Feds file trespass complaint against Nevada ranchers

RENO, Nev. (AP) - Renewing a decades-long feud over grazing and property rights on public lands in the West, the federal government has filed civil trespass charges against the estate of late Nevada rancher Wayne Hage, his son, and another cattleman.

The complaint filed by Justice Department lawyers this week claims Hage - who came to epitomize Nevada's Sagebrush Rebellion before his death last year - his son, Wayne N. Hage, and Goldfield rancher Ben Colvin have repeatedly defied the government by grazing cattle without permits the last three years on land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

It further alleges the Hages unlawfully "leased" lands owned by the government to other ranchers for livestock grazing.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and an injunction to prevent further illegal grazing.

"This has been a long-term case," said BLM spokeswoman JoLynn Worley in Reno.

Neither Colvin nor members of the Hage family could be reached for comment.

But a lawyer who represents the Hage estate in the elder Hage's long-running case in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over property rights, said the issues raised are not new.

"These are the same issues pending before the claims court for a decision," said San Francisco attorney Lyman "Ladd" Bedford.

Hage, who died last year at age 69, filed a claim in the early 1990s against the government seeking $28 million after he rejected a Forest Service offer to buy his ranch for half of what he paid for it.

The agency also confiscated more than 100 of his cattle and suspended his grazing permits on parts of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, saying overgrazing was causing ecological damage on the high-desert range.

Hage argued water rights that came with the Pine Creek ranch when he bought it for about $2 million in 1978 carry with them the right to the associated forage.

"If you don't have the water rights, you don't have a ranch," he said during a hearing in 2004.

In 2002, U.S. Claims Court Judge Loren Smith in Washington, D.C. ruled that Hage had a right to let his cattle use the water and forage on at least some of the federal land where he held a federal grazing permit north of Tonopah, in central Nevada.

Yet to be decided is whether the government's action constituted an illegal "taking" under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Colvin, like the Hages, also has tangled with the federal agents over livestock grazing. In 2001, the BLM seized and auctioned 62 of his cattle, saying he was trespassing on federal land and owed the government $73,000 in back fines and fees.

He filed against the government in the federal claims court two years later, seeking $30 million in compensation.

Worley said the BLM has no plans to impound cattle in the latest dispute because of a new state law that specifies when the state brand inspector can issue ownership certificates needed to transfer livestock.

The court action, she said, "is pretty much the avenue we're forced to take because we're not able to get a brand clearance certificate if we were to go impound."

The article doesn't mention that before the state law was passed the Feds attempted to impound their cattle but were stopped by the local Sheriff.