By Christi Turner | High Country News
With armed militia on one side, armed federal agents on the other, and about 900 cows in the middle, the Bureau of Land Management last Saturday called off its roundup of rancher Cliven Bundy’s “trespass cattle,” releasing the 300 or so cows it had already collected back into the desert.
BLM director Neil Kornze said that the agency made the call to protect both their agents and members of the public, after armed pro-Bundy supporters, many of them belonging to antigovernment militias, made a highly public show of force that heightened tensions during the multi-day standoff in Clark County’s Gold Butte region, 80 miles east of Las Vegas.
After 20 years of flouting the law, Bundy owes the BLM over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees and fines and has defied two court orders. Former agency insiders and legal experts say the feds may have little choice now but to round up Bundy himself. Some of the armed militia members who showed up at the scene could face legal action as well. Nonetheless, the outcome of the standoff may set back the BLM’s future dealings with other recalcitrant cattlemen. It likely damages the agency’s public image, and may encourage the idea that the agency will capitulate if threatened with force.
