Caution: Now Entering Public Lands.. Not intended for use by the Public. :-\
His ancestors have been living there since the 1880s and have been unable to purchase more than 100 acres?
Diamond Bar fined $46,000 for unlawful grazing
SILVER CITY, N.M. (AP) - The Diamond Bar ranch, ordered to remove its cattle from the Gila National Forest, owes more than $46,000 in fees for unauthorized grazing, and the cost is rising, says the U.S. Forest Service.
Now the Forest Service is suggesting that Diamond Bar ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney be required to remove all livestock - about 950 head, Kit Laney said - by Feb. 15.
The Forest Service calculates that the ranch is running 1,042 head of cattle and horses on the two grazing allotments, more than 145,000 acres in the Gila and Aldo Leopold wilderness.
U.S. District Judge Howard Bratton issued an injunction in December against the Laneys, ruling they were trespassing on federal land.
The Forest Service had limited the Laneys to grazing 300 cattle, but they've been grazing more than 800, saying any less would ruin them financially.
Laney said Bratton's decision would force him out of business, but his attorney, Larry Patton of Luna, N.M., vowed to appeal.
The government had 20 days to list damages and fees the Laneys owe. The bill totaled $46,277 as of Nov. 30, and the Forest Service has computed the charge at $142 a day since Dec. 1.
The bill also includes $4,388, the cost of storing plants that the Forest Service had hoped to plant along damaged riversides. The agency said the delay was caused by the presence of cattle that would have destroyed the plants. The Laneys have not filed their response.
http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/011497/diamond.htm