Wednesday, May 07, 2014

NMSU men’s rodeo team holds national ranking



The New Mexico State University men’s team reached the number one spot in the Grand Canyon Region this weekend, making this the 10th consecutive seasonal win.

“It is a great accomplishment by these rodeo athletes to dominate the region and win all 10 regular season rodeos. Almost unprecedented,” NMSU rodeo coach Jim Brown said. “I don’t know if it has been done in our region in quite some time. As coach, this is definitely a milestone for our team’s accomplishments.”

A three-day rodeo event, April 25-27, held at the Aggie tailgate lot at NMSU proved to be successful, with two men’s team first place titles and two women’s first and third place titles.

Rodeo athletes Bailey Bates, Shelby Montano, Nicole Sweazea, Tyke Kipp, Trenten Montero and Ty Anderson made the men and women’s all-around places for the weekend.

“It was an amazing feeling seeing our stands full despite the wind and blowing dust,” Brown said. “Our hats are off to all the fans, students, community, faculty and staff for coming out and supporting the team. Our rodeo was awesome.”

Tyke Kipp is currently nationally ranked in fourth place for the men’s all-around honor. He will be representing NMSU in saddle bronc riding and steer wresting at the College National Finals Rodeo.

“Your goal as a high school student is to take state, and now being at the collegiate level I’ve taken regional and now national,” Kipp said. “It feels great!”

As regional champions, the Aggies will head to Casper, Wyo. for the College National Finals Rodeo, June 15-21, sending nine rodeo athletes to compete in events.

Qualifiers include: Trenton Montero, Tyke Kipp, Cody Mirabal, Pacen Marez, Colt Capurro, Reno Eddy, Russell Van Soelen, NaLynn Cline and Meghan Johnson.

“My formula as coach is to keep it simple,” Brown said. “I do everything I can to provide the students with quality practice stock, so they stay sharp in their events; provide scholarships; and be there for them in their times of need, in and out of the arena and classroom.”

The men’s team currently holds the number one national spot, with four regions left to complete rodeos.

For a full list of rodeo events visit the NMSU Rodeo Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/nmsu.rodeo.

NMSU Rodeo Team on RFD-TV



The NMSU segment starts at 1:20

http://www.rfdtv.com/story/25416478/western-sports-roundup-zane-davis-keeps-lead-in-day-2-of-hackamore-classic#.U2q6aFeI0WN

BLM to review its planning process

After using the same basic planning approach for 38 years, the Bureau of Land Management has announced it will review how it develops its Resource Management Plans. “As I’ve met with elected leaders and citizens from across the West on BLM issues, I’ve consistently heard two things: first, the BLM needs to more effectively address landscape-level management challenges; and second, planning takes too long.” BLM Director Neil Kornze said in a statement. The decision was hailed by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership as a way to “modernize this approach and remedy its shortcomings. “For example, tracts of intact and undeveloped lands, commonly known as backcountry, are key BLM resources that aren’t adequately recognized and managed through existing agency planning guidance,” said Henri Bisson, former BLM deputy director for operations and BLM Alaska state director. Based on an initial review, the BLM intends to target changes to, in part, create a planning process that is responsive to change, allowing BLM to keep plans current through amendments; and to reduce the amount of time it takes to complete RMPs. “The main challenges the BLM face are incompatible development and land use, as well as the need for well-funded restoration,” said Ken Mayer, former director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife...more

Just relax.  Having Harry Reid's former aide heading this up should give everyone confidence.

Actually, my gut feeling on this is not good.  Notice who is praising it.  It appears to me they are looking for ways to have more wilderness, wildlife corridors and other set-asides from multiple use.  Go to the BLM page on this issue and you will find statements such as, "we hope to improve our land use planning process so that we can more effectively plan across landscapes at multiple scales and be more responsive to environmental and social change."  Sounds to me like environmentalists and urban residents are who they are aiming to please. 

BLM's planning process takes so long because of NEPA and lawsuits, not because of their approach.  

BLM says they want your comments, so you better check it out.




Editorial: No freedom to ruin public lands

Wild mustangs are an invasive species in the American West. But, then, so are all the humans living here who are not of American Indian descent. The wild lands in Utah and other Western states where wild horses now roam are fragile and arid — places easily endangered by encroaching, rapidly multiplying horses numbering in the thousands and tens of millions of people who are multiplying even faster and doing more to threaten the land. Humans have all but obliterated many of the native plant and animal species, including wolves, buffalo, beaver, otters, sage grouse, tortoises, prairie dogs and myriad varieties of plants and even fish. Running cattle on fragile public land causes more harm than wild horses do, but the humans who have taken over this part of the globe do not want to share scarce feed with animals they cannot work, sell or butcher. Two recent incidents demonstrate how shortsighted many Utahns and other Westerners are about the ecosystems they have usurped. A Nevada rancher who opposes welfare for humans is determined to let his cattle graze on land that belongs to all Americans without paying for the privilege. Other ranchers are threatening to round up wild horses to keep them from eating vegetation they feel belongs first of all to their herds. Public lands in the West are part of a legacy all Westerners should want to leave for their children and grandchildren. But if they continue to put what they demand as their due today ahead of preservation for the future, there will be little left of the West for those who want to raise families here...more (if you can stand it)

I believe its time to resurrect an award I started during the early years of this blog.  Some of you will remember this.  For a wonderful dose of "Outhouse Soup" read the Salt Lake Tribune editorial above.  Its full of it.


Is Billionaire Steyer Taking Aim at Obama’s Policy on Natural Gas?

Is San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer really about to declare war on natural gas? Rumors are swirling in Colorado and Washington, DC that Tom Steyer is ready to side with Democrat Congressman Jared Polis of Boulder and national ban-fracking activists who are working to shut down Colorado’s booming natural gas industry. The WSJ today reports: “Tom Steyer, a hedge fund billionaire turned environmental activist, is also likely to help financially support Mr. Polis’s effort, according to three people close to the situation.” Yet doing so puts him squarely at odds with a growing bipartisan coalition in the state that supports the jobs and economic opportunities that come from natural gas development in Colorado. This move would also have huge impacts on the energy debate across the country. The revelation made in the Wall Street Journal is stunning for several reasons. First, it shows that Tom Steyer is ready to bankroll groups opposed to all fossil fuel development – including natural gas. Additionally, this position would seemingly put him at odds with Senator Mark Udall, an incumbent Democrat who calls himself “a champion of Colorado’s natural gas industry.” Steyer and his team have repeatedly said their number one goal is to ensure Democrats retain the majority in the United States Senate...more

EDITORIAL - Bundy militias

There are plenty of second-hand accounts of armed militiamen patrolling the Bunkerville-Mesquite area of northeastern Clark County. According to these stories, the men are limiting the movements of regular folks who just want to get on with life after last month’s high-profile confrontation between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and rancher Cliven Bundy.

Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., has called on state and local officials to remove Mr. Bundy’s supporters, who clearly make a number of area residents uncomfortable. At the height of the Bundy-BLM dispute, armed civilians were everywhere, and there were reports of threatening and intimidating behavior toward civilians, to say nothing of federal employees.

But Rep. Horsford hasn’t seen any militia members out in public. Review-Journal journalists haven’t seen them manning checkpoints along rural roads. And surely, if armed outsiders were restricting the rights of residents, the Mesquite Local News would have the story. But there is no story.

The truth is probably less dramatic. It’s not hard to imagine some of Mr. Bundy’s supporters overreaching and playing soldier despite the absence of any threat — or any authority, for that matter. But the narrative that Bundy allies are behaving like some sort of cartel in the Mesquite area is an exaggeration. Certainly, anyone behaving in such a way should be arrested by Mesquite police, the Metropolitan Police Department or the Nevada Highway Patrol.

Rep. Horsford is responding to constituent concerns. Good for him. But Mr. Bundy’s supporters have every right to assemble. If they’re breaking the law, by all means cite them. But rounding them up simply because their anti-government politics offend some Nevadans isn’t an option. Until they exhibit criminal behavior, they have as much right to remain in Nevada as anyone else.


LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

NM College spends $5 million to save $200,000

By Rob Nikolewski │ New Mexico Watchdog

Santa Fe Community College has just unveiled a solar array that, it says, will save the college at least $200,000 a year on its utility bills.

But the array, funded by taxpayers in a 2010 bond election, will cost $5 million.

You don’t have to be a math major at the college to figure out it would take 25 years of $200,000 cost savings per year to reach the $5 million mark for the project to just break even.
So is the solar array a good deal?

SFCC interim president Randy Grissom thinks so.
First off, Grissom told New Mexico Watchdog the college expects to save more than $200,000 a year on utility bills.

“We took a really conservative approach in doing our analysis,” Grissom said. “We anticipate it will be between $200,000 to $300,000 (a year in savings).”

...But given some of the solar industry’s problems in recent years, taxpayers have reason to be skeptical.
For example, in summer 2012, after getting $16 million in grants from the state, Schott Solar shut down its manufacturing plant in south Albuquerque and laid off 250 workers. New Mexico taxpayers had to eat more than $12 million because the administration of then-Gov. Bill Richardson did not include any clawback provisions in the deal with Schott.

Taxpayers also got stuck losing millions in 2009, when Advent Solar went belly-up, despite receiving nearly $17 million through the State Investment Council and its private equity arm.



Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Lesser prairie chicken listing opposition continues by NM County Commissioners

Local leaders don’t think federal exemptions for farmers is a consolation prize from the threatened listing of the lesser prairie chicken. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week that farmers, ranchers and landowners implementing Farm Service Agency Conser-vation Reserve Program practices intended to protect and increase the chicken populations will not be subject to additional regulations from the threatened listing under the federal Endangered Species Act. But Roosevelt and Curry County commissioners say that’s not reason enough to put their picket signs down. The commissioners represent counties and landowners who oppose the listing. Their concern is it will result in regulations created to protect the bird that would hinder or shut down their operations. The listing of the lesser prairie chicken, a bird native to New Mexico and four other states and known for its rare mating rituals, was made in March by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in March. Roosevelt County Commissioner Kendell Buzard said not all farmers have CRP land or are signed up with other conservation agreements. He feels it’s necessary to continue to oppose the listing. He added that a good portion of the county’s tax revenue comes from energy industries and ranchers. “Management of conservation is best left to the county and the state…and not the (federal) government,” Buzard said. “We went to great lengths to set aside habitat to benefit this species and I think it will work if it’s given time.” Roosevelt County ranch manager Willard Heck said the whole point of conservation agreements were to make people exempt from further regulation. He thinks a lot of ag producers in the area are still weary about how the programs work.  Curry County Commissioner Wendell Bostwick however refuses to concede to the listing because he said history has shown that it will only get worse for farmers and the energy industry. “They tell us all these good things but for some reason it ends up bad,” Bostwick said. Bostwick said environmentalist groups have intentions of petitioning to list the bird as endangered. He used the spotted owl as an example of what could go wrong because it was listed as endangered and he said the lumber industry in the state perished as a result. “The (conservation agreements) go away if it becomes endangered,” Bostwick said. “They’ll start chipping away until there’s no more.”...more

Podesta: Congress Can’t Stop Obama On Global Warming

White House adviser John Podesta told reporters Monday afternoon that Congress could not derail the Obama administration’s efforts to unilaterally enact policies to fight global warming. Podesta said that the president was committed to using executive orders to pass regulations under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon dioxide emissions that they say cause global warming. “They may try, but there are no takers at this end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” Podesta told reporters at a Monday press conference at the White House. Republicans and some Democrats in Congress have urged the Obama administration to scale back their climate goals because of the adverse impact of new regulations on the coal industry. Coal supporters have portrayed the administration’s actions as the “war on coal” due to huge job losses in coal states like Kentucky and West Virginia. Obama has made 2014 his “year of action” — promising to use his executive authority to implement various actions of the president’s agenda that are too divisive for Congress to consider. Podesta was brought into the White House late last year to help Obama find ways to use executive orders to unilaterally push climate policies. Podesta authored a report in 2010 outlining ways the president could use his executive authority to push a progressive agenda, including unilateral actions on climate policy. Podesta wrote that the president could use executive power to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent by 2020 — the very goal the Obama plans to meet using his executive powers...more

Administration brags about actions bypassing Congress, promises more

The White House this weekend recapped how it has skirted a defiant Congress on climate change, fuel efficiency and a host of other issues so far this year. President Obama touted his efforts to circumvent Congress during his "Year of Action" in his weekly address Saturday, and the White House issued a new report detailing its actions so far and top administration officials bragged about their efforts during a press call last week. "In my State of the Union Address, I said that in this year of action, whenever I can act on my own to create jobs and expand opportunity for more Americans, I will," Obama said in his weekly speech. "And since January, I've taken more than 20 executive actions to do just that." That includes launching a new website to make climate change data more accessible; directing U.S. EPA and the Transportation Department to develop the next phase of fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for trucks; adding public lands to the California Coastal National Monument; and launching new regional "hubs" to prepare farmers for the effects of climate change. Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's senior adviser, said Friday that Obama would work with Congress when he can, "But he's not going to wait for it. So whether it's with his pen or his phone, the president's been driving his agenda forward."  And there's more where that came from, he said. "This doesn't stop just because we're a few months into the year. We're going to keep going all the way to the end, because the president has instructed us to every day look for ways to try and advance his agenda in ways big and small."...more

