BY LINDA BENTLEY | APRIL 16, 2014
Rancher battling BLM, Sen. Harry Reid, George Soros, China
Although BLM left the area, no one believes this fight is over
BUNKERVILLE, Nev. – The weekend brought the weeklong standoff between Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, 67, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to a boiling point with supporters and militia from all over the country converging to support the Bundy family and the lands his family has ranched for well over a century.
On Friday, April 11, the FAA declared flight restrictions over the area through May 11, stating the temporary flight restrictions within a 3NM radius was pursuant to an Agricultural law enforcement investigation and only relief aircraft operations under the direction of BLM are authorized.
With thousands of supporters standing their ground with the Bundy family, BLM backed off on Sunday, released the cattle they had rounded up and left the area.
Although BLM left the area, no one believes this fight is over.
On Friday, April 11, the FAA declared flight restrictions over the Bundy ranch and Bunkerville Allotment area through May 11, stating temporary flight restrictions within a 3NM radius was pursuant to an agricultural law enforcement investigation and only relief aircraft operations under the direction of BLM are authorized.
According to Bundy, the fight began in 1993 when the federal government reclassified the land known as the Bunkerville Allotment that Bundy’s ancestors settled in the 1880s while the land was inhabited only by Native Americans, before President Theodore Roosevelt declared the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, before the Transfer Act of 1905 that transferred forest lands to the Department of Agriculture’s new Forest Service, before Las Vegas was founded in 1905, and before the BLM was created in 1946.
The Government Land Office, established to manage land granted through the Homestead Act of 1862, was found to be ineffective at stemming the tide of subsequent auctions, cash sales, speculation and monopolization both within and without the law, or falsified claims utilizing “dummy entrymen” to acquire land, which took much of the desirable land out of the reach of homesteaders.
Bundy claims he has no agreement with the federal government and said he’s been paying fees to Clark County in an arrangement that existed prior to the BLM inserting itself into the picture.
Records indicate Bundy is also the last active rancher in all of Clark County.
The federal government sued Bundy in March 1998 and on Nov. 3, 1998 it was granted a permanent injunction against Bundy to permanently enjoin him from grazing livestock within the Bunkerville Allotment in order to protect the endangered desert tortoise.
The court also ordered Bundy to pay the federal government trespass damages of $200 per day per head of cattle.
In September 1999, the court granted the United States’ motion to enforce the injunction, ordering Bundy to remove his livestock from the allotment as previously ordered.
The court ordered Bundy to pay the U.S. government $1,377 as “willful repeated trespass damages for 51 cattle” for the month of December 1998 and $45.90 per day for each day Bundy’s livestock remains on the allotment commencing Jan. 1, 1999.
Bundy was further ordered to pay the U.S. government $4,123.06 for the expense incurred by the BLM for its Dec. 15, 1998 trespass detection flight.
Despite the order, Bundy rejected the federal government’s restrictions on the land his family has run cattle on for generations in order to supposedly protect the tortoise.
Bundy stated the BLM was established to help ranchers manage their land. However, he said the BLM was managing his ranch out of business.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which has fought numerous grazing leases on public lands, is said to be behind the BLM’s actions against Bundy.
On March 25, 2014, the CBD issued a press release titled, “Tortoises suffer while BLM allows trespass cattle to eat for free in Nevada desert,” addressing the Bundy situation and the Bunkerville Allotment while stating, “The court has provided the BLM with a clear and undisputed mandate to proceed with what should have occurred over 12 years ago — to protect the rights of the American public by ending illegal grazing that has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars while imperiling the protected desert tortoise. The foot-dragging by the departments of Justice and the Interior has been nothing short of a breech of duty and ethics.”
The CBD appeared unusually silent when the BLM announced last year that it was euthanizing protected desert tortoises, added to the endangered species list in 1990, cared for at Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, due to a lack of funds to keep the facility open.
The refuge was apparently established to relocate desert tortoises in order to allow real estate developers to build subdivisions in the Las Vegas area during the building boom.
The CBD is financed by Earthjustice, a George Soros-funded organization.
Soros believes in centralized global government control of land, food, water and other resources in order to control the world’s “human capital.”
The federal government took Bundy back to court last year to enforce the injunction.
On Oct. 8, 2013 U.S. District Court Judge Larry R. Hicks wrote, “Here, uncontested evidence demonstrates that Bundy continues to violate the Court’s 1998 permanent injunction. Bundy himself admits to grazing his cattle on lands both inside and outside the Allotment in contravention of the court’s orders.”
In a footnote, the court referred to a document “disposing of Bundy’s arguments that the court does not have jurisdiction and that the public lands in Nevada are not property of the United States.”
Hicks found Bundy’s objections to the federal government’s motion, many of which had been disposed of in prior proceedings, were without merit.
He granted the United States’ motion to enforce the injunction, permanently enjoined Bundy from trespassing on the “former Bunkerville Allotment,” entitled the federal government to protect the former Allotment against trespasses by Bundy, ordered Bundy to remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days, while entitling the United States to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after that time.
Hicks also ordered the United States was entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle for any future trespasses, providing it complies with the notice provisions regulated by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
He further ordered Bundy “shall not physically interfere with any seizure or impoundment operation authorized by this court order.”
Over the weekend, InfoWars.com unearthed information that the former senior advisor to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was director of the BLM.
And, a document titled, “Cattle Trespass Impacts” that was formerly posted on BLM.gov stating Bundy’s cattle impacts solar development and the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands” has been removed.
The document stated, “Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle.”
In 2012, it was reported that Reid’s son, Attorney Rory Reid was representing Chinese energy firm ENN Energy Group, which was seeking to build a $5 billion solar energy farm and panel manufacturing plant in Laughlin, Nev., which is in Clark County.
Reid himself made a trip to China in 2011 to help encourage the Chinese company to locate in his state.
Reid’s son, former chair of the Clark County Commission, was able to locate a 9,000-acre site in Clark County that the firm is purchasing at far below appraised value.
Previously, Sen. Reid was said to be involved with Harvey Whittemore, a top contributor, developer and lobbyist, attempting to get favorable treatment for his Coyote Springs housing development and who was convicted last year of using straw contributors in order to get around the $4,600 individual contribution limit in 2007 by funneling $133,400 of his own money to Reid’s re-election committee by having employees and family members make contributions to Reid and then reimbursing them.
