The Federal Bully

Rural Cleansing

The Federal Bully

Rancher day in Washington

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            The healthy and viable ranching operations have an ability to respond to changing management factors. However, there is a limit to how much change can be accepted and the ranch operation maintained. If ranching operations go out of business, there may be no opportunity to return. The reason for this is that the equipment and infrastructure may be lost and too expensive to acquire again. To further complicate the return to business, are the tax requirements. After paying the capital gains taxes that are due upon selling a livestock operation, there may not be enough capital to buy the livestock again.

            Another factor to be considered is that the livestock operations depend on skills that have been developed and taught from generation to generation. Once a generation is skipped, the skills are often lost in the family. Thus, unless the ranching skills, tradition and customs are maintained they will be lost to the individual, family, and community forever.

            One Story

            They came in four new vehicles. Three were pickups and one was a Ford Expedition type vehicle. All had darkened windows. They all missed the start time. The earliest was 10 minutes late and the last arrived 45 minutes later covering the waiting party with dust from a high speed approach. No one offered an apology to the rancher standing by his vehicle and parked there 20 minutes before the start time.

There were seven of them, federal employees, to inspect plans for an Environmental Quality Improvement Project, or, EQIP, as such projects are known in federalease. The contract had been signed, engineered, and cleared for installment by the NRCS with the contracted rancher. Nearly 120,000 feet of pipeline and associated infrastructure were involved. The BLM participants, six of the seven federal arrivals, had requested the latest visit on the basis of joining the contracted agreement late predicated on the arrival of federal funds for what was known as ‘federal EQIP’ participation.

“Would you like federal funding to join the project?” the BLM inquiry had been.

“Sure, if it means less money out of my pocket,” the rancher had responded.

The entourage squeezed into the Ford and off they went. The vehicle was driven by a senior BLM biologist. When the party reached a four mile stretch of pasture pipeline, the rancher indicated he would prefer to put a new trough every mile. The BLM biologist braked the vehicle, turned to the rancher, and responded,

“Look, I am not here to negotiate a thing with you,” he snarled. “You are not getting those troughs!”

The rancher was incredulous over the outburst. His first reaction was that the tone of the response was in jest, but the message was serious. Not a peep was forthcoming from the other participants. The biologist was the commander. The other officials looked down, out the windows, or anywhere except at the unblinking gaze between the rancher and the BLM jeffe.

In subsequent days, the project was unilaterally redesigned by the BLM and the accusation was made the NRCS misdesigned the project. The design criteria would change or the BLM would not back the project. The rancher called for a meeting to discuss the demand. There were 11 BLM employees, one NRCS representative and the rancher.

The BLM served notice the demand was firm or there would be no participative project. Furthermore, NRCS would have to fund any shortfall of the contract total because they had made the design errors. The NRCS indicated they would not participate in the increased cost of the project. They were satisfied with their design. If there was any change, the BLM or the rancher would have to pay the difference, and, since the rancher had already signed the original contract, he would be in breach and subject to penalty if he refused to proceed.

The work was concluded on time, the ranch paid the difference of more than $45,000, and the files are clean. There is not a hint of conflict, not a dime of altered contract had to be explained, and … the rancher didn’t get the additional troughs that would have benefited every living creature along the line.

First Act; Washington D.C., October 29, 2013

On October 29, Westerners will gather in Washington to testify and present evidence of bullying by federal employees. The invited ranchers are being prompted to tell their side of the story of being targeted by agency officials based upon combined federal ownership accompanied with private property and private property rights.

In the ranching history of the West, this meeting is a first. Ranchers are known to be independent sorts and don’t need bureaucrats or elected leaders to parlay discussions of peacemaking especially if it comes to personal confrontations. Things, though, have changed.

The introduction herein above offers a glimpse of that change. The words describe “Irreversible and Irretrievable” aspects of the industry and offer a glimpse of the catastrophic effects that federal land oversight has wrought on the West.

Citizens of the West are protected in matters of conflict between themselves and state and local government by the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Legal action can be taken in those matters against representatives of those forms of government. There is no such remedy, however, in the matter of assault against rights, privileges or constitutional immunity by the federal officials. There is a gap of protection, and stories similar to those noted above are much more numerous than anybody should even venture to guess. They have become commonplace. In fact, it is the way of the West … where citizens must rely on federal lands to exist.

Not ‘Public’ lands … ‘federal’ lands

The date of the upcoming hearing and the ongoing drama of the government shutdown and debt ceiling debate make the subject of the stories all the more compelling. A review of headlines this morning indicates citizen outrage over access restrictions at places like the Lincoln Memorial and the capital mall. Those of us out in the hinterlands away from concentrations of urban votes, though, know what closures of public domain at places like Zion, Mt. Rushmore, Lake Mead, the Everglades, and the ocean around the Florida Keys actually mean to American livelihoods. Our distaste for federal condescension only grows.

In fact, every citizen can now realize the full implication of what those of us in the federal West have long known. These are not public lands. These are federal lands. They are owned, managed, and manipulated by the federal government to do what they want, when they want, and to serve whatever political agenda they wish to pursue.

Hey, America … welcome to our World!

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The rancher in the story still drives the same Dodge pickup that was parked there at that meeting place now seven years ago. It has nearly 350,000 miles on it. How do I know … I check the mileage every morning … AND, it is hooked to a stock trailer that has a brand new set of used government tires that were deemed inappropriate and unsafe for federal use after 10,000 miles.”