Commissioners instruct sheriff to unlock forest gates

Otero County Commissioners instructed the county sheriff to unlock U.S. Forest Service fences in the mountains on Monday. During a commission meeting to discuss the Forest Service's alleged illegal fencing activities within the county the commission and ranchers decided the USFS should unlock some of its fence gates to allow cattle easier access to water in the region. District 1 Commissioner Tommie Harrell asked Forest Service Supervisor, Travis Moseley, to unlock a few gates to allow cattle easier access to water. Moseley replied with a simple no to Herrell's request. "Now the procurement is since they won't, then we've instructed Sheriff Benny House to unlock those fences," Herrell said. "And we'll do this by court order." According to Herrell, House is being ordered to unlock four gates to two enclosed areas near the Agua Chiquita riparian area. The order was issued on the heels of the commission's recent request for the USFS to halt fencing projects in April. In April, the commission issued a cease and desist illegal fencing activities letter to the U.S. Forest Service. Ranchers that attended the meeting were concerned with the legality of the USFS fencing off their cattle from water supplies and the danger it causes to their livestock. "Fencing our cattle off of the water denies us our usage rights, and the cattle are only there three months in a normal rain year and six months during times of drought," rancher Judyann Holcomb Medeiros said. "During the drought, our cattle have to walk extended lengths to reach water. The fences also causes the cattle to use the heavily used county road, and we have had cattle hit and killed or severely crippled or damaged by the impacts." Medeiros said she understood the Forest Service has recently been concerned with maintaining the riparian areas for the New Mexico Meadow Jumping Mouse but that she believed there was solid proof the species inhabiting the area. Blair Dunn, an Otero County attorney, addressed the issue of the fences being put up to protect the potentially endangered species by saying the USFS doesn't have the right to appropriate water for wildlife. "They have no lawful right to the stream," Dunn said. "So to pen something off for wildlife to go drink and to appropriate that water for wildlife when they don't have the necessary legal permits or rights to do so amounts to an illegal diversion of water."...more

Utah Wildlife Officials Backing Ranchers Threatening To Break Federal Law To Round Up Wild Horses

State wildlife officials are supporting Utah ranchers and county leaders who are threatening to break federal law and round up wild horses this summer if federal officials don’t do it first. The ranchers say a swelling feral horse population is edging cattle and elk out of drought-plagued southern and central Utah pastures. Utah Wildlife Board members, at a meeting in Salt Lake City on Thursday, voted unanimously to send a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and U.S. Bureau of Land Management state director Juan Palma urging a reduction in the number of horses on the range. The letter is the latest form of public pressure on the BLM. Earlier this week, a group of 13 ranchers filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the BLM is not doing its job to protect wildlife and cattle. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert declared last week that local entities should be allowed to manage the horse herds because the BLM has not. “It’s a sad situation in the southwest desert,” said board member John Bair, one of about a dozen on Thursday who said the feral animals are hogging food and spring water, trampling soil and clearing the way for invasive species...more

EPA out of touch, out of control in Wyoming

By William Perry Pendley

Paper-pushers in Washington need to get out more — the real world bears little resemblance to the view from the federal cube farm or from space.

In mid-March, a story out of Wyoming reported that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had targeted a Fort Bridger (population 345) welder for violating the Clean Water Act and threatened to fine him $75,000 a day unless he restored a wetland he altered without a permit and, therefore, contrary to federal law. Andy Johnson, who owns eight acres in Uinta County in southwestern Wyoming on which he runs horses and watches his three daughters play, says the stock pond he built, filled with crystal-clear water, and used to create a habitat for brook and brown trout, ducks and geese, was permitted by the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office.

The timing could not have been worse. Folks in Wyoming were still fuming over the EPA’s December 2013 decision to designate a million acres, including the town of Riverton (population 10,000), inside the boundaries of the Wind River Indian Reservation. In doing so, the EPA ignored 110 years of history and state, federal and U.S. Supreme Court rulings. Moreover, the EPA was a month away from issuing new regulations to give it even more authority over private land like Mr. Johnson’s by broadening the definition of “waters of the United States.”

Wyoming’s Republican senators demanded the EPA withdraw the compliance order, which they labeled “a draconian edict of a heavy-handed bureaucracy” that puts “each and every landowner throughout the country” in fear. For his part, Mr. Johnson did not back down. “I have not paid them a dime, nor will I . If you need to stand up and fight, you do it.” He can draw strength from another Wyomingite who stood up, fought the EPA, and won.

In 2005, David Hamilton of Worland (population 5,500), in north-central Wyoming, cleaned out an irrigation ditch on his 400-acre farm. Mr. Johnson and his wife may have put their “blood, sweat and tears into [their] dream” of a stock pond, but Mr. Hamilton spent $30,000 hauling away discarded cars, broken appliances and assorted debris that lined the ditch to foil erosion, and made other agricultural improvements. The project was a success, but the EPA disagreed. In 2007, its agents showed up on the farm and in 2010, the agency sued Mr. Hamilton in federal court.

The EPA claimed Mr. Hamilton destroyed 8.8 acres of wetlands, an impossibility given that Worland records the least rainfall in Wyoming — less than 8 inches a year. Facts did not matter to the EPA. instead, it relied on the National Wetlands Inventory — prepared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service using Google Earth satellite images — to target the landowner and to tally wetlands damaged. Unfortunately, when Mr. Hamilton’s attorney, Harriet M. Hageman, challenged the EPA, the district court ruled that “Slick Creek,” which is actually Mr. Hamilton’s irrigation ditch, is “navigable waters of the United States,” as “a matter of law.”

(There's actually a happy ending)

William Perry Pendley is president of Mountain States Legal Foundation and author of “Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan’s Battle With Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today” (Regnery, 2013)

Westerners fear Obama preparing monuments land grab

Just south of Canyonlands National Park, the redrock wonders merge into a scrubland oasis with a peak that juts 11,000 feet into the sky. Mesas and buttes provide panoramic views and canyons, and ancient cliff dwellings offer a unique retreat. It’s a region that holds sacred and historic value to the Navajo Nation, which has pitched Congress on creating the Diné Bikéyah National Conservation Area to protect the 1.9 million acres in San Juan County from development. But as with most things involving Congress, inaction has been the order of the day. Even as supporters of a conservation area remain hopeful, they’re ready for Plan B: Asking President Barack Obama for a national monument. Willie Grayeyes, and other members of the nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah, traveled recently to Washington to lobby Interior Department officials to designate the region north of the San Juan River and just outside the Navajo Reservation as a monument. "The Utah delegates are only fumbling the ball. They aren’t really tackling it," Grayeyes said. A monument is a logical fallback to congressional designation, under which many of the current uses could continue. That commitment has some in the West fearing more intrusion by the federal government into their backyard, undermining locally driven efforts to decide the future of public lands. That fear isn’t without precedent. "It makes me worried that [the president will] just ignore the wishes of the people of Utah and just do what he wants to — like Clinton did," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a recent Salt Lake Tribune interview. "Sometimes he does act unilaterally."...more

