(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Flashbacks to the 2014 Cliven Bundy standoff may haunt those old enough to remember the deadly dispute that nearly resulted in another Branch-Davidian disaster for the Obama administration.
The Bundy family’s struggle to protect its ancestral home from a Bureau of Land Management land grab became a growing secessionist movement spanning two years and multiple states.
It ultimately resulted in the death of at least one rural Oregon militia member; led to a drawn-out, multi-decade legal battle; and helped put figures like the Oath Keepers’s Stewart Rhodes on the map long before the Jan. 6, 2021 uprising at the U.S. Capitol.
Yet, despite the heavy toll that the federal government paid for its overreach, the original BLM is at it again, threatening once more to oust ranchers who have long enjoyed grazing rights by locking up protected public lands for the private use of non-governmental organizations that have resources available to lease them.
In April, BLM proposed a Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, which would establish “conservation leases” on lands that previously had been designated for “multiple use” purposes under federal law.
Although there is not likely to be another Bundy-style standoff in its wake, the policy change is yet another affront by the Biden administration against America’s heartland and its residents in favor of coastal elites.
“This rule is just another example of the Biden Administration weaponizing the government to appease radical environmentalists at the expense of the people of Montana,” said Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., in a press release.
“This expansive rule will limit recreation, timber, grazing, and important energy development on public land,” Rosendale added. “Even more consequential is the impact this will have on cattle ranching, which will require Montana ranchers to compete with coastal corporations for the limited number of available leases.”
Rosendale sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and BLM Director Tracy Stone–Manning calling on them to rescind the rule while pointing to its violation, in particular, of the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act.
“Specifically, the Taylor Grazing Act established grazing districts that issue use permits for a fee to regulate public land use and prevent overuse,” he wrote. “… While the proposed Rule does not directly amend the Taylor Grazing Act, we are concerned that the Rule would impede sustainable and productive grazing practices.”
The new policy also comes as Biden already has pursued billions of acres in land grabs—some, following the lead of his old boss, former President Barack Obama, by desginating vast swaths of land in areas including Utah and Nevada as protected national monuments.
The moves impact nearby property owners, including farmers and ranchers, as well as those who may hope to lease and develop the land for energy and mineral exploration, which may be increasingly crucial to America’s energy independence as tensions simmer with China.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed several of the Biden administration’s previously attempted land and power grabs:
- In West Virginia v. EPA it curtailed federal agencies’ ability to make overly broad policies without going through the legislative process.
- In Sackett v. EPA it dialed back the Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping and arbitrary designations of wetlands, which critics said gave the federal government dominion over puddles and drainage ditches.
- In a pair of recent cases challenging the Education Department’s student-loan amnesty, it rebuffed President Joe Biden’s efforts to act without Congressional authorization on a massive economic policy that would have transferred the burden of hundreds of billions of dollars from borrowers onto U.S. taxpayers at large.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
