The battle of Bunkerville

The Battle of Bunkerville is over, and thankfully no shots were actually fired. The Bureau of Land Management’s overly militarized attempt to round up Clark County rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle over grazing fees and the endangered desert tortoise ended after hundreds of supporters, including self-proclaimed armed “militia,” refused to be herded into a free speech corral while BLM “Rangers” with assault rifles threatened to turn the demonstration into a replay of the bloody Maidan Square uprisings in Kiev.

Can someone tell the president to use his pen and his phone to put an end to these ridiculously unconstitutional free speech zones?

After Gov. Brian Sandoval helped broker a truce and the cattle were returned bruised but alive to Bundy, Sen. Harry Reid put on the same bitter beer face he wears while denouncing the Koch Brothers and warned the battle isn’t over. He is right, but Sandoval may take the next round in the 2016 Senate Race as the popular governor showed he can face down the Senate majority leader. Reid’s DNA is all over this crime scene as the newly installed 35-year-old BLM director Neil Kornze, who worked for years on Reid’s staff, immediately paid the Senator back by defending the fiasco.

News reports surfaced that the real reason for wanting to force Southern Nevada’s last cattle rancher off the land his family has worked for a century was not grazing fees or tortoises but a sweetheart deal involving Reid’s son Rory and Chinese solar energy developers who covet Bundy’s land. Nevada is committed to 25 percent renewable energy by 2025, and Reid has a history of doing well for his family by claiming to do good for Nevada.

But solar energy is not necessarily any better for tortoises than cattle. Solar development requires new roads, new power lines, and vast acreage of pristine desert to build. Green plans to turn the Mojave Desert into a solar farm have been blocked by other greens who do not want nature disturbed for any reason, no matter how noble.

Despite rancher Bundy’s belief in local county government, the Clark County Commission did not distinguish itself in the dispute, with Commissioner Tom Collins threatening violence against “inbred” Utah supporters of Bundy. Nevada’s largest county seems to be mostly interested in using the public land transfer movement as a way to cut through the admittedly onerous red tape involved in swapping out federal lands for development.

Rural America is being depopulated by a political elite that has never put any sweat equity into anything more substantial than the next career move. Ranchers like Cliven Bundy who work their land and raise large families to do the same for generations appear as anachronistic to our urban mandarins as Native Americans who opposed the transcontinental railroad did to the robber barons.

A report to the Washoe County Commission this month showed that the transfer of federal lands to the state will bring new revenue to the state with the majority going to a trust for education. Another large contingent will go to protecting the Nevada Sage Grouse, whose possible inclusion on the endangered species list could mirror the desert tortoise as a backdoor way for the feds to retain control over the lands. Commissioner Kitty Jung seemed to be impressed and ordered staff to write a history of the public land disputes. Here’s hoping that the report will give justice to the Cliff Gardners, the Dann Sisters, the Wayne Hagues and now Cliven Bundy whose independent spirits represent the best of Nevada’s love of freedom.