Katie Fite of the environmental group WildLands Defense said the range around Battle Mountain is “devastated and needs significant rest” from the ranchers’ activities.
“They truly think they are the lords of yesteryear and the public lands are their own little fiefdom,” she said.
At its height, the Battle Mountain protest attracted the support of conservative Nevada lawmakers, states-rights advocates and backers of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada cattleman whose refusal to pay federal grazing fees led to an armed standoff with federal lawmen in 2014.
The protest tapped into long-standing resentment of the BLM, which controls about 48 million acres of federal land in Nevada. The agency leases public land to ranchers for grazing while administering the Endangered Species Act and other federal environmental regulations.
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https://www.revealnews.org/article/ranchers-denied-the-drought-while-collecting-drought-subsidies/