Drought Pushes Nevada Ranchers to Take On Washington

BATTLE MOUNTAIN, Nev. — Around here they call it “going Bundy”: allowing cattle to graze illegally on federally owned land. For months, ranching families in this tiny community have itched to do it — both because of the relentless drought, which has left their own land dry and their animals hungry, and because of the anti-Washington streak that runs deep in this part of the rural West, where people fervently believe that the government owns too much land. Last month, the Filippini family finally did it: They released hundreds of cattle onto federal land here at the border of Lander and Humboldt Counties, an arid patch that straddles part of the old Pony Express cross-country mail route of 1860 and 1861. Drought has reduced the grass cover here to less than four inches of stubble in some creek beds, a level that leads to a ban on grazing. “We did the right thing as far as I’m concerned,” said Eddyann Filippini, 59, the ranch matriarch, whose Facebook portrait shows her on horseback by the Pacific Ocean, poised to ride to Washington to protest the government’s management of land in Battle Mountain. “If I end up in a federal prison, I hope it’s Martha Stewart’s,” she added. So far, that does not look likely. Since the drought began here in 2012, the ranching families of Battle Mountain, a community of 3,600 people in Nevada’s northern desert, have been locked in a battle with the bureau, the federal agency charged with caring for millions of acres of taxpayer-owned land. The agency looms large in the West, where the government owns and controls about half of the land, and its decisions about who can graze, drill or mine can make or break entire communities. In 2013, the agency began restricting cattle grazing on public lands, concerned that the ecosystem would not recover if animals ate their way through during a dry spell. Three families were ordered to halt grazing on various land allotments: the Tomeras, the Mariluches and the Filippinis. Several companies were also affected. Environmental groups, which have long called for the end of ranching on public lands, urged the agency to be as strict as possible. The issue here — drought — has caused longstanding tensions between Western ranchers and the federal government to escalate. The ranching families of Battle Mountain filed lawsuits to overturn the no-grazing edict. They pitched signs near the agency’s office urging drivers to “Honk to Impeach Furtado.” And last fall, eight of them mounted horses in Bodega Bay, Calif., just north of San Francisco, and rode 3,000 miles to Washington to deliver petitions to Congress calling for Mr. Furtado’s removal...more