The Salt Lake Tribune article had this side bar:




Possible candidates for national monument status
 
Alpine Lakes – Washington
Berryessa Snow Mountain – California
Boulder-White Clouds – Idaho
Desolation Canyon – Eastern Utah
Din̩ Bik̩yah РSan Juan County, Utah
Gold Butte – Nevada
Greater Canyonlands — Southeastern Utah
Organ Mountains – New Mexico
Rocky Mountain Front – Montana
San Gabriels – California
San Rafael Swell – Emery County, Utah
Tule Springs – Nevada

For Obama, a renewed focus on climate

After years of putting other policy priorities first — and dismaying many liberal allies in the process — Obama is now getting into the weeds on climate change and considers it one of the key components of his legacy, according to aides and advisers. He is regularly briefed on scientific reports on the issue, including a national climate assessment that he will help showcase Tuesday. He is using his executive authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other sources, and is moving ahead with stricter fuel-efficiency standards for the heaviest trucks. It’s a notable transformation for a politician who as a senator talked in grand terms about the need to combat global warming but adopted a much more constrained approach in the run-up to his 2012 reelection. Environmentalists also remain anxious about Obama’s delay in making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, one of the movement’s signature issues. On Tuesday, the White House’s reinvigorated strategy will be on full display. Back in June 2009, the administration’s low-key launch of its second national climate assessment received only a smattering of coverage from regional papers. This time, Obama will conduct interviews from the White House with local and national TV meteorologists, who will also be briefed by senior administration officials...more

Feds: Air tanker fleet incomplete ahead of wildfire season

A decade ago the U.S. Forest Service had more than 40 air tankers it used to fight the nation's most destructive wildfires. Now the fleet has dwindled down to 10. A number the agency's spokesperson Jennifer Jones called "insufficient." "We've been working very hard to try and bring additional air tankers into service. It's proven to be very challenging and time consuming," said Jones. Officials say five brand new aircraft that were supposed to be ready for take-off are grounded because they don't yet comply with federal standards. "The next generation air tankers need to meet contract requirements to ensure they can fly safely and effectively," said Jones. Of the 10 aircraft actually in service, eight of them are over a half century old. "As the air tankers age the risks increase and so do the cost," said Jones. Officials said they don't know when those five new aircraft will be ready. Meantime, if additional air support is needed officials told CBS 5 the military and or private contractors as well as planes from Canada could be called in. KPHO

The Long History of BLM's Aggressive Cattle Seizures

 


    Every month, Raymond Yowell, the 84-year-old former chief of the Shoshone Indian Tribe in northeastern Nevada, has almost $200 garnished from his $1,150 Social Security check, and it all dates back to a 5:00am phone call on a Friday morning in 2002.
    That morning, a government official from the Bureau of Land Management told him to come down to a seizure site where the 132 cattle he owned were about to be impounded.

    When he arrived, men brandishing handguns told him he couldn't get any closer than 250 yards from his cattle. He watched from a distance as the government loaded the livestock onto stock trailers.

    Within a week, the cattle had been sold at a private auction – for what Yowell estimated to be a quarter of their market price. The proceeds belonged to BLM, officials told him, paying a portion of the grazing fees he suddenly owed. It wasn't enough to cover the full debt, and BLM sent Yowell a bill for $180,000.

    Yowell has been fighting the BLM in court ever since, but while the case moves its way through the system, his Social Security check takes a hit every month.

    The story, ranchers in Nevada say, is far from unique. Beginning in the late 1980s, BLM adopted aggressive tactics in the West, leading to large-scale cattle seizures and a disruption of life for ranchers that had utilized public lands for decades prior.

    While the press has showered attention on Cliven Bundy, a polarizing man who prompted a tense standoff between Bundy's well-armed militia supporters and federal police, the struggle between ranchers and the BLM is much broader. 
    ...Idaho Republican Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage and her husband Wayne Hage, lost their grazing permit on their Nevada ranch property for federal lands in 1991, when the federal government refused to renew it. This incident started a 20-year battle with the BLM. The government also denied access to the Hage family’s water rights, which pre-dated the implementation of the 1934 Taylor Act’s grazing permit requirement, by not allowing access to streams and wells. Eventually, the agency built fences around any water source, so the cattle could not drink. The BLM seized Hage’s cattle and filed a civil trespass action against Hage.
    A little over twenty years later, however, seven years after Hage and his wife died, Hage’s children, Wayne Jr. and Ramona Morrison Hage won a victory for the family in court.
     Last May, U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Jones ruled that “the government and the agents of the government in that locale, sometime in the ’70s and ’80s, entered into a conspiracy, a literal, intentional conspiracy, to deprive the Hages of not only their permit grazing rights, for whatever reason, but also to deprive them of their vested property rights under the takings clause, and I find that that’s a sufficient basis to hold that there is irreparable harm if I don’t … restrain the government from continuing in that conduct.”
    Judge Jones found the government’s demand for trespass fines and damages from innocent ranchers to be “abhorrent to the Court and I express on the record my offense of my own conscience in that conduct. That’s not just simply following the law and pursuing your management right, it evidences an actual intent to destroy their water rights, to get them off the public lands.”
    Jones went further and accused federal government personnel of racketeering under the federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations) statute, and accused them of extortion, mail fraud, and fraud, in an attempt “to kill the business of Mr. Hage.”
    Morrison Hage, a member of the Nevada Agriculture Board, told Breitbart News that “In the west our governors almost conduct themselves as if they’re a colonial governor and as if they’re only governor over the private land, adding “They take their hands off the steering wheel even though all state power emerge from the state. They take their hands off the steering whenever there’s anything to do with federal land management.”
    Harvey Frank Robbins became a Wyoming dude ranch owner in 1994, after buying a piece of land in the state, but Robbins troubles began soon after his purchase. He told Live Stock Weekly, "The government — the Forest Service, the BLM and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department — were trying to buy the ranch," he explains. "They had these plans of grandeur of having this sanctuary of elk and trout fishing and all the things they could do. Then this guy from Alabama comes in at the last minute, not knowing any of this, and buys this ranch."
    Robbins accused BLM employees of trying to force him to renew an easement to the point of almost putting him out of business. When Robbins refused to do so, according to his lawyer, Karen Budd Falen, BLM employees broke into his house and demanded to be allowed on to his property without a court order, among other things. While Robbins won victories in lower courts, a RICO case against the BLM employees eventually went before the Supreme Court in 2006, where the majority ruled the BLM agents were not liable for the alleged actions against Robbins. 




