Nevada

Nevada Ranchers Sue BLM Over Wild Horses

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 18:28:37 GMT

The federal government has not lived up to its promises regarding wild horse control in Nevada, according to a lawsuit filed by two ranches.

Colvin & Son LLC and Stone Cabin Ranch LLC filed suit against the Bureau of Land Management, along with its parent agency, the U.S. Department of the Interior, on Oct. 17 in U.S. District Court in Nevada. The dispute is over the wild horse overpopulation in a 540,000-acre stretch of land within an area that the government calls the Stone Cabin Complex. That’s also where the ranchers graze cattle.

The ranchers argue that despite the BLM determining the Stone Cabin Complex needs better management to control the wild horse population, the government has yet to act. That inaction, the ranchers claim, violates the federal Wild and Free Roaming Horses & Burros Act, which has guided the management of those feral animals for 50 years.

The BLM estimates that the land in question can support 242-404 horses, according to an April environmental assessment of the land complex. It had more than 900 mustangs on the land as of last fall, the assessment estimated — leading the BLM to conclude that horses needed to be removed.

But the assessment conditioned the removals on off-range corral space availability and “funding limitations and competing national priorities.” The ranchers said this was not allowed under the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act, which says that excess animals must be removed immediately.

The ranchers sued after the Department of the Interior rejected their appeal challenging the proposed roundup’s deferral.

The “lack of implementation” of the roundup decision violates the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act, “causing harm to the plaintiffs, to the public lands within the (Stone Cabin Complex), to wildlife species and their habitats, and to the wild horses themselves,” the lawsuit states.

The last roundup in the Stone Cabin Complex area took place in 2021, when the agency collected 314 mustangs by baiting them into a trap with water. The BLM said the 2021 roundup was to reduce the risk of starvation and dehydration.

Serbian Cheese A Bargain Compared To Bundy Trials

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:56:20 GMT

Your federal government spent $22 million in 2018 on a development grant to subsidize the production of Sjenica cheese – a unique creamy white cheese produced only in the rural highlands of southwest Serbia. Yes, Serbia, the landlocked country of 7 million people in southwestern Europe.

We know about Uncle Sam subsidizing Sjenica cheese because of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s “ Waste Report ,” an annual summary he produces as part of an ongoing project for the Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management.

At the time the Waste Report was published, the United States was sitting on a 1.4 billion-pound cheese surplus – largely created by increasing dairy production and a decline in consumption of milk and cheese. As Eric Boehm noted in an article for Reason.com , your government has been buying excess cheese to bail out American dairy farmers – at the same time it is using your tax dollars to boost cheese production in the Balkans.

I’m going to assume you’re not shocked Uncle Sam has wasted some of your money. I’ll also assume what you would really like is if the government would stop throwing good money after bad. Take for instance the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Yes, there’s still a case.

Bundy and his sons gained national attention in 2014 when the Bureau of Land Management sought to remove Bundy’s cows from federal grazing land claiming they were owed more than $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. An armed standoff ensued when the feds attempted to round up the Bundy cattle and remove them. The standoff ended when the feds decided a shootout between their agents and a disorganized citizens’ militia would be a PR disaster.

Instead, the DOJ stepped in and filed charges against Bundy, his sons, Ammon and Ryan and a Montana militiaman named Ryan Payne. The men faced years in prison for alleged conspiracy against federal agents for their role in the standoff.

Alas, your government – the same one that spent $22 million on boutique Serbian cheese – bungled the case against the Bunkerville, NV, ranchers.

This is where I interject that I don’t condone the actions of the Bundy clan or anything similar. Toting a firearm into a standoff with the feds has a significant chance of you either ending up in handcuffs or a body bag. And I’m not here to support the Bundy’s case against the BLM or support the feds case against the Bundy’s.

It’s done – or at least it should be. Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed the case against the Bundy’s in 2018 and declared a mistrial after ruling federal prosecutors “deliberately misled” defense attorneys and the court by failing to provide evidence from surveillance cameras and to disclose the existence of federal snipers near the ranch in the days leading up to the April 2014 standoff. Bundy left the federal courthouse in Las Vegas a free man.

