THE BUNDY STANDOFF—A
CENTURY OF ABUSE
PART 6
By
Michael S. Coffman, Ph.D
July 19, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
Part
VI—Environmental Extremism, and the Hage Victory
After
creating the feudal/manorialism control over vast tracts of “public
land” in the far West, a radical and bizarre form of environmentalism
crept into natural resource colleges in the 1970s. By the 1980s our
federal agencies began hiring these graduates and by the 1990s they
were in mid- and senior management positions. Government bureaucracies
were now poisoned with this radical environmental ideology.
Following
the creation of the US Forest Service (USFS)in 1905 and Bureau of Land
Management (BLM) in 1934, there has been an increasingly uneasy 
working
relationship between citizens who make a living from the public land
to produce our food, and the federal employees managing it. That relationship
took a nosedive with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management
(FLPMA) and the National Forest Management Acts (NFMA) in 1976.
Conservation
Biology
Both
Acts were pushed through Congress with enormous pressure by environmental
groups, again funded by the decedents of the northern core. The Acts
were heavily biased towards endless planning that has turned into a
money pit sucking enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to achieve environmental
goals that are not necessary or are based in ideological pseudo science.
Since then both agencies have had their personnel increasingly staffed
with college grads steeped in environmental dogma that nature knows
best and man is a cancer to the earth (For more information, see here,
here
and here).
It’s called conservation biology. In its first
journal issue the purpose for existence of the Society of Conservation
Biology was explicitly stated:
“The
society is a response...to the biological diversity crisis that will
reach a crescendo in the first half of the 21st century. We assume implicitly
that...the worst biological disaster in the last 65 million years can
be averted.... We 
assume
implicitly that environmental wounds inflicted by ignorant humans and
destructive technologies can be treated by wiser humans and by wholesome
technologies.”
This
over the top arrogance is typical for diehard conservation biologists,
many of them in our federal and state agencies. Worse, other writings
and textbooks show that there is a belief in this group of activists
that they are at war with society. This is especially true with ranchers
because these ideological biologists have been taught in our finest
universities that ranchers are destroying ecosystems. As a consequence,
ranchers, timber companies and mining companies began to be singled
out for deliberate destruction. Reality anchored in peer-reviewed research,
however, shows that ecosystem health can be dramatically improved with
cattle grazing and forest harvesting; even the much maligned clear cutting.
As a Ph.D. in ecosystem analysis and management, this author is stunned
at the blatant pseudo science and outright lies that are used to support
this war against natural resource management.
For
the first ten years or so, these newly minted conservation biologists
were the low men and women on the totem pole in government agencies
like the BLM. They had very little power to implement their extremely
radical ideas. Outside observers were amazed at how quickly they were
promoted into mid- then high-level positions. Many said it couldn’t
be a coincidence. The increasing tyrannical nature being experienced
by Bundy and other ranchers by the USFS and BLM is born in the extreme
conservation biology movement, which is a very radical, even extreme,
offshoot of environmentalism.
It
is literally quite bizarre. By 1994 a BLM internal working document
prepared for a March 30 BLM summit on ecosystem management identified
the objective/purpose of eco¬system management: "All ecosystem
management activities should consider human beings as a biological resource..."
Human beings are an biological resource? It’s absolutely sick.
While shocking, it was a long time ago. Yet, how could it have even
been written in the first place? The BLM is still implementing Ecosystem
Management. The arrogance of the BLM, its relentless drive to destroy
ranchers and resource users, and the raw use of overwhelming intimidation
and force certainly suggests that in practice, the BLM is carrying out
that goal.
Certainly
at least some BLM personnel have been radicalized and are doing all
it can to push people, especially ranchers, off of the public lands.
Ask any ranching family in the West that actually has to make a living
off the land. This accusation is unanimous. This is what Cliven Bundy
is facing.
The
seeming hatred for many BLM personnel for the ranchers automatically
creates a deep adversarial relationship between the BLM and ranchers.
That is only half the problem, however. The other half is the armed
brute force the BLM (and Forest Service) uses to intimidate ranchers.
