You shall not remove your neighbor’s boundary stone, which the men of old have set, in your inheritance. – Deuteronomy 19:14
Brian Gregg
In ancient Hebrew culture, stones were often used to mark the
boundary between two neighboring properties. Moving a boundary stone
meant you were stealing part of your neighbors’ field. It was a serious
crime in that time, and for good reason.
Ancient Israel was an agrarian society. They grew crops and raised
livestock. To steal part of some-one’s field was to steal part of his
livelihood, his ability to provide for his family. Hebrew families were
required by law to keep land in the family. In fact, if folks fell on
hard times and had to sell the family land, they would have the land
returned to them in the fiftieth year, the year of “Jubilee.”
Keeping land in the family was vitally important, because it was the
only way to ensure that your descendants would survive. The ability to
pass your land down to your children as an inheritance was a sacred
right.
The world has changed a lot since those days. But here in the
American West, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, and that’s the
vital importance of land for families who make a living raising
livestock. With every drop of sweat that you pour into the land, you
earn the right to pass that land on to those who come after you.
But what happens when the government casts aside that legal right and
no longer values the history and tradition of western ranching? In that
case, a ranching family’s livelihood and
legacy can be stolen. They can lose everything overnight.
That’s what happened to
John and Martha Corrigan.
The fifth-generation cattle ranchers in the “three corners” region of
southwest Idaho, are direct descendants of the families who homestead-ed
the area. When it came time for Martha’s parents to pass down the
family ranch, the Corrigans were in for a rude awakening.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) illegally cancelled the Corrigan’s grazing preference on nearby federal grazing lands.
Grazing preferences are a special kind of property right — they
guarantee landowners the right to be issued a permit to graze their
livestock on federal lands that owners of that piece of land have
historically used.
Based on new (and arguably illegal) regulations implemented during
the Clinton administration, the BLM now claimed that the Corrigans’
grazing preference for their historical tract of federal grazing land
was no longer attached to their nearby ranch. Because the agency did not
renew their parents’ grazing permit, the BLM claimed — years after the
fact — that this also automatically destroyed the Corrigans’ underlying
preference, which was part of the family’s private ranch lands.
A way of life devastated overnight
Such a thing had never been heard of in the history of American
ranching. The BLM simply invented an entirely new legal theory. And even
worse, the BLM somehow “forgot” to tell the family that it had
cancelled their grazing preference until the Corrigans tried to make use
of it years later.
It was akin to moving an ancient boundary stone.
The BLM destroyed their family legacy and their right to make a living. It took something sacred from them.
If we don’t stop them, the BLM will be able to do this to countless
other ranching families. That’s why Mountain States Legal Foundation is
representing area cattle associations also threatened by the BLM’s
action in the case,
Corrigan v. Bernhardt.
