffic and approaching private vehicles with their loaded weapons.

By my estimation, this already tips the crazy scales and ventures very far into terror territory, but we’re not done yet. The protestors began planning their war strategy, deciding to place the women on the front line. Yes. On purpose. So they would get shot first. “If they were going to start killing people, I’m sorry, but to show the world how ruthless these people are, the women needed to be the first ones shot,” said former Nevada Sherriff Richard Mack, who supported the protest.

I have absolutely no doubt that had a shot been fired, it would have been by the crazy side first. And I don’t know what’s scarier – that a husband and father would be so captivated by extremist dogma that he would sacrifice his family, or that this husband and father was also a sheriff. After that, the BLM backed down. They released Bundy’s cattle in order to avoid bloodshed.

I can’t say whether the decision made back in 1993 to reduce grazing in the area was fair or right. I do know how sensitive that grass is – I’ve spent a lot of time in America’s Southwest – most of it after I learned about the cattle business and grass management. I also know that our ranching industry is reputed to be light years ahead of the U.S. when it comes to land stewardship, and holistic and rotational grazing. That culture doesn’t seem to be as well established in the U.S., and some of the ground I’ve seen down there certainly supports that theory.

I’ve seen a few people on my Facebook compare the Bundy standoff to the Sage-Grouse emergency protection order (EPO) issued earlier this year, but it isn’t remotely the same. For one thing, the recovery plan and almost every bit of research I have read regarding the Sage-Grouse says that light-to-moderate grazing is good for the species. Admittedly, I’m just now starting to dig into this issue, but it seems to me that the EPO is grandfathering ranching interests, as well as protecting them into the future – provided the order doesn’t change.

Considering that stocking density and methodology on our Sage-Grouse grounds haven’t changed significantly since the species started rapidly declining in the late 80s, ranching doesn’t seem like the smoking gun here. West Nile Virus and industrial development – to my interpretation anyway – seem the two culprits having the most impact. Increased predation – I can see that too. There’s been a predator/prey imbalance in this region for some time. The plains grizzly were killed out, and there are no resident wolf packs. Coyotes do a marvelous job of filling in the footprints of larger predators – and that’s not always a good thing. Pronghorn numbers are down considerably, although I don’t know how that affects the coyotes. There are more cougars traveling through the area, and we certainly know the Cypress Hills is flush with them right now. I don’t know how many may be resident outside of the Hills, but certainly, the coulees and waterways are part of the wildlife corridor the cougars (and other species) will use.

I get that we want to protect the Sage-Grouse – other than the ranchers and other folks lucky enough to live in that shortgrass prairie, no one loves it more than I do. I’d move there in a heartbeat if I could, and I adore all the wildlife that lives on the prairie… but you know what? We should have acted 15 years ago when we started noticing the decline was substantial. Perhaps had we mitigated some of the concerns then, we wouldn’t be faced with what seems an almost ludicrously heavy-handed EPO now. Still, when I read it, ranching appears to be protected and grandfathered throughout the document.

It’s not like I haven’t seen reckless decisions made by our own federal government – dismantling the PFRA a prime example – but Bundy went through the courts. Many times over. And he made absolutely zero effort to pay his grazing fees for the cattle he was permitted to graze. Nada. Zilch. The dude is a deadweight that happens to have a little charisma and the ability to appeal to extremists. He exploited the BLM’s rule changes in the ‘90s as justification to become a criminal. I just can’t see the producers I know in Saskatchewan and Alberta leveraging the Sage-Grouse EPO to shirk their responsibilities.

The BLM says they are still going to go after Bundy administratively – whatever that means. And really, the government had no choice. Righter-wing politicians and media in the U.S. were starting to compare the protests and cattle seizure to Tiananmen Square. That in itself is baffling and upsetting. The BLM was enforcing several court orders, and had delayed doing so for years. They did not prohibit the protests, nor were they the first ones to bring weapons to the party. And let’s not forget there were armed men with sniper rifles aimed at BLM heads. At Tiananmen Square, the citizens were armed with nothing but their voices, and they were shot down like dogs in the street for using them. That is a far cry from what went down at the Bundy Standoff.

Bundy continues to get away with his illegal activity. How nice that through the worst years of the business he was able to hitch a free ride for his cattle on the backs of the other thousands of ranchers who their grazing fees.

The Sage-Grouse issue is a worthy one for us as an industry to look at and examine carefully, and there were some disturbing precedent-setting actions taken by the government.  But the Bundy standoff is a completely different animal, and it’s important that we address our own challenges in our own country without that fanatical edge which has become so synonymous with America as of late. Our ranching lobby is powerful, but if we give ourselves over to this militia mentality madness, we’ll lose both our voice and our credibility – and those are the two most valuable industry assets we have.

Sadly, the whole Bundy debacle has caused much of the U.S. and a lot of Canada to view Bundy’s cause as a case of cowboys and government – and the cowboy is getting a black eye on account of it. Bundy and his gun-toting, hat-wearing bandits are the furthest thing from the kind of cowboys I know. Real ranchers don’t line up their families to be shot. They do what’s right – and that means standing up for what’s right without committing a wrong. I have a lot of names for Bundy and his ilk, but “cowboy” isn’t one of them.

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