Posted on 04/21/2014 3:59:30 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Some have speculated that the standoff between federal agents and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is the result of a secretive deal orchestrated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and political allies in the solar industry.
But the Bundy standoff is really the culmination of a long battle with environmentalists who want to keep federal lands off limits to economic activity. The primary vehicle used by government officials and environmentalists to advance this goal has been the desert tortoise, which was listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 1990.
The land Bundy’s family had used for cattle grazing since the late 1800s suddenly became off-limits. Bundy refused to give up his grazing rights and wound up in a prolonged court battle. The court ruled against Bundy in 1998 and ordered him to remove his cattle, or else the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) would do it for him.
The BLM even had a webpage detailing the problems they saw from Bundy’s “trespass cattle” that were grazing in desert tortoise habitat. The webpage, however, was deleted. So was the cached copy after the Bundy standoff became nationwide news.
A screenshot of the deleted page from the BLM’s website shows that environmental groups were some of the main forces aligned against Bundy’s trespass cattle. Environmentalists were pushing for the disputed federal lands to be used as “offsite mitigation” for the impact of solar development. Solar development in the area is heavily supported by Nevada environmental groups.
“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle,” the BLM page says.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Western Watersheds Project (WWP) have been actively pushing the government to impose heftier grazing fees on cattle ranchers for years, along with pressuring officials to close of huge areas of public lands to grazing and oil and gas development."
The CBD and Robin Siler are at it again.
I’m a biologist. Species come and go. F*** the tortoises! Absolutely NO impact by losing them. Zero! It’s the NATURE of life. Goodbye and farewell my four-legged friends!
Don't give anybody any ideas...
What happened to these tortoises under the hooves of buffalo?
Robin Siler has an address. Just sayin.
He has an address, too.
Perhaps the environmentalists ought to head to Bunkerville and enforce their edicts!
Yipes, not Dr. Silver of Phx?
As was suggested in your post on the Oklahoma / Texas Lang grab, the real problem is the Federal and progressive opposition to the private ownership of land — They are violently opposed to it. This is a fundamental difference between Constitutional conservatives and basically everybody else. If we lose , we’re slaves.
Yeah, right.
It it is all about tortoises why are Rory and Harry Reid raising such a protest? They don’t even have a dog in the tortoise fight.
The EnviroMarxists are the Domestic Terrorists and supported by the Fed.
Pray America wakes up
I had the opportunity to completely humiliate Daniel Patterson of the CBD before a standing room only crowd in Lancaster CA in 2001 to a standing ovation RE his ‘sky is falling’ landuse rhetoric and the hypocrisy of driving to n anti OHV landuse meeting in a built Toyota 4x4.
The problem is that the general public is not willing to even CHANCE altering their existence or endanger their material goods by refusing to comply with environmental crap. The BLM is and has been the enforcement arm of the Sierra Club for decades.
Until that changes and people are unwilling to stand up for themselves, the status quo will continue.
This is BS. Follow the money to Hairy Roid’s bank account.
"The toothless tortoise is ill equipped to harvest and masticate range forage. The tortoise can harvest only tender vegetation, and it can't masticate even that. The tortoise can't process enough bulky, low analysis forage fast enough to meet its nutritional requirements (Nagy & Medica 1986). They solved this problem long ago—they allow other animals to do it for them. Desert tortoises feed primarily on dung. The more animals using the range, the more dung, which makes more food available for tortoises. In the millennia preceding the advent of domestic livestock on the range, tortoises subsisted on pellets excreted by rabbits, deer, and bighorn and scats of predators. Tortoise populations adjusted to the amount of dung available; their numbers were low (Mollhausen 1854). The Western Regional Extension Publication No. 39: By-products and Unusual Feedstuffs in Livestock Rations (Bath et al. 1980) states:". . . it is commonly estimated that 80% of the total nutrients in feeds are excreted by animals as manure." The desert tortoise is well adapted for making use of cow dung. Four days elapse between meals. This allows plenty of time for the tortoise to complete the digestion that began in the cow's stomach. The digested food moves slowly, ever so slowly, through tortoise intestines. This trip takes 17 days". (Nagy and Medica 1986).
Rangeland 1990-
IT NEVER WAS ABOUT THE ENDANGERED TORTOISES: BEFORE THE NEVADA RANCH STANDOFF, THE BLM KILLED HUNDREDS OF THEM -
See more at: http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_35278.php#sthash.2zblhVFc.dpuf
I saw a report somewhere that the tortoises rather enjoyed a good cowpie now hand then, ya know ,, what with the increasing costs of obamacare and all ..
Just making ends meet,, and like good liberals, telling their opponents what to eat.
Then, under your rules, the BLM shouldn’t be charged for driving over the burrows of the turtles with their eggs inside.
The BLM also destroyed the water tanks that were used by more than just the cattle.
Where is their concern for the Desert Tortoise on the borders? They’ve done nada about the hordes crossing and leaving literally tons of garbage all over the trails. Their silence is deafening.
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