As discussed in Part I, no federal agency has constitutional authority
to administer police powers at the local level. Therefore the U.S. Federal
Code does not allow it. 43 §1733(c)(1) specifically states:
When
the Secretary determines that assistance is necessary in enforcing Federal
laws and regulations relating to the public lands or their resources
he shall offer a contract to appropriate local officials
having law enforcement authority within their respective
jurisdictions with the view of achieving maximum feasible reliance
upon local law enforcement officials in enforcing such laws and regulations.
(Emphasis added)
So
where did the BLM (and every other federal agency) get the authority
to arm 200 BLM jackboots and send them to intimidate and steal Bundy’s
cattle? The answer is simple. They did it illegally. While that is hard
to believe, these federal agencies have been gradually assuming unconstitutional
powers since the 1990s so that today the media and most Americans assume
they do have the constitutional authority to do to Bundy (and many more
hapless victims) what they did. All they need is some kind of excuse
to bring their boot down on the neck of a citizen.
In
Bundy’s case the allegedly endangered Desert Tortoise is the chosen
weapon to force him off the land, as was already done to the 57 neighboring
ranches. Pseudo science and extreme environmentalist pressure was used
to get the tortoise listed as endangered, and then implement “recovery
plans” to continuously reduce the number of cattle that can graze
the land while increasing fees, gradually strangling the ranchers until
they were forced off their land.
The
Desert Tortoise
While
some good science comes out of conservation biology, usually this nature-based
pseudo science usually gets everything backwards and turned inside out.
According to their pantheistic ideology,[1] everything that man does
is bad and has to be stopped. Like minded radical environmentalists
in environmental groups lobby extremely hard to get an alleged endangered
species put on the Endangered Species list. Once listed, draconian regulations
can be implemented on property owners or lease holders, especially ranchers
like Cliven Bundy where these species reside. There are literally dozens
of alleged endangered species in name only that the BLM and USFS can
use to hammer ranchers and users. In Bundy’s case every one of
the 57 other cattle ranches in his county has been put out of business
by the BLM using these and other strong-arm tactics.
[The
Desert Tortoise is supposedly endangered because of overgrazing by cattle.
That is a red herring. The tortoise thrives on cattle dung. The greater
the number of cattle the greater the number of tortoises. Source: US
Army Topographic Engineering Center]
For
40 years government report after government report blamed cattle for
the decline of the Desert Tortoise. This is what Cliven Bundy and other
ranchers have faced for decades. Yet, even before the Desert
Tortoise was declared endangered, a major
research study in 1990 clearly showed that Desert Tortoises
actually flourish with cattle. The more cattle, the more tortoises.
In the 1930s, before the 1933 drought hit, there were a record number
of cattle grazing in Southern Nevada and Southeastern California. The
Desert Tortoise was also at record numbers– at least 2,000 tortoises
per square mile in Antelope Valley CA. Today, the BLM has forced ranchers
to reduce their herds to 10 percent of what used to be on the rangeland.
The result? The Desert Tortoise population has also plummeted; allegedly
because of overgrazing according to the BLM. Not true. The 1990 research
describes what is really going on:
The
toothless tortoise is ill equipped to harvest and masticate range forage.
The tortoise can harvest only tender vegetation, and it can't masticate
even that. The tortoise can't process enough bulky, low analysis forage
fast enough to meet its nutritional requirement… They solved this
problem long ago—they allow other animals to do it for them. Desert
tortoises feed primarily on dung. The more animals using the range,
the more dung, which makes more food available for tortoises... The
desert tortoise is well adapted for making use of cow dung.
Amazingly,
the federal government does
not even mention the tortoise’s diet of dung. Probably because
it is not “natural” and destroys the narrative that cattle
are responsible for the decline of tortoises. There was and is no empirical
science to justify putting the Desert Tortoise on the Endangered Species
list. It was purely political; based in bizarre pseudo science that
is extremely destructive to the lives, liberties and happiness of thousands
of property owners. Cliven Bundy is but one example. Wayne Hage is another.
The
Wayne Hage Saga
As
explained in Part II, Constitutional law is no longer taught in law
schools. Attorneys are taught to use the U.S. District Court for federal
administrative law used by the BLM and USFS. Because the District Court
focuses on case 
law,
not Constitutional law, the corrupted law is stacked against the landowner
like Cliven Bundy.
