Vol. 80/No. 11 March 21, 2016
US gov’t expands frame-up against Nevada ranchers
Several hundred people, including some armed members of militia groups, forced Bureau of Land Management agents and heavily armed federal cops to back off on attempts to sell 400 cows belonging to Bundy that the U.S. government seized, claiming they were illegally grazing on federal lands.
Six of those charged, including Cliven’s sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were already in jail awaiting trial on frame-up charges of “conspiracy to impede a federal officer” for their participation earlier this year in the peaceful occupation of the Malheur bird refuge in Harney County, Oregon. That action was organized to draw attention to the frame-up and imprisonment of father and son Harney County ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond as well as to U.S. policies that are driving many smaller cattle ranchers off the land and destroying their livelihoods.
Cliven Bundy was arrested at the Portland airport Feb. 10 while on his way to visit Ammon and Ryan in jail.
“Why arrest and indict him now?” Mike Arnold, Ammon Bundy’s attorney, told the Militant from Eugene, Oregon, March 5. The U.S. government took no action for nearly two years, even though Cliven Bundy had traveled all over the country, he said. “Many believe this is just in retaliation.”
Arnold said many liberals and environmentalists in Oregon “are just going crazy demanding that the Bundys be incarcerated without their due process rights being honored because they don’t agree with their views, saying they are rightists. Don’t they realize that this could be used against their rights too?”
Ammon Bundy told the Oregonian March 3 that he takes his inspiration from Martin Luther King Jr. “We needed to make a lot of noise to get people to understand what is happening,” he said.
Those charged in the April 12, 2014, protest in Bunkerville, Nevada, face 16 felony counts ranging from “Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States,” “Use and Carry of a Firearm in Relation to a Crime of Violence” and “Interstate Travel in Aid of Extortion.” They face sentences of up to 20 years in prison and confiscation of their farms.
In fact, no violence occurred at the protest.
The indictment charges Cliven Bundy with broadcasting a video with “false, deceitful and deceptive statements to the effect that the BLM was stealing BUNDY’s cattle.” It says the protest was “conspicuous” for flying the Nevada state flag above the U.S. flag.
The interstate travel charge doesn’t say Bundy traveled outside Nevada. It is for use of “the internet or worldwide web, with the intent to commit a crime of violence” by asking supporters from other states to come to their ranch to stop federal agents from taking Bundy’s cattle.
‘Wild, mean, ornery cows’
The political and vindictive nature of the charges comes through clearly in the government memorandum asking the U.S. District Court to deny bail to Cliven Bundy.
The memo charges that Bundy lets his cattle “run wild on the public lands with little, if any, human interaction” and that his cows “are wild, mean and ornery.”
The Bundy family began ranching in 1877. Like most ranchers in the West they had no choice but to use federal land to graze. Nearly 50 percent of all land west of the Mississippi River is owned by the federal government; in Nevada 87 percent is under federal control.
The Bundy’s had grazing permits from the Bureau of Land Management from 1953 until 1993.
After the desert tortoise was listed as “threatened” in 1990 under the Endangered Species Act — and even though federal agencies admit there is no proof that livestock grazing harms tortoise populations — the Bureau of Land Management slashed the number of cows they would allow on federal land.
In 1993 the BLM “modified” the Bundy permit, limiting him to only 150 cows, not even close to the number needed to stay in business. Bundy stopped paying grazing fees or applying for permits, but kept grazing his cattle.
The government says Bundy owes more than $1 million in grazing fees and fines, but refuses to say how it calculated that figure.
Until the tortoise was listed as endangered there were some 50 cattle-ranching families in Clark County, Nevada. Bundy was not the only one to fight the restrictions. But one by one, all the rest gave up.
While other ranchers sympathize with Bundy’s plight, there are a wide variety of opinions on the April 2014 protest and Bundy’s position that the federal government has no right to the land.
The government regulations are “causing rural communities in the West to wither on the vine,” the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association said at the time of the protest, but added it “does not condone actions that are outside the law in which citizens take the law into their own hands.”
The “ornery cow” memo has been used to slander the ranchers. A March 2 story by Fox News reporter Hollie McKay uses the government memo to bolster claims the cows owned by the “rogue rancher” are “left to fend for themselves year-round, fighting off predators and scrounging for the meager amounts of food and water,” while they destroy fragile plant species and sacred Indian artifacts.
McKay says government officials don’t know what to do about the “unruly herd” and that they may be sold by the Bureau of Land Management.
McKay’s story is “full of false information,” Carol Bundy, Cliven’s wife, wrote on the family’s Facebook page March 2. “She interviewed me and didn’t add anything I said.”
Related articles:
Idaho protest: ‘Arrest sheriffs who killed rancher Jack Yantis’
Seattle march protests cop killing of Che Taylor
Protests hit FBI, Oregon cops ambush of Finicum
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home