by Michael Bastasch
Some have speculated
that the standoff between federal agents and Nevada rancher Cliven
Bundy is the result of a secretive deal orchestrated by Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid and political allies in the solar industry.
But the Bundy standoff is really the culmination of a long battle
with environmentalists who want to keep federal lands off limits to
economic activity. The primary vehicle used by government officials and
environmentalists to advance this goal has been the desert tortoise,
which was listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in
1990.
The BLM even had a webpage detailing the problems they saw from
Bundy’s “trespass cattle” that were grazing in desert tortoise habitat.
The webpage, however, was deleted. So was the cached copy after the
Bundy standoff became nationwide news.
A screenshot of the deleted page
from the BLM’s website shows that environmental groups were some of the
main forces aligned against Bundy’s trespass cattle. Environmentalists
were pushing for the disputed federal lands to be used as “offsite
mitigation” for the impact of solar development. Solar development in
the area is heavily supported by Nevada environmental groups.
“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the
regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes
Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from
solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable
with the presence of trespass cattle,” the BLM page says.
“The Center for Biological Diversity has demanded action to resolve
trespass in designated critical desert tortoise habitat in several
letters,” BLM page notes. “Western Watersheds has requested a verbal
status update and later filed a Freedom of Information Act request.”
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Western Watersheds Project (WWP) have been actively pushing
the government to impose heftier grazing fees on cattle ranchers for
years, along with pressuring officials to close of huge areas of public
lands to grazing and oil and gas development.
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