Stealing Land, American Style

Follow the money and the water

By Hugh Farnham

Powerful special interests, corporations, and our government have been lusting over the vast tracts of private ranching land of the West.  To steal this land, they engage in lawfare and over-regulation to drive ranchers into bankruptcy.  

From there, environmental groups such as the Nature Conservancy purchase the land for pennies on the dollar, and sell off the water rights to corporations like Suez.  The land itself ends up in the hands of the Federal government.

These groups work hand-in-glove to steal land from these ranchers.

The policy of regulating ranchers into bankruptcy was begun by Bruce Babbitt, a Clintonista. He once wrote regarding ranchers, "We must identify our enemies and drive them into oblivion."  From that point the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service started harassing honest ranching men and driving them off their land.

As a background, water rights in the West are generally handled differently than in the Eastern United States.  Those Western ranchers who have water rights not only own the water, but grazing rights as well - even on Federal lands.  

These rights have been generally upheld as these claims existed long before soviet bureaucracies like BLM or the Forest Service existed. 

What the BLM did was take water rights and converted them into privileges.  Then they tacked on fees and piles of regulations.

Wayne Hage was a rancher in Nevada who owned the Pine Creek Ranch,  a spread of 3/4 of a million acres.  Once he began educating fellow Americans about the abuses of the Forest Service regarding water rights, this bureaucracy began targeting him for destruction.  A must-see video where Wayne blows the lid off this criminal conspiracy (zip to 8:00 to get at heart of the matter):

A pack of feral bureaucrats boasting about stealing private land from "two little guys who were in World War II" - a mine worth $40 million snatched up by the government for $2.5 million:

Driving Ranchers off Their Land - Vin Suprynowicz