Oregon horse endurance ride draws hundreds

Horses and riders of all breeds and sizes spent the weekend in the Skull Hollow-Crooked River National Grasslands participating in endurance rides, trail rides and other challenges at the 43rd annual Still Memorial Weekend, formerly known as The Prineville Ride. Sandy Mayernick, volunteer coordinator at Mustangs to the Rescue, an all-breed horse rescue and rehabilitation organization based near Sisters, said she estimated about 200 people participated in the three-day event. “It’s huge this year,” Mayernick said. “Our numbers are definitely up. (Saturday) there were horse trailers as far as the eye could see.” For the first 42 years, the event was known as The Prineville Ride. When Mustangs to the Rescue Executive Director Kate Beardsley took the event over this year, she changed the name to honor Cole and Charlotte Still. Friday’s first event was a 25-mile endurance ride at 11 a.m., followed by a competitive trail challenge at 2 p.m. Saturday’s events started early at 6:30 a.m. with a 50-mile endurance ride and a 25-mile endurance ride at 7:30 a.m. An endurance ride is a timed event in which a horse and rider traverse a marked, measured cross-country trail over natural terrain. The rides can be up to 100 miles, and riders are expected to cover the distance in one day. The sport is governed by the American Endurance Ride Conference, which sanctions over 700 rides a year in the U.S. and Canada. The AERC maintains ride points, lifetime mileage statistics and an awards database for each horse and rider. “Riders are judged on how they and their horse handle obstacles along the trail,” Mayernick said. “We also put pink horseshoes along the trail for people to find. People who brought back a pink horseshoe were given a special prize.” Mayernick explained that during the trail challenge, judges are positioned at different obstacles, such as at the top of a steep hill, and judge riders by how they tackle the obstacle and how well they control their horses...more

Monday, May 05, 2014

Yosemite bans drones

Visitors to Yosemite National Park aren't allowed to bring their drones with them. The National Park Service announced this month that using drones in the California park is prohibited in all circumstances, citing an existing regulation that barred “delivering or retrieving a person or object by parachute, helicopter, or other airborne means" except for emergencies or by special permit. “This applies to drones of all shapes and sizes,” the park said. Over the law few years, Yosemite has seen an increase in the number of people bringing in drones to for filming purposes, officials said. But according to the park service, the drones create a fair amount of noise, interfere with emergency rescue operations, and can disturb wildlife like birds that nest on cliff walls...more

Feds: No plans to regulate agricultural methane emissions

Three cabinet-level officials are assuring Republican senators that the Obama administration has no plans to regulate methane emissions from the agricultural sector or livestock. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and his colleagues in a letter that the Obama administration’s strategy to reduce methane emissions will seek only voluntary reduction measures from agriculture. “Voluntary, partnership-based approaches to address emissions from agricultural sources have been shown to be effective, which is why the approaches for agriculture expand efforts to optimize and deploy waste-to-energy technologies and enhance manure management,” the officials wrote Friday. The administration announced its strategy in March to cut down on methane, a potent greenhouse gas. While it may lead to new standards for natural gas drilling, it specifically called only for voluntary measures to reduce methane output from agriculture...more

Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City

by 

This is the future if nothing is done to stop it.

In a secret test of mass surveillance technology, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sent a civilian aircraft* over Compton, California, capturing high-resolution video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality.

Compton residents weren't told about the spying, which happened in 2012. "We literally watched all of Compton during the times that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people," Ross McNutt of Persistence Surveillance Systems told the Center for Investigative Reporting, which unearthed and did the first reporting on this important story. The technology he's trying to sell to police departments all over America can stay aloft for up to six hours. Like Google Earth, it enables police to zoom in on certain areas. And like TiVo, it permits them to rewind, so that they can look back and see what happened anywhere they weren't watching in real time.

If it's adopted, Americans can be policed like Iraqis and Afghanis under occupation–and at bargain prices:
McNutt, who holds a doctorate in rapid product development, helped build wide-area surveillance to hunt down bombing suspects in Iraq and Afghanistan. He decided that clusters of high-powered surveillance cameras attached to the belly of small civilian aircraft could be a game-changer in U.S. law enforcement.
“Our whole system costs less than the price of a single police helicopter and costs less for an hour to operate than a police helicopter,” McNutt said. “But at the same time, it watches 10,000 times the area that a police helicopter could watch.”
A sargeant in the L.A. County Sheriff's office compared the technology to Big Brother, which didn't stop him from deploying it over a string of necklace snatchings.

Sgt. Douglas Iketani acknowledges that his agency hid the experiment to avoid public opposition. "This system was kind of kept confidential from everybody in the public,"he said. "A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so to mitigate those kinds of complaints we basically kept it pretty hush hush." That attitude ought to get a public employee summarily terminated.

The CIR story reports that no police department has yet purchased this technology, not because the law enforcement community is unwilling to conduct mass surveillance of their fellow citizens without first gaining the public's consent, but because the cameras aren't yet good enough to identify the faces of individuals. It's hard to imagine that next technological barrier won't be broken soon.



This land is whose land? Nevada ranch standoff reveals bigger fight over federally owned land


The Washington Times

Behind the hoopla surrounding Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the Bureau of Land Management is a growing resentment over the federal government’s status as the largest landowner in the West. “This is so much bigger than one rancher in Nevada,” Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, who heads the American Lands Council, said in an April 23 online debate sponsored by The Salt Lake Tribune. How much land does the federal government own? A 2012 Congressional Research Survey said the federal government owns about 640 million acres, or 28 percent of the nation’s land mass. Roughly 90 percent of that property is in the West. Put another way, one out of every two acres in the West is federally owned. In Nevada, the federal ownership figure is 81.1 percent; in Alaska, 61.8 percent; in Utah, 66.5 percent; in Oregon, 53 percent. In Connecticut and Iowa, the federal government owns 0.3 percent of the land. “The federal estate is larger than France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom combined,” said Robert Gordon, a senior adviser for the Heritage Foundation. “It is too big and was never intended to be preserved as one big park, but the left is strangling use of it and with it, rural America.” Many states added to the union during the 1800s were largely federally owned, but the government was actively trying to give land to homesteaders and settlers. By the early 1900s, when Western states were still new to the union, the focus began to shift to conservation of public lands.  In 1976, Congress touched off the first Sagebrush Rebellion by approving the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which declared that federal land within state borders would remain under federal control until further notice. Advocates on both sides have been arguing over the legalities ever since. Advocates of federal land insist that the issue is settled, but critics call for Congress to treat Western states the same as other states. “You don’t change these solemn compacts of statehood as the Supreme Court unanimously said in 2009 by a unilateral policy from Congress,” Mr. Ivory said at the debate...more


Nevada congressman seeks removal of Bundy backers

A Nevada congressman is calling on elected officials in the state to rid a town in his district of militia members who have rallied around rancher Cliven Bundy in his battle with federal land managers. Rep. Steven Horsford, in an address to the Clark County Democratic Convention in Las Vegas on Saturday, said he's making the request after hearing more complaints from constituents about the presence of Bundy supporters near Bunkerville, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Horsford, who attended a public event in nearby Mesquite earlier Saturday, said he was approached by residents there wanting to know about his plans to get militia members out of the area...more

That certainly doesn't jive with this news report and video of a recent town meeting where the folks were the most critical of BLM and Sheriff Gillespie.  So what is Congressman Horsford's reasoning behind his request?