You would think the DOJ would cut its losses and move on. You would be wrong. Today (May 29, 2020), the DOJ will appear in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco appealing for a retrial of the Bundy clan. What?

Yep, six full years after the initial standoff, and two years after they left the Las Vegas courthouse with egg on their faces, DOJ prosecutors will try again. Why?

“If there is no successful prosecution, it’s going to encourage a lot of anarchists like the Bundys to take actions that not only are a threat to themselves but threats to the public at large,” Pat Shea, who served as BLM director during the Clinton administration, told NPR .

Shea says Bundy’s cows have continued to graze for free on land that is now a protected national monument. Others claim Bundy’s government defiance has devolved into far-right extremism, and a widely debunked legal theory that counties and states, not the federal government, should own public land.

Court filings indicate prosecutors will likely argue that their missteps in the 2017 trial were “inadvertent,” and in particular they say they were trying to balance disclosing Bureau of Land Management surveillance footage with protecting witnesses against violence.

Sure, but Cliven Bundy is now 74, and the rest of the clan have retreated out of the spotlight. And, well…how much do we really need to spend trying to lock up a handful of disgruntled desert ranchers? That $1 million in lost Bundy grazing fees seems like a bargain compared to the price of a team of government lawyers on the case for a half-dozen years.

One could argue Uncle Sam’s investment in Sjenica cheese produced more tangible results for Americans than its actions against the Bundys.

Related stories:

Feds Deliberately Scuttled Bundy Case, Lawyer Says

FBI Suggested Waiving Bundy’s Grazing Fees

Bundy Criminal Case Receives ‘Final Nail’

Bundy Follower gets 68 Years for Role in Armed Nevada Standoff

Nevada’s Historic 25 Ranch For Sale

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:54:17 GMT

The historic 25 Ranch, near Battle Mountain , in northern Nevada, is for sale. The ranch, which includes approximately 126,000 deeded acres and 475,000 privately leased and BLM allotment grazing acres, spans parts of four counties and nearly 1,000 square miles. For comparison, the state of Rhode Island encompasses about 1,200 square miles.

The ranch is listed for $30.525 million by Asher Watkins, Sierra Sothebys Realty .

The beginnings of the 25 Ranch were established and settled in the 1870s, originally by Russell Land and Cattle Co., and W.T. Jenkins. In the 1940s, the W.T. Jenkins Co., merged all of the holdings into the current 25 Ranch.

Horses on the 25 Ranch

W.T. Jenkins migrated to Nevada from Wales in the early 1870s seeking his fortune mining for gold and silver. Those dreams evolved into the sheep business, which led him into a famous fatal gunfight with a cattleman named Joe Dean, which Jenkins won. Subsequently, Jenkins began raising both cattle and sheep.

Jenkins daughter, Louise Marvel, took over the ranch in 1918 at the age of 18 and grew it into one of the largest ranching operations in Nevada. She was named Nevada’s Cattlemen of the Year in 1962. At its peak, the 25 Ranch had 33,000 sheep and up to 10,000 head of cattle.

The ranch sold from the Jenkins family in 1964, and again in 1989 to the current owner. The property has been improved over the years with a main residence, numerous dwellings, corrals, barns, shops, and support buildings.

According to the listing agent, the 25 Ranch has a year-round carrying capacity for 6,500 cows. The vested and decreed water rights date back to the 1870s.

Related stories:

California’s Iconic N3 Ranch For Sale

Terry Bradshaw Lists His Oklahoma Horse Ranch

Flint Hills Ranch Listed For $8.58 Million

BLM Relocates Red Rock Horses

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:50:34 GMT

Too many horses and too little water. Those circumstances forced the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to relocate 237 horses from the herd grazing 160,000 acres in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area 20 miles west of Las Vegas, Nev.

The BLM used a bait and water trap to capture the Red Rock horses and they were transported to the Ridgecrest Holding Corrals in Ridgecrest, Calif. The horses were scheduled to be examined and put into the BLM’s wild horse and burro adoption program.

The growth of the Red Rock herd had strained the water and vegetation resources.

