Range wars heat up out West

Washington Times ^

[VinnyTex]

RENO, Nev. (AP) ? Federal cattle seizures. Gun-toting ranchers. Government surveillance cameras in the desert.

Land management has always been a heated issue in the West, but the animosity is especially strong in Nevada, where ranchers are outraged over being punished for grazing on federal land without authorization.

[glock rocks]

[glorgau]

They've been getting a free ride for about a zillion years, and now they're upset when they might have to actually pay for something they use.

[Timocrat]

Remind me again where it says in The US Constitution that the Feds can own land for a purpose not enumerated in the Constitution.

[Red Jones]

bump

[SHedrick]

The issue isn't using the land for free...the issue is using the land at all. There is a concerted effort on the part of environmental activists employed by various government agencies to limit - or even block - access to public lands. Unless you have lived out West a while, it is not obvious how much has changed in a very short period of time. MOST of the land in the western states is government land (for example, Arizona is 11% privately owned and 89% government owned) and the intent of the enviornmental extemist movement is to ensure that government land remains free of human beings.

[Roscoe]

Assuming the question was more than rhetorical:

http://www.cnie.org/nle/rsk-50.html

[from occupied ga]

access to public lands

Public lands? They're not public lands, they're government lands - not the same thing at all. If they belonged to the public then the public would be able to do with it what they wanted, but they can't so they're not public. This may seem nitpicky, but your use of the leftist term, "public lands" helps shape the debate in the favor of the leftists.

[Libertina]

I take it you are referring to the land the FEDS hold all across the West and Midwest which almost Americans can use. Take a look a maps showing FED ownership of land. An amazing amount of land in the western states. Then add in the usurption of land/water by "environmental" agencies, which seem to be accountable to no one. Don't forget Klamath - the ILLEGAL taking of water from farmers which destroyed hundreds of farms. And the latest in WA State: the nazi environmental biologists who faked evidence of endangered species animal presence so NO ONE but THEMSELVES could use thousands of acres of land. (The Linx hoax.) And of course, all around Mt. St. Helens, no one goes off the trails for hundreds of miles around except the few biologists. Everyone else (The American public) may NOT enjoy the same. Not surprisingly, we have lots of congestion in building. but there is so much we can NOT use.

[countrydummy]

These landowners and ranchers were given grazing and water rights in the original land grants form the federal government when the lands were settled so as to be able to settle the lands, make them prosperous, thus making the nation as a whole grow and prosper! Something for nothing? They own these rights!!!! The government is now trying to steal them back!!!! And I do also mean these rights to "public lands"....these were lands left over or never claimed 200 years ago......but grazing rights and the water rights were included because the water did go through these "public" lands......the US government is not supposed to own any land!!!!! Period!!!!! Except the land that lies in the District of Columbia...D.C. Period!

[bimmer]

BTTT (and free Montana from the clutches of the feds, too!)

[countrydummy]

While I am on this role, I need to remind you that these folks pay all kinds of taxes....more so than you and I do...especially on land, and then of course for their water and grazing rights. I want to know what all easterns will think when all the western ranchers can't raise cattle anymore? Because their water and grazing rights have been replaced by the rights of a red-legged frog or a butterfly? When we have to pay $10 a pound for ground beef, or worse yet, have to depend on foreign imports that will not have FDA approval of the meat we eat, (meaning MAD Cow Disease)....how will you feel then? The "War" out West is fast moving to the East! I, and 52 other landowners here in the Eastern US, are being threatened by the NPS because we pollute the 'view-shed"....we have been here 200 years!!!!!!!!!! Why now do we "pollute" a view-shed or anything else????? Please learn your history of land distribution before you make anymore of these kinds of comments......please!

[B4Ranch]

You mean Nevada is 89% owned by the Feds.