Replies

“I can’t see what makes Mr. Bundy any different from any other rancher in the West”

He’s not any different. Your boys at the BLM just haven’t gotten around to the rest of them yet.

Although the BLM is doing the same thing to the Diamond Bar ranch in NM as we speak but I’ll bet you already know that. :-) wink wink.

Thanks for the tip off:

"When the U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905, one of its first concerns was to find a way to settle disputes among ranchers whose water rights resulted in conflicts over grazing areas. The Forest Service stepped into these territorial conflicts and proposed a way to resolve the disputes.

The rancher parties to the dispute voluntarily agreed to allow the Forest Service to measure the available water to which each participant had legal rights and designate the appropriate forage land required to make beneficial use of the available water. The designated area was called an “allotment.”

The ranchers paid the Forest Service a fee for their adjudication service, a portion of which went into a fund from which the ranchers could make improvements to the range and water access. The Forest Service issued a permit, which designated the forage area and the number of cow/calf units, or AUMs, that could graze the allotment.

Laney’s ancestors participated in this type of Forest Service adjudication process in 1907, three years before New Mexico became a state. The system worked well until 1934, when Congress enacted the Taylor Grazing Act. This law changed the status of the grazing permit from a voluntary process agreed to by the ranchers, into a “license” required by the federal government.

Few ranchers realized this law eventually would strip them of their rights and the land they had worked for generations."

I'm not familiar with the situation you cite in NM, but if there's another rancher grazing his cattle on federal lands without paying his allotment fees, then I would expect the BLM to deal with the matter.

Which in no way diminishes the accuracy of our original appraisal of Cliven Bundy, who can be most charitably characterized as a selfish skinflint bent on ripping off the taxpayer for at least the last 20 years. I never had much use for people who steal from the public at large, and I see no reason to change my position now.