“Without emergency action, the condition of the wild horses in the Red Rock HMA is expected to deteriorate, potentially resulting in the death of horses within a few weeks,” a statement from the BLM said.

Relocation to the Ridgecrest facility has drawn some interest as that area was hit by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake on July 4, and a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit July 5 just seven miles north. The area has experienced several smaller aftershocks since.

But BLM says the decision to relocate the horses was solely about food and water, plus the Ridgecrest corral suffered very little damage from the earthquakes.

To adopt or purchase a wild horse or burro, visit www.blm.gov/whb .

Nevada Mining Town Embraces Environmental Group's Ranch Plan

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:22:29 GMT

Environmentalists are taking over a faded Nevada mining town, but many locals don’t seem to mind.

The Nature Conservancy has become the largest private landowner in the Nye County community of Beatty, where the national organization and its neighbors are working to create a preserve for sensitive desert wildlife and a destination for outdoor enthusiasts a nearly two-hour drive from Las Vegas.

The conservancy’s latest acquisition is a 900-acre (364-hectare) working cattle ranch at the headwaters of the Amargosa River that could one day become a living laboratory for conservation work.

The $2 million purchase more than doubles the conservancy’s already extensive holdings along a lush ribbon of riparian habitat known as the Oasis Valley, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) northwest of the Las Vegas Strip.

“I don’t have a concern with that like I might have 10 years ago, because they’ve demonstrated they’re willing to work with us. That’s important to us,” David Spicer, a conservancy neighbor, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal .

Spicer is a rancher, miner and businessman who has lived in the Beatty area nearly all his life. He’s also the leader of a decades-long campaign to protect the native Amargosa toad and keep it off the endangered species list.

He called the Nature Conservancy an important partner from the beginning.

“We’ve had a relationship with them for more than 20 years now,” said Spicer, who heads a nonprofit called Saving Toads thru Off-Road Racing, Ranching & Mining in Oasis Valley, or STORM-OV for short.

As a result of the grassroots effort in Beatty, much of the rare amphibian’s habitat along the river has been protected without cutting off access to the land or burying local residents in red tape, Spicer said.

The toad population is now considered healthy and stable, with numbers in the thousands.

Through purchase or donation, the conservancy has acquired eight parcels totaling more 2.5 square miles (6.5 square kilometers) in and around Beatty since 1999.

The group has mostly avoided the sort of backlash environmentalists often face in rural Nevada by being a good neighbor, said Ryan Tweney, who retired to Beatty 14 years ago and chairs the town library board.

“The Nature Conservancy has been a huge help to the town in terms of preserving what we need to preserve,” he said. “I think it’s great.”

It doesn’t hurt that the nonprofit organization insists on paying taxes on its holdings, the way any other private landowner would, he said.

The conservancy’s newest property in the area could be the most important, said John Zablocki, Southern Nevada conservation director for the group.

Tucked behind hills northeast of U.S. Highway 95, the 7J Ranch is dotted with ponds, wet meadows and rich pastureland fed by more than a dozen springs. The property has Joshua trees on one side and sagebrush on the other, marking the transition zone between the Great Basin and the Mojave Desert.

Zablocki calls it “the crown jewel of the Oasis Valley.”

Len Warren, Amargosa River project manager for the conservancy, has lots of ideas for the 900-acre spread. As he walked around the property recently, he showed where native trees could provide bird habitat or where a pond stocked with bass might be converted into a haven for the Amargosa toad and endemic springfish like the Oasis Valley speckled dace.

“Our dreams are for it to be turned into an example of how you balance livestock grazing, environmental research and habitat restoration,” Warren said.

Zablocki pictures the ranch as a research station, where scientists from the conservancy and elsewhere can conduct real-world experiments on private land without having to go through lengthy federal regulatory reviews.

The livestock operation will continue with the previous owner leasing from the conservancy.

Longtime Nevada rancher Hank Brackenbury said he bought the 7J about four years ago and decided to sell to the environmental group due to the size of the ranch payment.

This way, he keeps raising beef cattle and the Nature Conservancy gets a crash course in ranching from someone who knows a thing or two.

