Putting Federal Lands
to productive use looked like there could be some agreement between Trump and
the Western States. On 12/5/17, Trump cut 2 million acres of Bears Ears and
Grand Staircase Escalante monuments in Utah.
The article below makes a case for
privatization.
I'm an Oregon rancher. Here's what you don't
understand about the Bundy standoff. The Obama administration has
pushed our livelihood to the brink. Keith
Nantz is ranch manager at Dillon Land and Cattle in Maupin, Ore.
This week, the Ammon Bundy-led seizure of a federal wildlife refuge thrust Oregon’s ranchers into the
spotlight. While I don’t agree with the occupiers’ tactics, I sympathize with
their position. Being a rancher was always challenging. And it has become increasingly
difficult under the Obama administration. Who are the Bundys? Ammon Bundy and a group of supporters, including his brother, were
arrested on Jan. 26. Here's a look at the Bundy family's history of
anti-government actions.
I grew up in a ranching community in
northeast Oregon. Even as a kid, I knew I wanted to be a rancher. After eight
years as a firefighter, I’d saved enough to start my own business. I wanted to
work on the land, raising delicious, wholesome beef for our growing population.
For almost a decade, I’ve done just
that. Most days, I’m up before the sun rises. I spend my mornings tending
to my horses, dogs and livestock. In the winter, when it’s bitter cold, I’m
outside with my cattle, making sure their water isn’t frozen and that they’re
properly fed. In the summer, I often work 15-hour days, cultivating my crops
and tending to the animals. In the afternoons, I’m in my office, reaching out
to customers and handling the ranch’s business side. Over the course of a given
day, I act as a vet, a mechanic, an agronomist and accountant.
I love the work, but it’s grueling. As a
rancher, I’m always one bad year away from financial disaster. Every
purchase I make — from new cows ($2,000 each) to a new piece of equipment worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars — is a major investment. And my ranch operates
on very slim margins, so I have to be savvy to make ends meet.
Money isn’t the only challenge. Raising
cattle requires a lot of land, much more than most ranchers can afford to own
outright. I lease about a third of the space I use from private owners. But
most ranchers aren’t so lucky. The federal government controls a huge amount
of land in the west (more than 50 percent in some states, like Oregon), and many ranchers
must lease that space to create a sustainable operation.
Utilizing federal land requires ranchers
to follow an unfair, complicated and constantly evolving set of rules. For
example, a federal government agency might decide that it wants to limit the
number of days a rancher can graze their cattle to protect a certain endangered
plant or animal species, or they might unilaterally decide that ranchers can’t
use as much water as they need because of a fight over water rights. Or they
might take over land that once belonged to the state or private individuals,
imposing an entirely new set of restrictions. [Not punishing the
Bundys for the Nevada standoff led to the occupation in Oregon].
I saw this play out firsthand when the federal government
considered listing the sage grouse, a chicken-like bird, as endangered. That
regulation would have shrunk the amount of land where ranchers could graze
cattle, putting many out of business and decimating the industry.
To avoid this, ranchers like myself and
local officials spent months meeting with federal officials looking for
compromise. We ultimately found middle ground. But we already have an enormous
workload in our daily lives. The pressure of having to drop everything to lobby
against a rule (which happens more often than you’d think) is a tremendous
burden.
Most of the time, those regulations are
written by people with no agriculture experience, and little understanding of
what it takes to produce our nation’s food. The agencies that control
these lands can add burdensome regulations at any time. Often, they will begin
aggressively enforcing them before ranchers have a chance to adjust.
This forces us to either find new
grazing land, reduce the size of our herd or sell out completely. In rural
communities, this can have a catastrophic effect on the local economy and
environment. Ranching is a billion-dollar industry in Oregon. Overall, agriculture accounts for 15
percent of the state’s economic activity and 12 percent of the state’s
employment. The income of a local farm generates double the moneyfor the local economy as a supermarket’s
income in the same area, according to the London-based New Economics
Foundation.
The siege on our industry has only
increased under the Obama administration. Officials are effectively regulating
us out of business by enforcing a string of unprecedented
environmental restrictions. In
Malhuer county (next to Harney county, where the current standoff is taking
place), the Obama administration is considering a measure that will turn 2.5
million acres of
federal land into a “national monument,” a move that would severely restrict
grazing. These restrictions would cause a huge economic downturn for those
communities.
These decisions are being made by people
who are four to five generations removed from food production. The rule-makers
don’t quite understand our industry, and are being spurred on by extreme
environmentalist groups asking for unreasonable policy changes.
It’s not that I don’t care what the
environmental community wants. In every part of my business, I try to find a
balance between economics, mother nature and our culture. I know that if we
don’t treat our land properly, we will go out of business by our own hands. It
is of utmost importance for us to be true conservationists if we want to
continue producing the most nutritious and safest protein in the world.
But all too often, I’m not given the
autonomy to do so. I’m given rules, not a conversation about how ranchers and
government officials and environmentalists might be able to work
together. That’s an approach that fails everyone.
I see no reason for
the federal government to own land beyond what they need to function. It is
unconstitutional. Congress has never amended their enumerated powers in the Constitution
and the Courts ignored the violation.
I also attribute our
annual forest fires to government ownership of land and believe all forest land
should be owned and operated by private land owners. There are 10,000 of these
land owners and they don’t have forest fires because they clear out brush and
live on the land where their forests are located.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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