You seem to make sense.
Then a sentence like this comes out...
“When he stopped paying grazing fees, the federal government sold his grazing rights to the Clark County Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan.” TC
One question - How does the government get to sell grazing rights that belong to Bundy?
The grazing rights only belonged to Bundy when he paid for them. You need to understand the situation prior to the passage of the Taylor Grazing act. At that time, a lot of federal land was not being used. No one was allowed to graze on Federal land. Now, in truth, some people did but they did so without the land owner’s (federal government’s) permission so they were not paying to graze.
Then the Congress realized that by opening up federal lands to grazing, they could boost the industry and create more jobs, lower beef prices, etc. To do this, congress passed the Taylor Grazing act which established a system of fees for ranchers so that they could increase the size of their herds by grazing on US government owned land. Ranchers then paid their grazing fees and “leased” access to graze their herds in 10 year permits. At the end of the 10 years, the permits could be renewed.
Bundy only owns about 150 acres and leases or used to lease grazing rights. 150 acres is NOT enough land to raise 500 head of cattle that is why Bundy had to lease the larger tract. Once Bundy stopped paying his lease, he no longer had legal access to that land. Much like a renter who stops paying rent.
Now he is getting evicted or at least the cattle is being evicted from that land. Read carefully the statements made by Bundy and his family. He does not say that he owns the land... only that he has be grazing on that land for a long time. He admits that he stopped paying the BLM and gives the reason that the BLM was created after he started grazing. But the Department of the Interior Grazing Service was created by the Taylor Grazing act. And the Grazing Service was the forerunner to the BLM. In fact, the Grazing Service was combined with another department to form the BLM.
Notice how the daughter said “My dad did pay his grazing fees for years to the BLM until they were no longer using his fees to help him and to improve.” ... Also Bundy himself says that he fired the BLM. Well, the BLM does not work for him. The BLM works for the US Government and when he stopped paying his fees, he legally stopped receiving the value that was exchanged for those fees - the right to graze on US Government property.
The Bundy clan is putting out half truths and manipulating the press to attempt to save their cattle after loosing at least two and possibly four court rulings in this case. A key insight into this comes from how the daughter says the following: “So my dad just went on running his ranch ...”
It may be his “ranch” but he only owns 150 acres of that ranch and leases the rest of that ranch from someone else. That is a very common configuration out here in the west. The danger is that others, who do not know about these details are assuming that the federal government is somehow trying to prevent Bundy from using his own land ... and that is simply not the case.
You can attempt to apply grammar to all this for fun, but why not stick to the arguments. How silly are you.