Grazing and Livestock

  • Was Cliven Bundy just a lazy rancher?

    Ralph Maughan

    U. S. Attorney in court says Bundy was not a man of principled views: “He was too lazy to bring his cattle in during the winter.” Cliven Bundy has always described his failure to pay grazing fees, or limit how many or where he grazes his cattle, to his powerful anti-federal government feelings.  On February…

  • Bundy Gang Won For Now

    George Wuerthner

    One result of the Bundy Gang take-over has been the abundant media attention to their assertions of government “overreach” and “aggressive enforcement“ of environmental regulations that, according to Bundy and Gang, has driven ranchers, miners, and loggers from the land. Unfortunately the media have been slow to counter such assertions. The reality on the ground…

  • Malheur was taken over by ranchers long before the Bundys came along

    Barrie Gilbert

    Casual readers of news coverage of the recent armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge might reasonably assume that the Refuge is strictly protected from livestock grazing. After all, that’s one of the things the vigilantes were protesting, right? The big, bad federal government locked up the lands from grazing and they were there…

  • An Open Letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze

    February 2, 2016 Dear Mr. Kornze, During last month’s armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, several articles reported that the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) – the agency you lead– was in negotiations to restore a grazing permit of the convicted criminals whose mandatory minimum sentencing was ostensibly the spark that ignited the…

  • The Backstory on the Hammonds and Malheur Conflict

    George Wuerthner

    Dwight Hammond and his son Steve, the ranchers who sparked the recent Harney County protests, were characterized as “responsible ranchers” by Congressman Greg Walden in a speech before Congress. Walden sought to minimize the crimes the Hammonds have committed by suggesting they merely burned a bit more than a hundred acres, something that he tried…

  • Congress Should Follow the Lead of Local Sheriff and Offer “Safe Escort” Out of Public Lands Ranching

    Press Release

    By Josh Osher and Andy Kerr The Sheriff of Harney County, OR met with the leader of the armed occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and offered a way to end the takeover fiasco. The Sheriff offered a “safe escort” out of the increasingly untenable situation. Congress should follow the Sheriff’s pragmatic gesture and offer…

  • Rugged individualism and Independence with a government safety net

    George Wuerthner

      The standoff in Harney County Oregon highlights one of the great ironies of the rural West. More than any other people, western rural residents are more heavily dependent on government (read taxpayer) largesse than any other part of America. Yet the average rural resident sees himself/herself as a  “rugged and independent” individual and by…

  • Reality Check on Public Lands Ranching: A reaction to the rhetoric of the Bundy militia in Oregon

    Ralph Maughan

    Boise, ID – Western Watersheds Project is disappointed that the government’s acquiescence to ongoing law-breaking on public lands across the West has led to the armed occupation of one of America’s premier bird sanctuaries. This weekend’s militia takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is another battle in the “War on the West” that extractive industries…

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‎”At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.”

Edward Abbey

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