On good southern ranch land, you can raise a cow and a calf for each acre of land. Outside of Burns, OR, I’m guessing, you would need about 70 acres for the pair. Some of the scrub lands in Wyoming are even worse, a quarter section (160 acres) for the pair, which is why these desert ranches have to be so big and water rights are such an issue.
There is an interesting Bundy point-of-view in the Bundy Ranch blog (google it, number one result). It’s best to understand both sides in these disputes.
Let me fix that for you:
Assuming his 160 acre ranch and his defaulted leasehold interests are the bulk of what he owns, the idea that Cliven Bundy is a multimillionaire is preposterous. To put things in perspective, the grazing land I sold in Utah last year was twice the size of what Bundy owns and fetched less than $100,000 in an open market sale. Not that I’m complaining, I purchased it at a bank auction 20 years ago for $27/acre, or $8,640.
Cliven Bundy wants to believe that he owns the thousands of acres he leased (but defaulted on) from the U.S. government. To me, that’s no different than a Section 8 Low Income Housing tenant defaulting on their lease and claiming they own the building.
That really was my whole point in addressing the residence on the ranch and his land holdings. But it also illustrates that he is really in a very tough situation. The other 165 acre parcel that is currently for sale in his town has languished for over 3.5 years, despite being priced below market. So here you have a family that really cannot afford to continue to ranch and yet he probably cannot sell the ranch either.
While I do not condone what his sons are doing I understand their desperation. And their argument that the federally owned land should be administered and managed by the State of Nevada for the benefit of it’s citizens is one that could potentially be advanced by Nevada legislators. In fact that suggestion was advanced today on CNN by a republican presidential candidate. But’s that a litigation and that costs money.
I do not believe the Bundy’s are claiming actual ownership of the federally owned lands - it is my understanding that they believe the land or any income should be utilized for the benefit of the citizens of Nevada.
Ah! But which citizens? There are, after all, some environmentalists living even in Nevada these days.
I agree that he’s in a tough situation. 160 acres is insufficient for a viable cattle operation in that part of the country. But that’s all he owns and he’s defaulted on the terms of his lease with the government, so there’s no leasehold interest to sell.
I also think there’s something fundamentally wrong with the contention that the 165 acre parcel that’s languished on the market for 3.5 years is priced "below market ". As I recall, you mentioned $875/acre or thereabouts. If so, then market value is clearly less than $875. My Utah parcel sold for roughly $300/acre so, in my mind, that’s a reasonable FMV for desert grazing land.
As an aside, I recently purchased a small (20 acre) tract in the Utah west desert for $4,100, or just over $200/acre. 20 acres is insufficient for grazing, and it’s far from any utility services, but all indications point to it having sufficient ground water to warrant drilling a well that could support an “off the grid” residence and a few animals.
Sagebrush land is cheap, and for good reason. It’s practically worthless.
Edit to add: I just looked back and see that the land languishing on the market is priced at $5,000/acre. That’s a ridiculous price for desert grazing land. I could buy Utah grazing land all day long for a fraction of that and the cows don’t have a preference which state they’re in.
No - the 165 acre parcel is on the market for $875,000. So about $5300 per acre which according to the broker is below the $6,000 per acre price that land in that area generally sells for. The Bundy Ranch is really not all grazing land either - it is also a farm. Not even sure if he grazes his cattle on his own land.
The federal government currently owns 81% of the land mass that comprises the State of Nevada. Sure there is enough of that designated as “conserved” to keep the environmentalists happy.
If we’re handing out land (not that I think we should) why should the Bundys be at the top of the list? And why should cattle grazing be the use to which it is put? Why would the citizens not instead want the land sold or rented at market rate?
“I say let 'em come. Then the Feds can round them all up and lock them up in one of those bunkers under Wal-Marts in Texas.”
After hearing various pro gun rights people complaining that President Obama’s plan to close the gun show loophole somehow infringes on their 2nd amendment rights, I would like the government to donate a large swath of ranch land somewhere, let everyone who thinks they need a gun to protect themselves from the federal government come and settle in, Trump can build a nice wall around the perimeter and they can all have as many weapons as they would like and live separately ever after with Trump as their leader.
