It sounds like what happened is similar to what they tried to do with the coal terminal project in Whatcom County , WA.
The terminal is to be built in a wet land area, close to the Lummi reservation. So first, they made a deal with BP, which removed the land from the storm water district and then they tried to make a deal with The People for Puget Sound, which was one of the most powerful NGOs in the state, to allow the PPS to control all the mitigation funds which should have gone to Whatcom County. The claim was that their studies show that off sight mitigation is much more effective than on sight mitigation. What it really does is pay off the NGO and buy their support instead opposition. In the case of the Whatcom County coal terminal, the deal was exposed and the NGO ended up losing their state funding. The deal with the coal terminal on Whatcom County was illegal partly because of the involvement of BP, which had a vested interest in the coal terminal and a seat on the storm water advisory board, which was working with the People for Puget Sound.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are likely a bottomless pit of gov't malfeasance.
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"....My thinking is they did this for two reasons first I think they needed to put blame on the Bundy ranch for hurting the poor defenseless “endangered dessert tortoise.” Second reason is they needed to kill them off so that when big oil comes in they wont be bothered by extreme environmentalist when they start fracking for oil as BLM has already sold 29 oil, gas leases in northeast Nevada.
The reality is these “endangered dessert tortoise” have lived for thousands of years next to other hoofed animals such as the buffalo and dear. so why is a cow any different. Cows are generally very good to neighboring animals. obviously over grazing can cause issues but the Bundy Ranch is aware of the local environment and not to mention the land is huge in a vast 1,200-square-mile area of rangeland. that means each of the “900 trespassing cattle” had over 1.3 miles of land for each cow to graze. thats insane. and the BLM is saying that these cows are endangering the dessert tortoise? This is so beyond crazy its not even funny.
Bakersfield is one of the largest oil producers in the world. I bring up Bakersfield because the town has an eery sight of oil pumps stretching as far as the eye could see. The new oil industry fad is fracking. Fracking has opened a whole new door for oil production and can be used all over the united states and even the world regardless of the location and geological environment. fracking is a process by which drilling is done and water along with a slect bit of chemicals are added to the ground to raise the oil out of the ground to the surface. fracking has caused a lot of controversy over the years because of its known environmental issues such as leaving the ground contaminated, Lack of care taken for environmental safety extracting the oil, earthquakes, deadly chemicals, and so on. This is what Nevada and the bundy ranch will look like if big oil takes over."
Seems the BLM has already issued some 23 fracking leases and probably wants to issue a whole bunch more but doesn't want the Bundy's to get in on any of the action since they had the land titled to them/the govt., years ago after the Bundy's farmed it for over 100 years. As for the endangered tortoises they are killing them by the dozen for some reason. Lots more to this story it appears.