My goodness, did any of you ever go to junior high or high school history class? If you want to argue against endangered species laws and the trickle down consequences those have on the use of public land that's a perfectly valid opinion.
Anybody remember those little minor events in our nation's history such as the Louisiana Purchase, etc. Most of Nevada was actually acquired by the federal government as part of the Mexican Cession in 1848. ALL western land was initially acquired by the federal government and then pieces of it were transferred to private ownership through the various types of homestead acts. There was never an act to transfer 600,000 acres of land to this dude's ancestors. States control water law, and by some odd provision apparently this guy might be able to claim ownership of some water rights associated with this land, but not the surface itself - and those water rights were not something they ever paid for.
I'm not particularly familiar with the Mormon migration that settled much of Utah and Nevada, but they and the federal government have more than a little bit of stormy history. Frankly, this is a continuation of that. A lot of folks in that region suffer from a persecution compex regarding compliance with any federal laws - involving things like polygamy, etc, - and this is the extreme outcome of that.
The federal government owns that land and they should have the right to lease it or not just like private landowners do. If he does have prior appropriation rights to water under state law, frankly the government needs to condemn them and pay fair market value for them - which is probably miniscule in that region.
We have the right to influence big picture decisions on public land management through elections. If you look back to when this started, it was likely Republicans in congress and a conservative president.
The reality is there is a lot more land in this country much better suited to cattle grazing than this area. And there are whole lot more cows than desert tortoises.
Anybody remember those little minor events in our nation's history such as the Louisiana Purchase, etc. Most of Nevada was actually acquired by the federal government as part of the Mexican Cession in 1848. ALL western land was initially acquired by the federal government and then pieces of it were transferred to private ownership through the various types of homestead acts. There was never an act to transfer 600,000 acres of land to this dude's ancestors. States control water law, and by some odd provision apparently this guy might be able to claim ownership of some water rights associated with this land, but not the surface itself - and those water rights were not something they ever paid for.
I'm not particularly familiar with the Mormon migration that settled much of Utah and Nevada, but they and the federal government have more than a little bit of stormy history. Frankly, this is a continuation of that. A lot of folks in that region suffer from a persecution compex regarding compliance with any federal laws - involving things like polygamy, etc, - and this is the extreme outcome of that.
The federal government owns that land and they should have the right to lease it or not just like private landowners do. If he does have prior appropriation rights to water under state law, frankly the government needs to condemn them and pay fair market value for them - which is probably miniscule in that region.
We have the right to influence big picture decisions on public land management through elections. If you look back to when this started, it was likely Republicans in congress and a conservative president.
The reality is there is a lot more land in this country much better suited to cattle grazing than this area. And there are whole lot more cows than desert tortoises.
