First posted in May of 2014, but still relevant.

“I happen to be one who cheers and supports the Sagebrush Rebellion. Count me in as a rebel.” Ronald Reagan

Watching the drama recently on the Bundy ranch and surrounding public land in Nevada, we may be forgiven if we didn’t remember, or even know, that this is only the most recent skirmish in a years-long battle over local control of public lands.

The Sagebrush Rebellion began in the late 1970’s as a grass-roots movement of independent ranchers, miners, and other land-working men and women in opposition to the encroachment by tyrannical Federal bureaucrats and  increasingly ridiculous federal environmental regulations.

Reagan believed the federal government’s ownership of acres of land is “contrary to the Constitution, it’s contrary to the basic law when the 13 Colonies first came into the Union.” He thought that the ownership of the land should go to the states where local governments can either protect the land, or use it for urban or industrial growth.

Here is a recording of an interview with Reagan in 1976 regarding energy and environmental policy:

A recent article at the Reno Gazette Journal, puts the present-day events into perspective.  This is a well-known example:

If there’s a poster boy for the Sagebrush Rebellion, it’s arguably Wayne Hage, a Nevada rancher who, along with his survivors, waged a legal battle with the federal government that spanned more than 20 years. His story began in 1991 after the government, contending Hage had defied grazing regulations in Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and refused to pay fines for violations, impounded some of his cattle.

Hage sued, insisting the government had violated his right to freely graze on public land and thus had threatened his livelihood. The case wound its way through the courts and, in 2008, two years after Hage’s death, U.S. Claims Court Judge Loren Smith agreed, concluding Hage’s rights had been violated. The judge ordered the government to pay the rancher’s family $4.4 million in what was heralded by many as a major victory for the Sagebrush Rebellion.

That victory, however, was shot down in July 2012 when a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., overturned the ruling. Hage’s attorneys are now attempting a new appeal in the case.

“It’s not done yet,” said Mark Pollot, attorney for the Hage estate.

Here is a December, 2015, post about the Hage case in the Environmental Law Prof Blog.

Indeed, it is not done yet.

Neither the Hage case, nor the encroachment by radical environmentalists – not just into public lands in the West, but private lands all over the United States.

As William Perry Pendley said in April 2014 at a Hillsdale College event in Colorado Springs, CO:

What has been most lacking in the reporting on these stories is the background of the disputes. And it should be stated up front, in all fairness, that the Obama administration is not unique in pursuing policies anathema to Westerners. On that score, it has simply followed the examples of the Carter and Clinton administrations.

In the late 1970s, President Carter’s “War on the West” spawned what came to be known as the Sagebrush Rebellion, which Ronald Reagan embraced during his campaign for president in 1980: “I happen to be one who cheers and supports the Sagebrush Rebellion,” candidate Reagan proclaimed in a speech in Salt Lake City. “Count me in as a rebel.” The uprising was spurred by the fact that, more than any other region, the American West had been victimized by the environmental policies implemented—utterly regardless of their destructive economic and human consequences—during the previous two decades. Reagan had seen firsthand the transformation of the environmental movement from one of conservation and stewardship, in which the part played by human beings and technology was vital, to a movement in which humans and technology were understood to be enemies of nature. As articulated by Reagan, opposition to extreme environmentalism represented a return to true environmentalism.

Mr. Pendley explains very well how the Federal Government and radical environmentalists work hand in hand to restrict use of public lands:

A typical way these policies get implemented is for environmental interest groups to sue a government agency under either the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and for the agency then to settle the lawsuit in the interest group’s favor. Sometimes—as in a 2008 lawsuit filed against the U.S. Forest Service by three environmental groups to prevent oil, gas, and mineral extraction in Pennsylvania—the government not only settles the lawsuit but also pays the interest groups for their complaints (in that case paying out nearly $20,000). Just last month, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt filed a lawsuit against the Interior Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over such “sue and settle” tactics following an ESA lawsuit by a group called Wild Earth Guardians that sought to restrict land use for agriculture, oil and gas drilling, wind farms, and other activities in a five-state area—Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas—inhabited by the lesser prairie chicken. “These settlements,” Pruitt said in a statement, “impose tougher regulations and shorter timelines than those imposed by Congress,” and thus violate the rule of law. “Oklahoma has indicated its willingness to protect the lesser prairie chicken,” he added, “but it seems increasingly clear this issue isn’t about sound science or saving endangered species.”

Lesser Prairie Chicken

These tactics are used today primarily to hamper oil and gas exploration and extraction throughout the country.  Mr. Pendley reports that:

According to the Congressional Research Service, from 2009 through 2013, oil and natural gas production on private land was up 61 percent and 33 percent, respectively; on federal lands, by contrast, oil production was down eleven percent and gas production was down 28 percent. This is no mere coincidence. The Monterey/Santos oil field in California is estimated to hold more than twice the oil of the Bakken oil field in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford oil field in west Texas combined, but its development is on hold because federal lands are involved.

Now, Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has spoken publicly, inferring that the Obama administration would use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to unilaterally designate new National Monuments without Congressional approval or local input, the intent being to prevent economic activity on said lands.  Jewell’s most extreme and outrageous act to date was to sign off on a decision by the EPA to put a million acres of Wyoming land—including the entire town of Riverton, Wyoming, with a population of over 10,000—into the Wind River Indian Reservation, despite the indisputable historical fact that this land was ceded to the U.S. in a 1904 agreement between the United States and the Tribes  See NewsMax report.

If you have any doubt about the tactics used by the EPA, please watch this video of an EPA training session:

Text of the video is as follows:

“But as I said, oil and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production. And I gave, I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said. It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up. And, that won’t happen unless you have somebody out there making examples of people. So you go out, you look at an industry, you find people violating the law, you go aggressively after them. And we do have some pretty effective enforcement tools. Compliance can get very high, very, very quickly. That’s what these companies respond to is both their public image but also financial pressure. So you put some financial pressure on a company, you get other people in that industry to clean up very quickly. So, that’s our general philosophy.”

I urge you to read Mr. Pendley’s complete presentation, and you may find the contents shocking.  He says in conclusion:

It is little wonder that there is talk of another Sagebrush Rebellion like that embraced by Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s. Westerners know they deserve better, and that they and their states can be better stewards of their land than federal bureaucrats.

Indeed.  There is little wonder at all.