“It’s all here,” Brackenbury said. “It’s been a good ranch for a lot of years, and if it can continue to be a good ranch, that’d be good.”

The purchase price included grazing rights on 437.5 square miles (1,133 square kilometers) of federal land surrounding the ranch, much of it unfenced and bordered by a massive Air Force bombing range to the east.

The property is also within sight of Yucca Mountain, the proposed repository for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste.

There are about 75 head of cattle on the property right now, he said, but the range can handle more than twice that amount when conditions are good.

Zablocki said the conservancy’s new pastures also could serve as a regional “grass bank,” providing relief forage for other Nevada ranchers stricken by wildfire or drought.

“We actually need grazing as a rangeland management tool,” he said.

The organization is working with a prominent local business owner on a dog park and trail system to lead visitors down to the Amargosa River from the parking lot.

Warren and company also have plans for more boardwalks, signs and native trees at the Torrance Ranch Preserve, the conservancy’s oldest habitat restoration project in the area.

The broader goal for the conservancy and locals like Spicer is to find something new to sustain a once-proud hard rock mining town that’s fallen on hard times.

Ecotourism could be the answer for a community home to fewer than 1,000 people that already serves as a gateway of sorts for nearby Death Valley National Park.

Spicer has invested heavily in that idea. Over the past five years, he has developed more than 50 miles of mountain bike trails on his ranch and surrounding public land, and he has hosted gatherings ranging from Boy Scout campouts to scaled-down versions of the Burning Man counterculture festival in northern Nevada.

“We’ve coined a phrase around here: conservation through recreation,” Spicer said. “Conservation is more effective and durable.”

Nevada’s ‘Cattle Drive for President Trump’

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:31:30 GMT

Ranchers in northern Nevada will hold a “Cattle Drive for President Trump” on Wednesday, Oct. 14, to raise funds for the president’s re-election campaign.

Jack Payne, owner of Nevada Livestock Marketing (NLM) in Fallon is organizing the effort to gather cattle donated cattle from throughout the state that will be sold at auction Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 5 p.m.

Prior to the auction, a rally will be held at the sale yard featuring an address by Donald Trump Jr., Congressman Devin Nunes from California and former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. Lunch will be served from noon to 2 p.m., with Trump, Jr. scheduled to speak at 2 p.m. Corbitt Wall will serve as auctioneer for the benefit sale.

Details of the event can be found at NLM’s website here .

According to a report in the Fallon Post , NLM will be accepting delivery of the animals and running its own truck up Highway 50 on Oct. 13. The cattle will be sold on the 14th at a special sale that should “attract every buyer in the region,” according to Payne. “The sale yard will be tracking the 3% commission on every sale and will make a donation in that amount to the campaign.”

The Ranchers for Trump Auction will also offer some non-livestock items, such as a round of golf for four at Coyote Springs Golf Club.

Payne told the Fallon Post, “This election is critical to the preservation of rural values and the very essence of life in a free and fair America.” Parties interested in supporting the cause may contact Payne at 775-225-8889, or Rex Steninger at 775-753-6466.

Feds Deliberately Scuttled Bundy Case, Lawyer Says

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:26:42 GMT

Prosecutors in the 2017 trial of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and 14 others deliberately scuttled the case, so the government shouldn’t be allowed to revive the case. That’s what an attorney told an appeals court that is set to hear arguments in coming weeks, according to an Associated Press report.

Prosecutors’ misdeeds during the first trial forced defendants’ attorneys to ask the judge to dismiss the case midway through proceedings, says Alyssa Bell, attorney for co-defendant Ryan Bundy. A retrial would violate the Fifth Amendment ban against being tried twice for the same offense, the AP reported.

“Retrying the case would only advantage the government by allowing them to strengthen their witnesses’ testimony based on the knowledge gained from information ... revealed thus far,” Bell said in an Aug. 21 court filing to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The case was dismissed in December 2017 by U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro, who found “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct” and “deliberate attempts to mislead and distort the truth” by prosecutors against Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan, and independent militia member Ryan Payne.

Larry Klayman, an attorney for co-defendant Cliven Bundy, told the AP on Tuesday he expects appellate judges will uphold Navarro’s dismissal of the case that the lawyer called “an unjust and political prosecution fatally infected with extreme prosecutorial misconduct.”