He said a fifth-grade girl told him that Bundy has a "sense of entitlement" and should pay grazing fees like other ranchers who use public land in the West. A man told him that Bundy is a "welfare rancher" living off taxpayer subsidies, Horsford said. "And that is why I am calling on (Gov.) Brian Sandoval, Sen. Dean Heller, the (Clark County) sheriff (Doug Gillespie) and any other elected official in Nevada to do their part to get rid of these armed separatists," Horsford said to loud cheers from about 200 delegates.

A fifth-grader talking about a "sense of entitlement"?  Come on Congressman, you sound like Jimmy Carter talking to his daughter Amy about arms control.  That was widely ridiculed during the Presidential debates, as your quote should be now; and "welfare rancher" is right out of the arsenal from far left environmental groups.  You better have a talk with your speech writer.

Georgia GOP Senate candidate travels to Bundy ranch

With a little over two weeks to go before Georgia’s Republican Senate primary, the seven candidates vying for retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ seat are canvassing the Peach State at a frantic pace in an attempt to shake as many hands as possible before voters head to the polls. One contender, however, is now thousands of miles away, sacrificing one of the precious few weekends that remain to pay tribute to a protest on the other side of the country. Senate candidate Derrick Grayson, a network engineer and avid YouTube pundit, slipped away Saturday evening to board a plane bound for Las Vegas amid a heated primary fight for the GOP’s nomination. Accompanied by his campaign manager and director of operations, Grayson then drove from Sin City to rural Clark County, Nevada, where a highly publicized legal showdown continues to unfold between rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Many protesters remain on Bundy’s ranch, sleeping in tents and banding together against what they see as government overreach. One such devotee, Jason Patrick, has played a major supporting role in Grayson’s campaign thus far. Grayson et al joined Patrick this weekend to survey the scene and show their enthusiasm for Bundy’s populist struggle...more

Fracking Insiders See No End To Boom

Despite official predictions that the U.S. energy boom will pop like a bubble in the next 20 years, people engaged in drilling for oil and gas—from the financiers to the frackers—see no end to boom times or low gas prices, industry insiders said in Chicago Friday. Late last year the International Energy Agency predicted the U.S. would surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest energy producer by 2015 but would run out of gas, so to speak, in the 2020s. The U.S. Energy Information Administration made a similar assessment  last year, predicting production would decline after 2020 and then increased demand would drive up gas prices. But such glum assessments underestimate not only the amount of domestic shale oil and gas, but also the ingenuity of those  tapping it, the insiders suggested Friday at the Energy Forward conference hosted by the Chicago Booth Energy Group. Most shale oil wells today start strong but taper off quickly compared to conventional wells, and some cease production in 7.5 to 8 years. But drilling technologies are evolving quickly to change that, said James King, vice president for unconventional multi-stage completions with Baker Hughes, an oilfield services company...more

Scientists race to develop farm animals to survive climate change

When a team of researchers from the University of Delaware traveled to Africa two years ago to search for exemplary chickens, they weren't looking for plump thighs or delicious eggs. They were seeking out birds that could survive a hotter planet. The researchers were in the vanguard of food scientists, backed by millions of dollars from the federal government, racing to develop new breeds of farm animals that can stand up to the hazards of global warming. Some climate-change activists dismiss the work, which is just getting underway, as a distraction and a concession to industrial-style agriculture, which they blame for compounding the world's environmental problems. Those leading the experiments, however, say new, heat-resistant breeds of farm animals will be essential to feeding the world as climate change takes hold. The experiments reflect a continued shift in the federal government's response to climate change. With efforts to reduce carbon emissions lagging behind what most scientists believe will be needed to forestall further warming, the government increasingly is looking for ways to protect key industries from the impact. In agriculture, "we are dealing with the challenge of difficult weather conditions at the same time we have to massively increase food production" to accommodate larger populations and a growing demand for meat, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack...more

 There is a "race" going on, but its researchers racing after federal dollars.

Nanny State: De Blasio to Resurrect Attempt at NYC Big Soda Ban

Hide your Big Gulps again, New York. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week his administration will pick up where former Mayor Michael Bloomberg left off and will continue the battle to ban sodas larger than 16 ounces. The city will appeal a state court ruling that pulled the plug on the ban last year. City lawyers will argue the case at the Court of Appeals on June 4, the New York Daily News reported this week. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg got plenty of headlines in 2012 when he declared war on Big Gulps and other large sugary drinks. The much discussed ban on sodas over 16 ounces was an edict issued by the city's Health Department and never got approval from city council. A state judge in March 2013 blocked the ban and said Bloomberg overstepped his authority in issuing it without the city council's consent. De Blasio and Bloomberg have not seen eye to eye on everything, but the new boss is the same as the old boss when it comes to regulating away that special kind of joy that can only be found at the bottom of a half-gallon of Coca-Cola. He wants a ban on electronic cigarettes, building on Bloomberg's long campaign to make it illegal to smoke traditional cigarettes just about anywhere inside the city limits. He also wants to shut down the famous horse-drawn carriage rides around Central Park, which has won him accolades from animal-rights activists who want to see the horses allowed to lounge in the park like any other resident of the city. And this week, he called for a ban on new wood-burning fireplaces in the city (no word on whether de Blasio is also harboring a vendetta against the Yule log), because in a city with more than 10 million cars spewing exhaust into the atmosphere each day, pollution from fireplaces is a serious problem...more

I think Mayor de Blasio deserves some kind of "award".  Oh look, Watchdog.org agrees:



For his renewed efforts to keep New Yorkers from being able to make their own decisions about soda consumption, Mayor Bill de Blasio takes home our nanny state city of the week award. His prize is 32 ounces of warm, flat, fizzless, off-brand soda.

Scientists Discover the Egyptian Secret to Moving Huge Pyramid Stones

by Andrew Tarantola

The question of just how an ancient civilization—without the help of modern technology—moved the 2.5 ton stones that made up their famed pyramids has long plagued Egyptologists and mechanical engineers alike. But now, a team from the University of Amsterdam believes they've figured it out, even though the solution was staring them in the face all along.

It all comes down to friction. See, the ancient Egyptians would transport their rocky cargo across the desert sands, from quarry to monument site with large sleds. Pretty basic sleds, basically just large slabs with upturned edges. Now, when you try to pull a large slab with upturned edges carrying a 2.5 ton load, it tends to dig into the sand ahead of it, building up a sand berm that must then be regularly cleared before it can become an even bigger obstacle. 

