Last week, seven extremists who staged an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year were fully acquitted. Now the verdict has emboldened Ryan Bundy, one of the group’s leaders, to threaten the possibility of another standoff, this time over a proposed national monument in southeastern Nevada.
“The land does not belong to the government,” Bundy told the Washington Post from an Oregon jail where he is being held on separate charges. “The land belongs to the people of Clark County, not to the people of the United States.”
In fact, the proposed Gold Butte national monument is extremely popular in the region: 71 percent of Nevada voters support designating Gold Butte as a national monument. Additionally, the proposed monument has been publicly endorsed by a large number of elected officials, tribal nations, businesses, and community and recreation groups.
Bundy’s flawed argument that the American people don’t own public lands has been consistently disproved by constitutional scholars. The president has full authority to create national monuments via the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law that 16 presidents from both parties have used to permanently protect vulnerable public lands and historic sites.
Moreover, Bundy and his supporters are completely out of step with westerners and the American public. Throughout the West, strong majorities support national public lands. According to public opinion research, more than 90 percent of voters in Nevada, Colorado, and Montana believe public lands are an essential part of their state’s economy.
Gold Butte is located on unique desert landscape east of Las Vegas, popular for outdoor recreation and home to abundant Native American and historic artifacts. But, without protection, it is also at risk from vandalism of petroglyphs and pioneer-era artifacts and from illegal off-road vehicle use that degrades habitat for desert tortoise and bighorn sheep.
The Bundys and other members of their militia have continuously supported a dying movement that believes publicly owned lands, like the land the proposed monument is located on, should be open for unbridled development by state and private interests. The area is where Cliven Bundy has illegally grazed his cattle for years.
According to the Washington Post, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (D) said in a statement on Monday that the Gold Butte monument would not be derailed by threats of resistance from “radicals… intent on using public lands like Gold Butte for their own selfish purposes.”
During the takeover of the national wildlife refuge early this year, the Bundys and the other occupiers prevented several federal employees from going to work, damaged Native American artifacts, and trashed the offices and other buildings at the site. The estimated cost to taxpayers of the armed occupation is over $6 million.
One of the jurors from the Oregon trial made it clear that their decision was not based on any agreement with the extremist’s methods or thoughts on public lands. “It should be known that all 12 jurors felt that this verdict was a statement regarding the various failures of the prosecution to prove ‘conspiracy’ in the count itself — and not any form of affirmation of the defense’s various beliefs, actions, or aspirations.’’
The fact is that Ryan, along with the rest of the Bundy clan and several others, are still facing federal charges and jail time from the 2014 armed standoff with federal agents over unpaid grazing fees. Cliven Bundy still owes over $1 million in grazing fees and fines.