I guess the one question I have is: can I, today, file for, pay the fees for, and be granted rights to graze cattle on that land? Or would it be rejected due to the presence of some 'protected species' which seems to have survived the existing cattle grazing for the past hundred or so years?
Or would it be far more likely that I'd be granted use of that land for some massive solar plant that would 'accommodate' the protected species living in little pens in between my massive solar panel arrays?
If the answer to the first is no, or the second yes, then this has nothing to do with grazing fees and everything to do with power over the land. And the worst part of it is; had the federal government just stepped up and said 'hey, we've decided to use this land for a solar power plant and the cattle are in the way and thus have to move' that most people would have nodded their heads and supported the federal move. Instead, the story is about some 20 years of grazing fees that were never paid (and likely wouldn't have been approved.)
And that story from the BLM doesn't support a multi-million dollar effort to round up cattle. Any remedy for money owed would logically be an attempt to obtain money, not spend more money. The federal government could have obtained a judgment for the money and levied against the Bundy family or its cattle. Did they? It doesn't look like they did, but instead decided to launch a hugely expensive cattle roundup.
Rounding up all the cattle in an area spanning hundreds of square miles is not economically viable, particularly when some of the cattle don't belong to the Bundys and those cattle have to be sorted out. What do the BLM folks plan to do with the wild cattle? And what is the real reason for the whole affair? That's what needs to be publicized.
My experience is that yes you can and the government officials will happily accept your tithes for as long as possible.
Then will come the EPA, the Water Management Authority, the Greens, the Illegals claiming it is THEIR land historically, the Native Americans with the same claims, some rich private company that needs it for their own special project, or the government itself that has discovered either something on your property that they now need or that it is simply in the way of.
Then your property, your house(s), your livestock, your water and mineral rights, and any improvements you made will all be made as nothing. You will be given little if anything for what you owned and whatever taxes, fees, and fines you paid will forever be not even a historical footnote. I think that in the past from a few cases I have read about, compensation was mandatory and precidence (sp?) usually determined it to be one Federal Reserve Note in the amount of one dollar.