Within
a short time of buying the ranch in 1978, the U.S. Forest Service filed
claim to the Hage’s water rights, fenced off critical springs,
and eventually cancelled their grazing permits. The harassment and permit
violations were unbelievable. Margaret
Byfield (Hage), one of Hage’s daughters recounts:
They
fenced off a major spring from our cattle and piped our water into their
ranger station without our permission. In 1979, over a period of 105
days, we received 70 visits and 40 certified letters from the Forest
Service citing us with various violations, most of which did not exist
or were created by the Forest Service itself. I remember how one of
these accused us of not maintaining our drift fences on Table Mountain.
After two days riding the fence [by horse], one of our hands found the
Forest Service flag marking a single missing staple. We were also charged
with trespass citations where they claimed our cattle were in locations
not permitted. They dropped these charges once they realized we had
eyewitnesses watch Forest Service employees move our cattle into
these areas, and then within hours notify us of the alleged offense.
(Italics added)
By
1991 Hage was out of business. While Hage was rounding up his last cattle
to sell, the USFS “brought in over 30 armed riders and gathered
every cow they could find, which only amounted to 104 after two earlier
roundups. Half the riders were armed with semi-automatic rifles and
wearing bulletproof 
vests.”
Recounts Byfield: “when finished handed my father a bill for their
confiscation expense.” The Gestapo tactics the USFS and BLM are
doing to ranchers is well beyond belief for most Americans. It’s
not an exaggeration. It is actually worse. The same types of attacks
were suffered by Cliven Bundy and other ranchers for twenty years. All
but Bundy were forced off their ranches rather than suffer this abuse.
Hage,
however, had the chain of title to his water rights (vested rights)
back to 1866 and 1874. Not surprisingly, the federal government had
none. They couldn’t because the 1907 Colorado v. Kansas
Supreme Court decision struck down any Forest Service right to water.
Although unverified, it is reported Bundy has the same chain of title
back to the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo which guarantees all property rights stay with
the land owner and future owners.
Once
the USFS took Hage’s cattle, killing at least one cow in the process,
he had legal standing to go to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (Claims
Court) with a constitutional “takings” case based on the
Fifth Amendment: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property
be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
(Italics added) The Court of Federal Claims is authorized to hear primarily
money claims founded upon violations of the Constitution, federal statutes,
executive regulations, or contracts, express or implied in fact, with
the United States.
Hage
filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims as The Estate of E. Wayne
Hage and the Estate of Jean N. Hage in 1992. During the next ten
years the USFS filed numerous lawsuits against Hage, one of which was
a felony charge. Only a few of them were found in favor of the USFS,
and even those were reversed by the 9th Circuit Court on appeal.
In2002
that the Claims Court issued the first truly landmark ruling in the
case. The Court
determined that despite the government’s argument that the
Hage’s had no property rights in the federal lands, the Court
found they owned the water on the federal lands that flowed to their
private lands, they owned the ditch rights-of-way that transported that
water (and 50 feet on either side), and the range improvements.
One
of the most important findings of the Court’s
decision was that property rights owned by Hage were pre-existing
to the permit system by the Act of 1866 and "the court is
not of the opinion that lack of a grazing permit that prevents access
to federal lands can eliminate Plaintiff's vested water rights and ditch
rights." The favorite tool of the USFS and BLM was forcing the
livestock off the ranch and then claiming the water rights when ranchers
no longer could use and they expired.The decision had a chilling effect
on the federal agencies. These were vested rights, just as Bundy is
claiming.
As
discussed in Parts II and III, vested rights had been passed in Congress
as the Act of 1866 creating the “split estate” concept to
handle these rights as granted by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with
Mexico. In 2008, after issuing four opinions, the U.S. Court of Federal
Claims finalized
the 2002 preliminary ruling. Hage
was granted $14.4 million in the settlement. The circuit judge,
Loren Smith,in his ruling on the Hage case, likened federal ownership
in the West as“feudal overlords.”As discussed in Part I,
it is the very same landlord relationship that caused families to flee
Europe to America from their “feudal overlords that owned the
land they farmed.”
