A day after blinking in a showdown on the range, federal land managers pledged to pursue efforts to resolve a conflict with a southern Nevada rancher who has refused to pay grazing fees for 20 years.
Bureau of Land Management spokesman Craig Leff said the agency would continue to try to resolve the matter involving rancher Cliven Bundy “administratively and judicially.” Bundy owes more than $1 million in grazing fees, according to the bureau.
“The door isn’t closed. We’ll figure out how to move forward with this,” Leff said Sunday. He declined to comment on possible options.
Bundy did not respond to requests for comment.
The fight between him and the BLM widened into a debate about states’ rights and federal land-use policy. He does not recognize federal authority on land he insists belongs to Nevada.
On Saturday, the bureau released about 400 head of cattle it had seized from Bundy back to him only hours after announcing a premature halt to the roundup due to safety concerns. The operation, expected to take up to a month, ended after only a week.
The cattle were freed after hundreds of states’ rights protesters, some of them armed militia members, showed up at corrals outside Mesquite to demand the animals’ release.
Las Vegas Police Lt. Dan Zehnder told The Associated Press that Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie was able to negotiate a resolution after talking with Bundy.
But Leff stressed the bureau did not take part in the negotiations.
The several hundred cows gathered during the roundup were short of the BLM’s goal of 900 cows it says have been trespassing on U.S. land without required grazing permits for over 20 years.
The showdown over Bundy’s cattle was the latest chapter in the Sagebrush Rebellion, which was launched by Nevada lawmakers in the 1970s in an attempt to turn control of federal land to the states.
Environmentalists accused the BLM of capitulating to threats of violence from armed Bundy supporters and urged them to pursue action against the rancher.
Leff declined to comment, reiterating that the bureau’s top concern was the safety of its employees and the public.
The dispute that ultimately triggered last week’s roundup dates to 1993, when the bureau cited concern for the federally protected desert tortoise in the region.
The bureau was implementing two federal court orders issued last year to remove Bundy’s cattle after making repeated efforts to resolve the matter outside court.
