“After the 1934 act they continued to pay grazing fees and make improvements up until the 1990’s.
Somewhere along the way the Bureau of Land Management was created. I don’t know what year.
Around 1990 or so they told him that he could no longer graze more than 150 of his 600 or so head of cattle there.
He told them to pound sand and kept paying his fees and grazing his cattle.
Around 1994 they told him he could only graze them in the summer, fall and winter and said it was so that the cattle didn’t disturb the Desert Tortoise. (more on that later)
He told them that they were HIRED by the Taylor Grazing act to MANAGE the land for the ranchers. So he FIRED them and started paying his fees to to the state of Nevada. Soon they didn’t know where to put it so they quit taking payments.
Meanwhile they came at him from another angle. When they saw they weren’t going to be able to force him off the land the BLM SOLD the rights to the land to the state of Nevada under the condition that the state RETIRE the grazing rights permanently. Nevada legislators, being idiots, did their bidding. That was around 1996 or so.
But the state left him alone and let him forage all those years.
A few years ago, due to Agenda 21, Ranchers around the nation were being shut down and either bought out (with a program that paid them a lump sum of YOUR taxpayer funds in exchange for quitting ranching.
A lot of them did. The program was touted as “optional” but they intimidated the ranchers with lawsuits ranging from environmental concerns to water concerns to endangered species.
Before all this there were 50 ranchers in Clark County Nevada. Now there is one. Cliven Bundy.”
“Left behind were trailers, generators, personal equipment scattered all over the ground and internal BLM documents left on the table where they had been branding the cattle.”
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2014/04/so-much-for-slow-day-just-got-off-phone.html