Hage estate wins again

A federal judge has added $150,000 to the original $4.22 million judgment won by the estate of rancher Wayne Hage in a years-long battle over property rights. The federal government had asked Senior Judge Loren Smith to throw out the judgment. Instead, he increased it. Hage, a leader of the "Sagebrush Rebellion" against federal control of land, was the husband of former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho. They both died in 2006. The order is the most recent victory in a legal dispute that stretches back to 1991, when Hage filed suit against the government for taking his private property without just compensation. In a previous court decision, Smith referred to the well-publicized lawsuit as "a drama worthy of a tragic opera with heroic characters." Hage's 7,000-acre ranch in Nye County, Nev., bordered several allotments in the Toiyabe National Forest on which he built fences, corrals, water facilities and other rangeland improvements for cattle grazing. Tensions began to mount between the rancher and the U.S. Forest Service in the late 1970s, when the agency permitted the introduction of elk to the national forest, resulting in damaged fences and scattered cattle, according to court records. Over the next decade, other incidents aggravated the strain and eventually led to the lawsuit. According to court documents, the Forest Service excluded Hage's cattle from forage and water in certain allotments, impounded animals that entered those allotments and prevented him from maintaining ditches needed to exercise his water rights...read more