Feudalism
is by its very definition a tyrannical system because the overlord,
in this case the federal government, has control over the very land
a family depends on for their day to day existence. In this case the
overlord is being driven by ideology and enormous outside pressure to
destroy the ranchers.
In
one of the few losses in the case, the award of $14.4 million in compensation
for the taking of the Hage’s water, rights-of-way and range improvements
was reversed on a technicality by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit in 2012. Now it appears that the United States Court
of Federal Claims will not be granting the Plaintiffs a hearing to allow
them to argue that only parts of the compensation claim were reversed.Once
again, a federal agency gets off scot free from any accountability for
their wrong doing. Well, almost. Fortunately, the ruling on property
rights still stands, however.
Once
that was accomplished, the case went back to District Court in U.S.
v. Estate of E. Wayne Hage which now had a case law precedent.
As explained in a Heritage
Foundation summary, Judge Robert C. Jones on May 23 last year tells
in his 104-page opinion
the sordid and infuriating tale of a two-decades-long conspiracy among
federal employees of US Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture
and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the Department of the Interior
to deny the grazing rights of a Nevada ranching family, interfere with
their water rights, and destroy their cattle business by scaring away
their customers. In summary Jones’ used some ripping language
in his decision:
“[T]he
Government’s actions over the past two decades shocks the conscience
of the Court.” The judge concluded that the government denied
the renewal of the Hages’ grazing permit for a “nonsensical”
reason that was “arbitrary” and “vindictive.”
The employees of the BLM “entered into a literal, intentional
conspiracy to deprive the Hages not only of their permits but also of
their vested water rights.” The court held that the government
had abused its discretion “through a series of actions designed
to strip the Estate of its grazing permits, and ultimately to strip
Defendants of their ability to use their water rights, for reasons unrelated
to the appropriate use of the range or ensuring that historical grazing
use is respected.”
Judge
Jones issued an injunction against the federal government interfering
with the Hage family’s water rights and ordered it to grant a
grazing permit in accordance with the “historical usages and preferences”
in that area of Nevada. The judge said he was restricting the government’s
“normal discretion” in “this extreme case because
of the conspiracy…and the obvious continuing animus against Hage
by” government officials. Two government employees were held in
contempt by the judge for sending trespass notices to people who leased
or sold cattle to the Hages in order to “pressure other parties
not to do business with the Hages, and even to discourage or punish
testimony in the” case. The judge referred them to the U.S. Attorney’s
Office for “potential prosecution for obstruction of justice.”
Except
for minor variations, this is exactly what has happened to Bundy. However,
the Hage’s 2013 case had just been decided in May when Bundy’s
last District Court case was decided in July. Since all testimony had
been given in the Bundy trial, the judge in Bundy’s case couldn’t
use the Hage ruling as case law. However, he could have used the Court
of Federal Claims decision but didn’t, partially because the feds
appealed it on technical grounds, which may have given Bundy’s
U.S. District Court judge an excuse. Hage’s U.S. District Court
Judge did use it.
The
state’s rights issue in which the 1891 Forest Reserve Act superseded
the U.S. Constitution is still rift with controversy. The states hated
it, but the consequences were very small then, so they didn’t
fight it. Obviously, that has changed now and feeble attempts have been
made to challenge it. However, most states are so full of progressive
Attorney Generals and politicians who agree with the principle of federal
sovereignty that there is no desire to fight it. Fortunately, that is
not the case with Utah.The state of Utah is now in a battle to overturn
this unconstitutional precedent and get all the so-called federal lands
back to the state. It will take years, but the time might be finally
ripe.
Ranchers
like Bundy have been fighting for their very livelihoods against the
federal government for well over a hundred years. While it may “seem”
to the average person like the federal government has the authority
and is trying to do the right thing, it is not. Instead, it is a feudal
arrangement that was forbidden in the U.S. Constitution by the Founders
because they saw European examples that it always led to tyranny. Now
there is an international agenda doing the same thing and it has already
had devastating effects on every American citizen.
Click
here for part -----> 1, 2,
3, 4, 5,
6,
�
2014 Michael Coffman - All Rights Reserved
bureaucrats
try to provoke them by so they have a reason to respond with force.
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