We could give them Yucca Mountain
Well, if by “conserved” you mean available for ATV riding, ranching, lumber projects, mineral and petroleum extraction, and so on. Oddly, many environmentalists would question the use of “conserved” to describe such uses.
(A better metric would be how much land is preserved as wilderness. That’s a hard number to find, but the one that I did find and which seemed from a decent source amounted to less than 3% of Nevada’s area—rather a different statistic, you know?)
Whatever the (over optimistic) market price, the market value today is clearly less than $5300 per acre.
And here’s some more data on some of what is going on with that public land in Nevada.
Arrest warrants have now been issued and the armed militants are shifting heavy equipment around creating barricades.
They are building their own wall.
I have to say that when you desperately want to be taken seriously and instead you have spawned some of the best twitter memes of all time it isn’t a good sign. 8-}
Does Yucca Mountain have any quicksand, @saintfan? That might solve a problem.
Interesting write up, thanks!
I don’t want to say the history is irrelevant, because it definitely isn’t. But it is also not directly impacting the current situation, which is that some people with guns have positioned themselves in an empty federal government building and don’t want to leave (but may be willing to leave if the locals ask them to?). No one has been hurt. The federal government needs to deal with the current situation, and separately deal with the issue of land usage.
I do believe that Black Lives Matter has a bigger impact on the day to day lives of more Americans. There aren’t really any instances in the article that talk the Oregon people impacting the average person. There are many examples of them taking on the government. The article didn’t say what happened to the individuals that murdered the police officers (or I missed it); my hope is that they enjoyed the death penalty. I firmly believe that calling these people terrorists leads to the wrong solution. If they are really terrorists, we can just blow them up with a couple shots from a drone, right? There is a reason no one is advocating this. They aren’t terrorists.
The federal government killed a bunch of people in Waco. The full firepower of the federal government has been used against whites. Perhaps that’s why they are taking a different strategy here. Obviously, no one can say with certainty if things would be happening differently if the people in this situation were black or muslim. I do think it helps clarify things because these Oregon people are “known” to the federal government. They did not just quickly appear and do this. Past interactions with these people can be used to guide future (/current) interactions or lack thereof.
I believe the Oregon people have a coherent message, which I assess to be “the federal government should ■■■■ of my life.” I am still unclear on the Black Lives Matter goal, but I gather it is either “stop shooting black people” or “government personnel (read: the police) are getting away with things they shouldn’t be.” I have a hard time believing it is the latter, because then they should all be voting for Rand Paul. And if it’s the former, the statistics don’t line up. Maybe they both believe that mandatory minimum sentences are bad?
The Oregon movement is a lot smaller. To the point where I’m not even fully convinced you can call it a movement. That is why I originally labeled them as “misguided individuals”. I believe Black Lives Matters numbers in the tens of thousands, at least that is my impression from their presence in multiple cities. Perhaps it is a lot smaller?
If the Oregon guys are really causing lots of trouble, why are they all not in jail? There is not that many of them. They could get warrants and arrest all of them individually when they aren’t in a big group. My answer to this (which may well be wrong), is that they are not in jail because the federal government does not take them seriously. I picture the government getting new “the Oregon guys did X” and the government starts rolling their eyes. I mean, after 2 days they put out a call that they were running low on snacks. What kind of effort is this?
Want an alternative way forward that will never happen? The Oregon guys, Black Lives Matter, the pro-choice movement, and the Tea Party all join forces and severely restrict the power and reach of the federal government. This could allow the Oregon guys more freedom and turn federal land over to the states, reduce the heavy handed-ness of the government toward blacks, remove the federal government from making choices about a women’s body, and decrease the size/expenditures of the federal government.
Also, I think #yallQaeda will probably be the most hilarious hashtag of the year.
The property is not desert grazing land but rather a farm like the Bundy’s property. The property includes the silos, farmstands and other out buildings. That’s why I mentioned it as a comparable. Bundy’s 160 acres is a farm/ranch where they produce melons, honey and pomegranates along with the beef from the cattle they raise. So really not comparable to your parcel in Utah selling for $200-$300 per acre.
Your desert grazing parcel is like the BLM property which is the subject of this dispute.
