Nevada Rancher Taunts Feds by Still Grazing Cattle on Undisputed Lands

Unbowed and unapologetic, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is still running his cattle on disputed grazing land eight months after his highly publicized standoff over public lands, but that doesn’t mean his feud with the federal government is over.

In a tense confrontation that generated international headlines, the 68-year-old Mr. Bundy won that round last spring: Bureau of Land Management officials agreed to leave the property and release his impounded cattle after hundreds of armed supporters descended on the Southern Nevada ranch in April. He says he hasn’t seen any sign of federal agents since.

“[W]e’ve really enjoyed some liberty and freedoms out here,” Mr. Bundy told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last month.

“Since the standoff, we haven’t seen one BLM vehicle on any of these country roads around this ranch. We haven’t seen one BLM ranger. We haven’t seen one [National] Park Service ranger. We haven’t really seen any undercover-type people,” he said. “We haven’t seen snipers on top of our hills. We haven’t seen high-tech communication equipment. We haven’t seen any of those things” . . .

His legal battle with the BLM over grazing rights, one that has resonated across the region, is ongoing. Mr. Bundy has refused to pay $1.2 million in grazing fees to the BLM, arguing that the land belongs to the state, not the federal government. The land rights issue is particularly heated in Nevada, where 85 percent of the land within the state’s borders is federally owned. (Read more about the Nevada rancher HERE)

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