text: Band of Nevada Ranchers Clashes With Government on Cattle Grazing Fees - The New York Times
  U.S.|Band of Nevada Ranchers Clashes With Government on Cattle Grazing Fees
  Band of Nevada Ranchers Clashes With Government on Cattle Grazing Fees
  By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK AUG. 2, 2001
  Ben Colvin's family ranching roots in Nevada date back to before the Civil War. Jack Vogt started ranching in California just after World War II with a single cow and wound up with a large herd in south-central Nevada.
  But as a long-running dispute over the two men's refusal to pay grazing fees to the federal government comes to a bitter climax, with about 200 of their cattle impounded at a livestock auction yard here and an antifederal group protesting just outside, federal officials decline to describe either man as a rancher.
  ''They are trespassers, not ranchers,'' said Bob Abbey, the Nevada director of the federal Bureau of Land Management. ''I have too much respect for the ranching profession to describe these men that way. They are simply out to get something for free from the American taxpayer.''
  Likewise, Mr. Colvin, 63, had nothing kind to say about the land bureau.
  ''Those who would arm themselves and take other people's cattle used to be called cattle rustlers.'' he said after a crew from the bureau rounded up his cattle near Goldfield and trucked them here.
  ''Today, they are called the B.L.M.,'' he said, using the acronym for the land bureau.
  The federal government owns 87 percent of the land in Nevada, according to the land bureau. That is much more than in any other state, and grumblings over federal stewardship date back to Nevada's entry into the union in 1864. They are at the core of what is often called the ''sagebrush rebellion'' of ranchers, miners, farmers and others who want less federal control here, even as they pay grazing fees that critics say are so low that they amount to a federal subsidy. Mr. Colvin owes about $62,000 in fees and fines for 62 cattle, and Mr. Vogt about $300,000 for his cattle, which were still being rounded up and counted.
  Impounding their cattle represents a potentially volatile twist in the debate. While the bureau says the vast majority of the nearly 700 ranchers who have grazing permits on federal land in Nevada pay the fees, Mr. Colvin and Mr. Vogt, and a handful of others across the state, have refused to pay, arguing that the federal government has no jurisdiction over the land.
  They are spurred on by an anti-federal government group here called the Nevada Committee for Full Statehood, which helped to organize a protest today at the livestock yard in Fallon, a cattle town about 60 miles east of Reno.
  The committee says it does not recognize the land bureau's authority over public lands in Nevada. About 50 people, including several children, attended the rally, waving Nevada flags and carrying signs.
  ''Rustling is still a capital offense,'' one said. ''Ranchers are an endangered species,'' another said.
  The group also distributed a statement saying that it fully supported the men, and that ''the unlawful actions of the B.L.M. confirm that Nevadans are being treated like serfs and that Nevada has been relegated to the status of a territory of the federal government.''
  Mr. Abbey, the state director here, dismissed the accusations as a smokescreen for efforts to defraud the treasury. The fees, set by Congress, are $1.35 per month per ''animal unit,'' defined as either a cow and a calf or five sheep. Critics say the fee does not even begin to help the program pay for itself.
  Mr. Colvin and Mr. Vogt, 77, have paid nothing since 1995, according to the land bureau, and have refused to comply with herd rotation schedules intended to limit overgrazing on particular stretches of range.
  Mr. Vogt, speaking by telephone from his property in Esmeralda County, about 150 miles southeast of here, said he would not pay and planned to go to court to block the auction of his cattle.
  ''They came in here and stole my property,'' Mr. Vogt said.
  He described the federal government as ''poor managers'' of the land, which he said should be under state or local control.
  ''If I pay their fees and go under federal jurisdiction, I'm dead, absolutely dead,'' Mr. Vogt said, referring to his business. ''So now a few of us ranchers here have had the gumption to stand up for what's right, and look what's happening to us.''
  While the pickets here, including several ranchers, have defended the men, they have hardly generated widespread sympathy. They have received no support from the Nevada Cattlemen's Association, a statewide trade group. Its executive director, Rachel Buzzetti, said that the grazing-fee system ''generally works well'' and that the impoundment was ''between these ranchers and the B.L.M.''
  At the Fallon Livestock Auction, where the cattle are being cared for pending the bureau's decision on whether to auction them, the ranchers seemed to get little support.
  Gary Snow, the auction owner, said that ''80 percent, maybe 90 percent'' of the ranchers he knew disapproved of Mr. Colvin's and Mr. Vogt's protest. And when Mr. Colvin showed up the other day to ask for his cattle, Mr. Snow offered no help.
  ''I told him, 'Look, the B.L.M. has impounded them, and the gates are locked,' '' he said. ''I said, 'This is between you and the B.L.M.' ''