In his court filing, Klayman branded the government appeal as a “Hail-Mary” effort to shield the U.S. attorneys who handled the Bundy case from “career-ending sanctions, if not ... criminal prosecutions.”

Navarro said the government purposely failed to disclose to defense lawyers evidence that federal agents had snipers and cameras around the Bundy home ahead of the April 2014 standoff in rural Bunkerville, Nevada.

Hundreds of protesters and armed Bundy family supporters forced federal Bureau of Land Management officials, FBI agents and contract cowboys to give up enforcing court orders to round up Bundy’s cattle.

Cliven Bundy, four sons and 14 other people were indicted in 2016 on charges including conspiracy and assaulting federal officers that could have gotten them life in prison.

Bundy Notion ‘Flawed,’ Judge Tosses Lawsuit

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:22:46 GMT

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has long held the federal government should not own land, and that public lands within states belongs to the states. Bundy brought suit seeking a court agreement with such ideas, but a Nevada judge ruled against him this week.

Bundy wanted the court to order that Nevada’s federally owned lands are the property of the state and to force the state and Clark County to defend Bundy’s land rights on his Bunkerville ranch.

“It is painfully obvious that the claims asserted by Bundy in the instant matter rest upon a fundamentally flawed notion advanced by Bundy since 1998 regarding ownership of federal public lands,” District Judge Jim Crockett wrote in an eight-page decision.

The decision was in response to court papers filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation group, which had intervened in the case.

“It is simply delusional to maintain that all public land within the boundaries of Nevada belongs to the state of Nevada,” Crockett said.

Bundy spent two years in jail facing criminal charges after a standoff in 2014 with the BLM at his Bunkerville, Nevada, ranch. Last year he filed a suit against Nevada and Clark County that former President Barack Obama’s establishment of Gold Butte National Monument was illegal and would prevent him from operating his ranch and destroy his livelihood. In January 2018, all charges were dismissed against Bundy.

Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Center for Biological Diversity, was pleased with the judge’s ruling.

“Hopefully it puts to bed forever Cliven Bundy’s kooky conspiracy theories about a federal government not being able to own public land,” Suckling said. “This is the one and only court system that Cliven claims is valid and he will respect. This should put his extremist belief to the test.”

Related stories:

Bundy Case Ends With final Sentencing

Cliven Bundy Sues Nevada And Clark County

U.S. Judge: Nevada Rancher's Son Must Pay $587K, Remove Cattle

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:19:59 GMT

A lawyer for a Nevada rancher whose father fought the government for decades over grazing and property rights said Thursday he’ll appeal a federal judge’s order to pay $587,000 and remove his livestock from federal lands by the end of the month.

Mark Pollot, attorney for Wayne N. Hage, said in a brief email that they disagree with the judge’s decision and that he was working on a notice of appeal.

Hage is the son of cattleman and longtime Sagebrush Rebellion figure Wayne Hage, who died in 2006.

The father’s fight began in 1991, more than a decade after the movement to wrest control of federal land got its start in the late 1970s and was labeled the Sagebrush Rebellion. But the elder Hage became iconic among ranchers and cattlemen who chafe at grazing and use restrictions on vast expanses of land under government control in states in the West.

Federal agencies control some 85 percent of land in Nevada, 66 percent in Utah, 62 percent in both Idaho and Alaska, and 53 percent in Oregon, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The movement then has echoes today in states like in Utah, where lawmakers have for years tried to seize control of land from the federal government. One law passed by the Legislature in 2012 even set a 2015 land transfer deadline that came and went.

In Congress, a federal-to-state land transfer bill by Nevada Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei got a subcommittee hearing in November, along with another measure called the Federal Land Freedom Act of 2015.

Opponents argue that states don’t have the money to manage and protect vast expanses of rangeland or fight wildfires, and that they would allow oil and gas drilling in environmentally sensitive places.

U.S. park, forest, military and other agencies also control significant amounts of land in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Washington state and Wyoming.

Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro in Las Vegas on Monday ruled that federal grazing permits held by Wayne Hage and his wife until the mid-1990s didn’t transfer to their estate or to their son.

The judge gave Wayne N. Hage 30 days to pay grazing fees and penalties racked up from November 2004 to June 2011, and 15 additional days to provide proof that he had complied.

The judge’s order also banned the Hage family from grazing livestock on any public land administered by the U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management.

The battle over some 11,000 square miles of property in and around Nye County, northwest of Las Vegas, preceded the fight involving federal agencies and rancher Cliven Bundy and an armed standoff in April 2014 near Bunkerville, 90 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Five Bundy family members and 12 accused co-defendants are now facing trial before Navarro in Las Vegas on conspiracy, weapon, assault on a federal officer and other charges relating to the standoff. Two other defendants have pleaded guilty to federal charges.

Hage told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he doesn’t have livestock on the range in question. He declined to say if he could pay the judgment.

He cast the court ruling as a “bellweather” step in government efforts to extinguish private property rights on public land.
The Hage case has a long and complicated history. Navarro’s ruling follows a 2013 decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Clive Jones in Nevada that was overturned on appeal by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Rancher Inspects Cattle After Showdown with BLM

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 01:59:13 GMT

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is going to spend some time prowling through his cattle to determine if any injuries were sustained during last weeks roundup by the Bureau of Land Management.
By: Scott Sonner, Associated Press

A Nevada rancher said Monday he’s trying to determine if federal agents damaged his cattle when the animals were rounded up then released in a showdown with angry protesters over a decades-long dispute about rangeland rights.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze said the agency backed off to avoid a potentially violent situation over the weekend.

However, he vowed to go to court to collect more than $1 million in back grazing fees he says Cliven Bundy owes for trespassing on federal lands since the 1990s.

Bundy, whose family has operated a ranch since the 1870s southwest of Mesquite a few miles from the Utah line, does not recognize federal authority on the land that he insists belongs to Nevada.

On Saturday, the bureau released about 400 head of cattle it had seized from Bundy. The operation had been expected to take a month to collect as many as 900 cattle.

The animals were freed after armed militia members joined hundreds of states’ rights protesters at corrals outside Mesquite. Bundy said they were united in defense of their constitutional rights.

“They have faith in the Constitution,” he told KDWN-AM in Las Vegas on Monday. “The founding fathers didn’t create a government like this.”

The BLM’s National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board was meeting in Sacramento on Monday on the broader issue fueling the conflict over how to divide the scarce forage on mostly dry lands across the West between livestock, wild horses and wildlife.

Wild-horse protection advocates say the government is rounding up too many mustangs while allowing sheep and cattle to feed at taxpayer expense on the same rangeland scientists say is being overgrazed. Ranchers say the government refuses to gather enough horses in the herds that double in size every five years.

Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, R-Las Vegas, said she spent much of the past week with the Bundy family and helped feed some of the calves that were returned over the weekend.

“It’s going to take a lot to revive the calves that were nearly dead when they were returned to the Bundy Ranch because they had been separated from their mothers during the roundup, and a few most likely won’t make it,” Fiore said. “It’s time for Nevada to stand up to the federal government and demand the return of the BLM lands to the people of Nevada.”

Horse protection advocates and other critics of livestock grazing on federal land said the government’s suspension of the roundup sends the wrong signal to law-abiding ranchers who secure the necessary grazing permits to use the land.

The BLM “is allowing a freeloading rancher and armed thugs to seize hundreds of thousands of acres of the people’s land as their own,” said Rob Mrowka, a senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s backing down in the face of threats and posturing of armed sovereignsts.”

BLM spokesman Craig Leff said the agency will work to resolve the matter “administratively and judicially” but planned no further public comment on Bundy’s case.

“The gather is over,” he said in an email.

In 1998, BLM secured the first of a series of court orders that found Bundy’s cattle in trespass, rejecting his argument the land in an area known as Gold Butte belonged to the state.

BLM filed a new complaint in U.S. court in Las Vegas in May 2012 seeking an injunction to prevent what it called Bundy’s continued trespassing, and Judge Lloyd George issued another order last July authorizing the agency to impound the cattle.