The whole issue is very complicated, and doesn't just involve rancher Bundy, isn't about unpaid taxes/fines, or that the BLM are alleged to be minions of Satan, or that endangered desert tortoises are at risk, or the whole spectacle chiefly concerns the grandfathered use of public/private/tribal land and water exploitation.
The real issue is about how both the BLM and NV ranchers are often supporting laws they agree with while ignoring the laws they don't like or care to enforce while at the same time the government agencies are sued by environmentalists into enforcing laws that neither they or the environmentalists understand or even support. One of the top issues here is about water rights, yet the codified laws about water rights in Nevada are probably the least confusing of all issues in this conflict.
It's not just this one rancher named Bundy; it's every rancher and farmer in the state of Nevada. This issue is so messed up that even different Federal agencies are at odds with one another (US Forestry Service vs. BLM) and departments and districts within the BLM are internally at odds with one another over more zealous districts making up rules as they see fit and holding them up as 'law' even if they run contrary to real laws and treaties. This conflict is more complicated and has more 'sides' in the fight than the Balkans Conflict of the 1990s.
All sides in this need to take a big step back, but the reason that this Bundy ranch incident became such a spectacle is because a landowner in Nevada finally stood up to the Feds and most surprisingly the Feds blinked.
These laws and rules and control and jurisdictions need to be addressed at the Congressional level, in my opinion.
... and to stay on topic, the fact that drunks 3000 miles away in Sarasota Florida are punching each other up in saloon fights over this incident going on in my home state is just bewildering.
The animosity between US Forestry Service vs. BLM is the stuff of legends.