I guess im a bit naive but why does the federel govt. own cattle grazing land and then claim that endangered turtles are more imortant to the economy than cattle raised for food?
Cliven Bundy refused to renew his agreement to graze cattle on the federal land twenty years ago. He quit paying the grazing fees that his family had been paying.
He did so five years before the land was closed to all grazing because of the endangered species, and was first ordered by a federal court to remove his cattle from this land approximately three years before the endangered species-based closure.
As Ann Barnhardt says:
[T]his is NOT a good battle to pick. The guy in question has been grazing his cattle at essentially zero feed cost for upwards of twenty years (well, THAT makes the cattle business easier, doesn’t it!) because he stopped paying the BLM any lease charges. Again, we can debate all manner of things including the ridiculous rules about closing land to grazing in order to “protect” lizards or prairie chickens or whatever the fake “endangered species” du jour is, and certainly we can debate the existence of the BLM itself, but there is no free lunch; everyone else pays to graze.