Tensions mount between Nev. ranchers, feds
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
Gerald “Jerry” Smith grew up in Nevada and went to work for the Bureau of Land Management right after college. As a local, he figured he was uniquely suited to work with the ranchers who have long resented the federal government’s role in land management here.
It didn’t quite work out that way.
Now retired from a job as district manager for the BLM, Smith knows all about the tensions that have long defined relations between ranchers in the rural West and the federal government, which manages much of the region’s land. Those tensions have boiled over in recent days at a wildlife refuge in Oregon and are at a perpetual simmer here.
Now it is Smith’s successor as district manager, Doug Furtado, who has become the enemy for many people in the region.
Although there have been no violence or threats here, the risk is real. Federal employees in Nevada have been attacked in the past over land-use disputes — shot at, their offices and cars bombed.
yeehaw
Imagine that, real down to earth ranchers not liking the Feds metaling as they are so good at. Stand by you Federal Obvomits. The country is sick of your intervention and lies and is finally standing up to it. I wish them well.
Y’allquida!
Gee, last time I looked, if you don’t own the land, you need to pay rent. If your cattle is damaging federal land, my land, then you need to stop and make some adjustments.
These ranchers are squatters. Insisting on raising cattle in this western landscape, on lands they don’t own for which they refuse to pay rent, sounds like a failure program to me.
I’m a landlord. Pay the rent or hit the road and quit your crying.
The feds manage from DC and are a regulatory disaster wherever they are. In the west they own far too much land that was never intended to be not state lands, this is the problem, no local control over a growing regulatory disaster and an ever growing federal duplicate agency structure. The lands need to return to the states.
……..people who abuse public lands the worst are the ones who will fight the hardest………..
These parasites on public land would be on food stamps if they couldn’t make a living by degrading the land that is owned by the American public. This land is owned by every citizen and to allow these bozos to occupy it unlawfully for their private gain is stupid. My friend (unknowingly) build his son a tree house. It was partly on FS land and it had to be removed immediately. Have you ever taken a close look at what cattle grazing does to the land?
Beef production is a major contributor to global warming and our gluttony for cheap beef is contributing to everything from cancer to heart disease to diabetes. Its not like the lack of this beef raised at our expense on public land is going to send us to the hospital–in fact, quite the opposite.
Public land ranchers nationwide call for taxpayers to kill and/or remove anything that inconveniences them–wild horses, coyotes, wolves–you name it.
If I could run my business on public land and pay almost noting for it, I’d be seriously wealthy.
The big rough/tough ranchers need to man-up, pay for things and obey the rules like the rest of us and stop stamping their feet and demanding privileges the rest of us will never have.
This whole thing is a joke. They want the land returned “to the people”. Learn to read–it is owned by the people–all of us. Get your freeloading behind off of it.
As far as the protesters in Oregon—turn off the water, the gas and electricity and allow exit from the facility only–no shipments of food and other supplies. Go home bad boys and think about regaining some of the pride your forefathers might have exhibited.
Just imagine if this was an unarmed group like ‘Black Lives Matter’ trying to make a point by occupying Public Lands-rightwing nutbags that support these heavily armed knuckledraggers would be frothing at the mouth for blood and extreme forms of punishment-people would probably be dead-I agree about turning off the power and seeing how long these mormon extremist’s magic underwear holds out in the cold
Nope. No bigotry from the left here. . .
People want free range beef but don’t want free range. If not for the ranchers most if not all of the water would be shipped to Vegas.
These free range cattle are shipped to feed lots, finished of with corn and then slaughtered. Its just that the taxpayer gets then to the feed lot phase at almost no cost to the rancher.
Sunriser, the ranchers have nothing to do with the water not being diverted to Las Vegas. People who live in White Pine county do as well as people along the Colorado river.
The beef produced in eleven western states only account for 15% of the Beef for sale in the United States. To me the “subsidies” these ranchers get is not worth it.
I can also site at least 4 subsidies Ammon Bundy gets from the federal government he’s so against, Mormon Extremist Hypocrisy at it’s best.
Dog, sorry your sarcasm is lost on me, because you are so anti- government.
People that have been wrong their entire lives about everything important projecting their bigotry and making bogus water and ‘free range’ beef claims on this issue-how pathetic-turn off the power and let these jerks go home and get a real job
One of these Bundy squatters stole a Wildlife truck, slapped some false ID on the doors, drove it to Burns for some coffee creamer (his story) and was arrested. Turns out he had squatted on Federal Land in Washington State before and had used explosives for booby traps to protect whatever it was he was protecting! Sounds like this guy and gang are Meth wanaby chemists. Time to arrest the whole bunch.
These are funny: “Vanilla ISIS”, “Y’all Qaeda”,
“Yee Hawdists,” “Yokel Haram,” “Talibundy”….all terms used with permission.