US won't enforce Nevada grazing restrictions in new dispute

Federal land managers say they won't immediately enforce drought-related grazing restrictions in northern Nevada so as to avoid confrontation with ranchers openly defying the order. Conservationists say it's another example of the government caving in to scofflaw ranchers like Cliven Bundy, who continues to graze his cattle illegally in southern Nevada after the Bureau of Land Management backed down from an armed standoff last year. Ranchers Dan and Eddyann Filippini have been notified they are violating the closure ordered in 2013 in an area covering more than 150 square miles near Battle Mountain about 200 miles northeast of Reno, Bureau of Land Management spokesman Rudy Evenson said Thursday. But he said BLM acting-state director John Ruhs told them the agency won't try to stop them while they continue negotiating a compromise. "We're not going to come out there and have a big confrontation," Evenson told the Elko Daily Free Press...more