There are a bunch of folks up in Oregon who have invaded and occupied federal buildings as a protest showing their support for a couple of ranchers over in Nevada who are in prison for unauthorized burning of federal grazing lands.  Whew, that was a mouthful.  This situation has been going on for several years so nothing new until the standoff started.

The state of New Mexico is made up of a tremendous amount of state and federal land.  Reservations, etc.  You can have a 25,000 acre ranch in New Mexico and it might be made up of 500 acres of private land, which you might own and the other 24,500 acres are federal or state grazing land.  You can call the whole thing your ranch but you are faced with some rules.  You can not prevent the public from utilizing the 24,500 acres for hunting, hiking and general public usage.  There are rules that you must follow.

I think the problem in Nevada is somewhat the same thing.  The ranchers there had been utilizing a certain amount of federal grazing lands and decided to burn off brush to improve grazing.  They treated the land as if they owned it.  Problem.  They did not.  They bitched and moaned and burned some more.  They got arrested, tried and are in prison.  Now there are folks in Oregon who are picketing in a way to stand with the fellers in Nevada.  Again, sounds like the thing to do.  However, they have moved in on some US Forest
Service buildings and seem to want to tell everyone that they are holding this little outpost hostage.  Boys, it’s not going to work.

You just have to set back and realize that the fellows down in Nevada have known since day one that they did not own the federal lands that they were grazing.  They can sit down at the coffee shop every morning and talk about their 25,000 acre ranch and all the coffee drinkers will sit back in awe.  But everybody in the cafe knows that they don’t own the land.  They can play like it is theirs as long as they follow the rules.

Many problems that exist between individuals and their state, local and national government can be cured if the folks involved make sure they are playing by the rules.

Gary