I'm surprised I haven't seen this topic come up on here yet. Is anyone following? I have tried to do so but there's simply a lot I don't understand about the way the land in the west works. I don't like fact the federal government owns so much land, but i'm not sure either if it's the ranchers just made a few mistakes and are trying to fix it by force. What I've been able to take away is that the ranchers can't ranch cause the govenrment owns all the land and the people in washington who have no idea what the ranchers do are making / changing the rules on how the land can be used....
I don't think taking over a closed building in a bird sanctuary is the way to go, when the guys you are protesting for say get off our side and report to jail you might want to reevaluate your tactics.
While I don't disagree with the groups angst with the policies and regulations of the government and they are sympathetic figures in my opinion simply because much of what the federal government is doing today by way of executive regulatory law, i.e. the EPA, etc I strongly object to, I don't know if the tactics in this instance were warranted. I think that we have had a massive governmental overreach in this country and it needs to stop somewhere before there is open warfare. We don't know the details but one of the protesters was killed and something within me says that this could have been avoided by people on both sides.
I don't know exact specifics of this particular case but I can tell you the basic "Western States" ranching/grazing scenario. The rancher owns his headquarters of maybe one or two sections of land. A section is 640 acres and while it may seem significant to an Easterner, it is of little consequence in the grazing capacity needed for the total amount of rangeland needed for a functioning operational ranch. He builds his house, barns, pens, etc on his own land, but his operation is non sustainable without the state or federal grazing rights that adjoin his property. These ranchers have a first right of refusal for these grazing rights and these rights are transferable to the new owner if they sell their headquarters, thus putting a high marketable value on heir properties. Some of these ranches have transferred to several generations within the same family. If the federal government decides to change the use category of this land and no longer allows livestock grazing, not only can the rancher no longer ranch, the value of his headquarters is now basically worthless as well as it now has little economic value on the market
So if the rancher has an operation that is not sustainable and relies on a gov't program to make it sustainable, gets upset when a program changes and blames the gov't when they gamble and lose. So much for rural sensibilities. I will say when BLM or the Forest Service go with a let it burn policy when a fire starts it isn't very popular with adjacent property owners and loggers.
Last I checked, there are plenty of ranches for sale. I say, put up or shut up and move on. Anytime you are making a living off someone else's property, you better be ready to go with the flow, because things are eventually going to change.
