Bunkerville rancher vows to resist federal roundup of his cattle

This is not Cliven Bundy’s first rodeo, but will it be his last? For the second time since 2012, the Clark County rancher has been served notice by federal authorities who plan to impound hundreds of cattle he left to roam on public land almost 20 years after the government told him to remove them. The Bureau of Land Management’s impound notice took effect Monday and lasts until March 23, 2015. The agency expects to announce details of the proposed roundup Wednesday. In an email to the Review-Journal, Kirsten Cannon, spokeswoman for the bureau in Southern Nevada, said the “illegal trespass cattle” can now be gathered “without further notice” from BLM and National Park Service land in the Gold Butte range, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. “Tell them Bundy’s ready,” the rancher said by phone Tuesday from his home near Bunkerville. “Whenever they’ve got the guts to try it, tell them to come.” Bundy’s dispute with government dates to 1993, when his herd on the federally managed, 158,666-acre Bunkerville allotment was capped at 150 animals out of concern for the federally protected desert tortoise. To protest the change, the rancher stopped paying his monthly grazing fees of about $2 per head but kept using the allotment, which included more than 10,486 acres of National Park Service land at the northern end of Lake Mead National Recreation Area. “Why should I pay BLM to manage me out of business?” Bundy said Tuesday. “What I did is I fired the BLM.” In response, the bureau canceled Bundy’s grazing permit in 1994, but his livestock kept on living off the public land his family has used since 1877. Rounding up Bundy’s animals now will be no easy task. The bureau’s most recent count, conducted by helicopter in December, logged 568 cattle scattered across a 90-mile swath of federal land in the Gold Butte area. The numbers have been much higher in previous counts. A March 2011 aerial survey tallied 903 animals, more than 300 of which were found in remote, roadless areas the bureau said could not be accessed by teams on the ground. The dispute is being watched closely by conservationists interested in seeing the Gold Butte area protected, perhaps as a National Monument. If and when the cattle are rounded up, Bundy will be allowed to claim any that bear his brand, so long as he pays the impound costs and trespass fees assessed by the government. Through Sept. 20, 2011, Bundy has been billed $292,601.50 in trespass and administrative fees, Cannon said. His balance since then is currently being calculated. Bundy said if his cattle are rounded up and eventually returned to him, he will see to it that they end up right back where they were in the first place. “I’m going to turn them back out and raise some more beef for people to eat,” he said...more