010814 Cattle Seizing Spurs Protests

Fallon, NV - A battle over cattle grazing in Nevada's high desert is pitting lawman against lawman.

When federal officers seized the herds of two local ranchers from government land last week, only a stern warning from the U.S. attorney stopped a pair of county sheriffs from blocking the roundup.

Now, dozens of ranchers and states-rights activists are holding protests at the livestock yard where the captured cattle are being kept, a sheriff is pressing a legal offensive against future seizures and local authorities are complaining that heavy-handed federal rules are threatening a traditional way of life in the West.

“They intimidate and hope they can get away with it,” said Lt. Tony Philips of the Nye County sheriff's office.

The dispute is the latest feud between local and federal law enforcement as New West range wars create alliances and enemies John Wayne never would have dreamed of. Recent examples:

- San Bernardino County, Calif., Sheriff Gary Penrod canceled an agreement that gave U.S. Bureau of Land Management officers the ability to enforce state laws on federal land. County ranchers are chafing at grazing restrictions imposed to protect the threatened desert tortoise. Penrod said he didn't want to be associated with “law enforcement personnel who may be precipitating violent range disputes.”

-The sheriff in Sevier County, Utah, has allowed ranchers to take back cattle that were seized by the BLM after ranchers refused to take them off drought-denuded range in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Sheriff Phil Barney said he wanted to avoid a “Waco situation” last November.

-In Klamath Falls, Ore., Sheriff Tim Evinger has mediated a tense dispute between farmers and the Bureau of Reclamation, which cut off irrigation water because of shortages brought on by drought and complicated by environmental rules.

-Last year, residents in northeast Nevada defied a different federal agency, the Forest Service, by taking shovels to rebuild a washed-out stretch of road in Elko County. The Forest Service had ruled that construction would threaten the bull trout. After months of confrontation, uneasy negotiations on a compromise are under way.

In Fallon, BLM officials are holding nearly 200 cattle owned by Ben Colvin and John Vogt, saying they owe a combined $370,000 in fees and fines for grazing without permits since 1995. The agency said the ranchers are overgrazing tens of thousands of acres in Nye and Esmeralda counties, 150 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada, with its vast expanses of desert and wind-swept range, is 87% owned by the federal government.

It was the birthplace of the Sagebrush Rebellion against federal land policy in the 1980s, and the Elko road dispute has energized a new round of anti- Washington activism. Ranchers and their increasingly vocal supporters see themselves as victims of rules that put environmental concerns above people.

“I don't think they have the right to take my cattle,” said Colvin, 63, whose family has been in the ranching business since 1860. “They may have the power but they don't have the right.”

Bob Abbey, the BLM's state director, said the impoundment of cattle was a last resort after more than five years of failed negotiations with the ranchers.

“They are the ones creating the battles,” Abbey said. “They have drawn a line in the sand. They have made a point of refusing to comply with the rules and regulations governing public land use.”

Esmeralda County Sheriff Kenneth Elgan planned to issue citations to the federal officials, according to District Attorney Patricia Cafferata, who said she opposed the plan.

Nye County Sheriff Wade Lieseke planned to go farther, said Philips, the lieutenant. “He had actually ordered me to get my people and go out and stop it,” Philips said.

Federal prosecutors, however, got wind of the sheriffs' plans.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Acting U.S. Attorney Howard Zlotnick in Las Vegas wrote to the Esmeralda County sheriff that “potential violations of federal law would arise if anyone interfered with BLM employees lawfully engaged in their assigned duties.”

Letters went to other jurisdictions as well. Deputy Nevada Attorney General Wayne Howell also said he contacted prosecutors in Esmeralda and Nye counties to assure them the BLM had the legal authority to seize the cattle without first obtaining a court order.

The locals backed off, partly for fear of prosecution.

“I didn't want to end up at Club Fed,” Philips said.

The sheriffs have plenty of support from protesters who turned out to back the ranchers. One sign at an auction-lot protest read, “The sheriff is the only elected law enforcement official in the USA.”

“They don't have a right to tell our local sheriff what he can and can't do,” said Janine Hansen of Sparks, a member of the anti-federal Nevada Committee for Full Statehood.

Philips said the Nye County sheriff's department is now seeking guidance from a federal court on the whether the BLM seizures are proper.

“If it turns out they are not meeting due process,” he said, “they'll never round up any cattle around here again without a court order.”

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