Range war heats up again between defiant Nevada rancher and BLM

From the cab of his old pickup, Cliven Bundy watched the trucks congregate on the horizon near his ranch some 80 miles north of here. His ongoing range war with the federal government, Bundy said, has heated up yet again. “I see where they’re set up,” Bundy told the Los Angeles Times by telephone Thursday. “There’s trailers and communications vans. I haven't seen them take any of my cattle yet, but they're getting ready to.” The father of 14 insists that generations of his family have ranched and worked this unforgiving landscape along the Virgin River since the 1880s. He says government overregulation has already driven scores of fellow ranchers out of business in sprawling Clark County, leaving him as the last man standing. In a telephone interview Thursday, Bundy's wife, Carol, said the family remains as resolved as ever. “It just shows that we’re not a sovereign state,” she said of the government's action Thursday. “It just shows that the federal government thinks they have power over us. My county and my state is allowing this to happen. But you know what? They haven’t taken our cattle yet. We’re still hanging on.” Carol Bundy told The Times that Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie has not responded to their requests to intervene. “We want him to step in and tell these federal characters that ‘This is Clark County, Nev., land and you have go through me to get these cattle.’ But we have not heard a word.”...more