http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/29/rancher-cliven-bundy-still-grazing-his-cattle-on-d/?page=all#pagebreakCliven Bundy enters 2015 unbowed, still grazing cattle in disputed lands
By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times
Monday, December 29, 2014
Unbowed and unapologetic, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is still running his cattle on disputed grazing land eight months after his highly publicized standoff over public lands, but that doesn’t mean his feud with the federal government is over.
In a tense confrontation that generated international headlines, the 68-year-old Mr. Bundy won that round last spring: Bureau of Land Management officials agreed to leave the property and release his impounded cattle after hundreds of armed supporters descended on the Southern Nevada ranch in April. He says he hasn’t seen any sign of federal agents since.
“[W]e’ve really enjoyed some liberty and freedoms out here,” Mr. Bundy told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last month.
“Since the standoff, we haven’t seen one BLM vehicle on any of these country roads around this ranch. We haven’t seen one BLM ranger. We haven’t seen one [National] Park Service ranger. We haven’t really seen any undercover-type people,” he said. “We haven’t seen snipers on top of our hills. We haven’t seen high-tech communication equipment. We haven’t seen any of those things.”
Still, the victory came at a high cost. Mr. Bundy, a newcomer to the media spotlight, was vilified in the media and lost the backing of many prominent conservatives after he said at an April press conference that black Americans may have been better off under slavery than on welfare, comments critics denounced as racist.
His legal battle with the BLM over grazing rights, one that has resonated across the region, is ongoing. Mr. Bundy has refused to pay $1.2 million in grazing fees to the BLM, arguing that the land belongs to the state, not the federal government. The land rights issue is particularly heated in Nevada, where 85 percent of the land within the state’s borders is federally owned.
The BLM did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its dispute with Mr. Bundy at deadline.
Meanwhile, the FBI is reportedly conducting a criminal investigation into possible weapons violations and intimidation tactics against federal agents that occurred during the standoff at the Bunkerville ranch.
And Mr. Bundy’s son, Ammon Bundy, says the federal government is treating him as a “domestic terrorist,” which is what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Cliven Bundy and his supporters at the height of the April standoff.
Ammon Bundy said he was detained and questioned Nov. 1 by the Transportation Security Administration when he and his daughter tried to board a flight from Phoenix to Salt Lake City.