Wet sand, however, doesn't do this. In sand with just the right amount of dampness, capillary bridges—essentially microdroplets of water that bind grains of sand to one another through capillary action—form across the grains, which doubles the material's relative stiffness. This prevents the sand from berming in front of the sled and cuts the force required to drag the sled in half. 

As a UvA press release explains,
The physicists placed a laboratory version of the Egyptian sledge in a tray of sand. They determined both the required pulling force and the stiffness of the sand as a function of the quantity of water in the sand. To determine the stiffness they used a rheometer, which shows how much force is needed to deform a certain volume of sand. Experiments revealed that the required pulling force decreased proportional to the stiffness of the sand...A sledge glides far more easily over firm desert sand simply because the sand does not pile up in front of the sledge as it does in the case of dry sand.


 These experiments served to confirm what the Egyptians clearly already knew, and what we probably already should have. Artwork within the tomb of Djehutihotep, which was discovered in the Victorian Era, depicts a scene of slaves hauling a colossal statue of the Middle Kingdom ruler and in it, a guy at the front of the sled is shown pouring liquid into the sand. You can see it in the image above, just to the right of the statue's foot...more

We need to put a bunch of wet sand around those DC Deep Thinkers, load 'em on a sledge and move 'em over to Egypt. 

The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

"Saturated fat does not cause heart disease"—or so concluded a big study published in March in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. How could this be? The very cornerstone of dietary advice for generations has been that the saturated fats in butter, cheese and red meat should be avoided because they clog our arteries. For many diet-conscious Americans, it is simply second nature to opt for chicken over sirloin, canola oil over butter.  The new study's conclusion shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with modern nutritional science, however. The fact is, there has never been solid evidence for the idea that these fats cause disease. We only believe this to be the case because nutrition policy has been derailed over the past half-century by a mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias. Our distrust of saturated fat can be traced back to the 1950s, to a man named Ancel Benjamin Keys, a scientist at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Keys was formidably persuasive and, through sheer force of will, rose to the top of the nutrition world—even gracing the cover of Time magazine—for relentlessly championing the idea that saturated fats raise cholesterol and, as a result, cause heart attacks.  This idea fell on receptive ears because, at the time, Americans faced a fast-growing epidemic. Heart disease, a rarity only three decades earlier, had quickly become the nation's No. 1 killer. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in 1955. Researchers were desperate for answers...more

Sunday, May 04, 2014

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy


The little woman

By Julie Carter

I feel certain that the saying "behind every good man is a good woman" was born in agriculture. Quite possibly it dates back to when agriculture was in its earliest crude form of poking a stick in the ground and dropping in a seed of corn.
 
While agricultural methods today are somewhat improved, the role of "little woman" hasn't changed much. She picks up the slack wherever needed and that led to another famous phrase — "a woman's work is never done."
 
Women in general are a tough lot but for the purposes of this pat on the back to the "little purty" as she is often referred to, I'm narrowing the topic to ranch women. 

A ranch wife will leave at daylight with the boss — after breakfast is cooked, kitchen tidied up, horses saddled and lunch packed. Many of those days there is no lunch because the all-day event was one of those "it'll-only-take-us-a-little-while" projects. They will be horseback all day fighting the elements and the cows to get the work done. All the things that can go wrong usually do.

She will find a way to shut a barbwire gate that only a he-man body builder would be able to pull up to the post. She will sit and wait patiently for hours on end right where he told her to wait. Then she will find out he expected her to read his mind when he changed his mind. Later, she will take a cussin' that should really have been for the cow that ticked him off in the first place.

And when it's all done, she'll come home to a cold dark house, build a fire, fix a meal and get ready to do it all over again. Somewhere in there, she'll squeeze in the grocery shopping, the laundry, house cleaning and bill paying. That has to be done in her spare time, whenever that is. 

When she has an important event she would like him to attend with her, he uses his over burden of work and lack of time to get out of it. So she rises to the task and helps him get the work done so they can go together to something he didn't want to go to in the first place. When he has an event and she's too busy, he goes alone. 

She may only be just over five foot tall but stature has nothing to do with guts and grit. She'll sit in a saddle in a blizzard helping to drive a cow to a gate that not even the cow can see. After it's all done, she'll coil up her wet freezing rope, peel the ice from her batting eyelashes and tell him how much she loves working with him.

She would love a thank you and pat on the back for job well done. But most often he just thinks of it as getting done what had to be done. He won't stop and ponder the fact that the "little woman" is the best help he has because she is more often than not, the only help he has.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarternm@gmail.com

The Grand Takings - Four landmark cases



The Federal land legacy
The Grand Takings
Four landmark cases
By Stephen L. Wilmeth


