@HarvestMoon1 - Thanks for clarifying. The land I sold had water under the surface (a well was certainly feasible) but surely not enough to support a productive farm.
Please clarify further. When you write “Your desert grazing parcel is like the BLM property which is the subject of this dispute” are you referring to the leased BLM grazing land in the Cliven Bundy dispute, or the Oregon land? If the former, you’re probably right, but I don’t know. If the latter, then I have to disagree. As I understand it, the Oregon land is a refuge for migratory(?) birds; the grazing land I sold isn’t fowl friendly.
I was comparing your land in Utah to the BLM land in Nevada where Bundy defaulted on his grazing fees. I would agree that the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge that Bundy’s sons are occupying is very different from desert grazing land.
It is my understanding that they chose that site because the Hammond family lives in that region and because it is so remote.
I imagine that most people reading this don’t have much of an idea of what this land is really like. The Bunkerville (Cliven Bundy’s) land would be totally barren, but for the fact that the Virgin River runs through the Bunkerville community. Go a quarter mile from the river and it’s a wasteland. Beautiful, but a wasteland nonetheless.
The Utah west desert land I’m writing about is beautiful in its own way, but to carve out a life there would be very difficult. Still, there are a few thousand or so people who choose to live that life. Proximity to water is crucial.
Market value for any of this land is based on access to water, local economic factors and, more than anything else, the utility value of the land. If you can graze cattle it’s worth “X”; if you can raise crops it’s worth “Y”; if you can build housing and there’s employment to support it, it’s worth “Z”.
Most of the federally owned land in Nevada and Utah is category “X” or less.
In terms of “turning land over to the states” . . . how would Oregon manage the rangeland if they owned it? Would they charge market rate for use to fill in their budget? Could they afford the fire protection services that the BLM now provides? I don’t know why these people feel that “turning the land over” to a smaller entity with less power to subsidize their economic interests would be beneficial to them.
And y’all should actually go and look at the link in #225 about the letter from the birders. Saying they’ve “gotten the birders mad” appears to be an understatement.
A few years back a birder friend was part of the (National Geographic??) expedition to stake out Arkansas swamps and try to confirm the existence of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. What he described sounds like an absolutely miserable time (to me, he was in heaven), but they were all well-outfitted, as they do this all the time. They brought plenty of wool socks and snacks.
I am kind of interested to see the terrorists’ response to all this ridicule.
Thanks for the birders link! I have a cousin in south Texas who is an avid birder and volunteers her time with some agency down there. She posted a link to her FB wall yesterday afternoon to a news article about this, but before I had a chance to read it, I started having computer issues and had to reinstall my OS (which took all day/night) so I never got back to read it, even though I told myself when my computer started to act up that I needed to remember to do that.
The point is, if the Y’allQaeda rabble hadn’t taken over the Wildlife Refuge, people would be there right now. Employees would be there, and a few visitors would also be there. This was not a vacant shed. It was a nice visitor’s center with a gift shop that was closed for the holiday weekend.
I have been reading about their Mormon roots. They claim descent from some of the polygamous settlers. My understanding is that early Mormons were in almost constant conflict with the US government. Someone IRL suggested considering their actions from a historical perspective, maybe centuries rather than decades.
I haven’t been following this story for the last few days… but the Mormon element is fascinating. Yes, they (Mormons) went west because no one wanted them (and not even the west wanted them but there were less people to say “no.”) On the other hand, they were one of the key reasons that settling the west by Euro-Americans was actually possible. They innovated irrigation systems and that opened up the west to whites. It’s a really interesting history. (I recommend Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West by Donald Worster if anyone is interested in that history.)
If they want to argue that their religion mandates that land be used and not preserved, they have a solid historic argument. If you look at the early history of now-American colonies, the whole basis for “taking” land from Indigenous people (yes, I realize this is poor phrasing and oversimplification but you get my drift) was that Genesis mandates that land only rightfully belongs to whomever “subdues” it. (I haven’t the slightest clue if that’s what Genesis actually says but that was the basis of land rights in much of early modern Christian world. The early laws and judges quoted Genesis as justification.)
Anyway, that birder piece is one of the best things I’ve ever read. Thank you so much to whoever posted that lol.