            In Federalist Paper XLV, Madison downplayed the danger of accrued powers of the federal government over the various states. He began the task when he reminded the readers of the impious doctrine of the King which concluded that people were made for kings not kings for people.
            The doctrine which he helped frame upheld the concept that the “solid happiness of the people” was the new path. Madison could have dispensed with many words if he had halted after penning, “It is too early for politicians (the antagonists to strong federal government) to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued.”
Fast forward 225 years and we must wonder what President Madison would have thought when he saw paramilitary forces squared off against Nevada ranchers. Something suggests his first thought would not have been domestic terrorism. Surely he would have been aghast.
His argument was the federal government stood the risk of authority diminishment and not the states … not the people.
He qualified that position in XLVI when he suggested the downfall of the powers of the state would come only if “the visionary supposition that the Federal Government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition”.
Madison’s worry of federal diminishment didn’t happen. On the contrary, the “solid happiness of the people” theme was the anticipated loser.
The West test
On a big sky day in Nevada in 1979, the cleansing of western heritage accelerated.
That was the day Wayne Hage met Forest Service officials on his Pine Creek Ranch. Asking them what they were doing, they told him they were surveying water rights in the Monitor Valley for federal claims.
Hage was horrified.
His belief that vested grazing and water rights were tied to title succession since the mid 1800s would be shattered, but he wasn’t alone. That day started a marathon process that ultimately buried Hage, his two wives, and the hopes of thousands of rural Americans.
If there is any resolution after all these years, it must reflect in the legal judgment that Hage prevailed with his claim of water rights. The other rights were defused into minutiae of detail, legal technicalities, regulatory drift, and special interest corruption. The result did not equate to “the solid happiness of the people”.
American ranchers have been manhandled, terrorized, and broken under the federal juggernaut.
The Landmark Takings
 My view of the landmark takings has worn on me.
The persistent words “… nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation” remain. They come from the closing clause of the 5th Amendment. The phrase is not conditional.
There are four landmark takings that every American must archive in memory. Let’s continue with the Hage case.
The Hage Case. After taking stock in the actions against him, Hage petitioned the office of his State Engineer to qualify his water rights. That forced an adjudication that took ten years. It was fraught with Forest Service delaying tactics.
In 1991, Hage had enough evidence to file a takings claim. He made the claim his grazing permits, his water rights and the associated investments and infrastructure were private property rights for his full use and enjoyment. His position was strengthened by personal property tax schedules, mortgage and credit line collateral filings, and IRS interest and depreciation allowances.
Throughout the period, the Forest Service moved to solidify its position with public opinion campaigns and regulatory creep. That culminated in the intent to evict Hage through the cancellation of his grazing permits which, in turn, triggered the BLM to cancel its lands permits when the patchwork ownership of his ranch was disrupted by the withdrawal of the forest ranges and rotational plans.
It became a tag team effort.
Finally, in 1996 the courts ruled he could proceed with his takings claim. There were subsequent stories such as the entanglement of a Nevada Attorney General with the environmental front, three armed confrontations with body armored federal agents, the trespass of 104 cattle on forest land, and the dismissal of Hage’s attempt to demonstrate forage regrowth by the federal officials noting wrong grasses were present.
In the end, Hage was awarded $4.4 million only to have the ruling reversed by a US Circuit Court in 2013. Today, the Hage estate has not been compensated in the war waged upon it. The technicalities and the array of tools brought to bear continued to obscure the unsettling truths about degradation of the property rights. Through a process that lasted 35 years, yielded nine court rulings, and condemned actions of agency officials, the government did its best to break Wayne Hage.
The Laney Case.  In 1883, the Laney family started Laney Cattle Company in New Mexico’s Black Range. That preceded the establishment of the Gila Forest Reserve by 16 years and the admission of New Mexico into the Union by 29 years.
With the establishment of the United States Forest Service in 1905, the idea of “allotments” emerged. The Laney family saw their original voluntary participation adjudicated in 1907. They remained in operation through a period that saw many administrative changes that altered the intent of grazing and range rights and reduced any ability to create parallel enterprises and substantive economic improvements. Their treatment had no semblance of the Jeffersonian preferred phrasing of “pursuit of life, liberty and property.”
In 1985, the next generation steward, Kit Laney, bought the neighboring Diamond Bar Ranch from a bank. In the transaction, Laney capitalized the investment equating to 1188 head of cattle and assumed an existing demand, a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Forest Service, which required them to make substantial improvements in water and fencing infrastructure. Most of the demand was within designated wilderness. The MOA stated the Forest Service would allow mechanized assistance for making the improvements.
The Forest Service reneged. Environmental groups objected to the mechanical applications in designated wilderness. The agency capitulated and denied access.
Laney simply couldn’t accomplish the demands with hand labor and mules.
The shortfall of infrastructure improvements resulted in the Forest Service cutting his allotment numbers to 300 head. When the allotment came up for renewal, Laney refused to sign the document that reduced his permit by 75%.
He couldn’t operate with such a change.
In 1997, a court ruling indicated his cattle were trespassing. In 2004, Laney received notice the Forest Service was going to seize his cattle and shut his ranch down. That took place, Laney was arrested for using his horse as a deadly weapon, and he served time in prison. His entire life was devastated.
The federal government … broke Kit Laney.
The Clark County allotments. The notoriety regarding Cliven Bundy has been extensive so we shall focus on the bigger story. That is the story of the loss of some 50 other allotments in that Clark County and Virgin River country of Nevada.
Like the Bundy case (cattle numbers reduced by half), those ranches were eliminated in a stepwise reduction of numbers. The nominal issue was the desert tortoise. As demonstrated in the Hage and Laney takings, the reduction of numbers equated to inability to operate. Collapse was inevitable.
The agencies have become masters of making it so expensive and constrained to operate ranches cannot succeed. They go broke or they sell to conservation organizations and disappear into the populous. The federal government either makes them willing sellers or … breaks them.
The ultimate taking
The ultimate taking took place in New Mexico back in1944.
That taking, beyond any and all similar 5th Amendment takings in the West, demonstrates the fear the Founders had in not vesting citizenry in the sanctity of private property. It reflects how and what will happen when those rights are conditional or limited.
In 1922, Aldo Leopold visited the Gila National Forest.
One day he rode out onto the western flank of Black Mountain and was awestruck.  He witnessed the grandeur of the headwaters of the Gila with the Mogollons to the southwest, the Black Range to the east, and the Pinos Altos Range to the south.
As that year played out, he got the opportunity to interact with the Shelley family, which had arrived on the south face of the Mogollon front in 1884. In that family’s speech, he heard the use of the term, wilderness. That was the term they actually used for their range “lying north of the high ridge on a line from 74 Mountain to Shelley Peak”. That was the wilderness that became the wilderness nomenclature in establishing the Gila Wilderness by Forest Service regional office administrative action in 1924.
Leopold took the term from the Shelleys.
There is every reason to believe he was further inspired by their fascination and respect for that homeland. He accepted their courtesy and hospitality and he set in motion the forces that would destroy them in 1944.
The drought of the late ‘20s, the Depression, and the settlement of the Peter McKindree Shelley estate destocked their wilderness of cattle, but it was the arbitrary actions of the United States Forest Service and then Gila Forest supervisor, L.R. Lessel who maneuvered to eliminate grazing rights that equated to 5000 cattle in 1930 and 0 in 1945. The removal of allotment numbers of that magnitude in war time had to raise eyebrows, but it must be assessed as an act of contravention intent in 2014.
In 1948, Lessel was overheard to say all cattle would ultimately be eliminated from national forest lands. That comment and the plight of the Shelleys lingered. In a hearing on the Wilderness Act in 1964, New Mexico’s Elliot S. Barker arose and asked Senator Clinton P. Anderson how many more ranchers were in line to be evicted with his legislation. Anderson assured him none and the phrasing “the grazing of livestock, where established prior to September 3, 1964, shall be permitted to continue …” was inserted. The United States was called to task, but senatorial leadership wanted nothing to do with righting the wrong that had already destocked the Gila Wilderness.
As agent of the United States, Lessel broke the Shelley family. He demonstrated the repeated propensity by agency managers to assume divine and lofty designs of empowerment each and every time federal tracts of the commons are assigned to them.
That family serves as the vanguard to the litany of uncompensated, dismissed, and discredited personal property takings since, and, as such, they must be recognized as … the first family of American wilderness.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The Shelley taking demonstrated the natural occurrence of the wilderness syndrome in a constitutional void, the Hage taking revealed the expanded body of eviction tools, the Laney taking demonstrated the application of those tools and the outcome of an individual standing alone, and the Clark County takings demonstrate the general apathy of the nation toward the sanctity of private property rights in general … Madison was wrong.”