Feds Seize Cattle of Nev. Ranchers
By Martin Griffith
Associated Press Writer
Monday, September 23, 2002; 12:16 PM
RENO, Nev. –– As more than 30 armed federal agents stood by, Bureau of Land Management officials seized 227 head of cattle they say two Western Shoshone sisters were grazing illegally on public land.
Mary and Carrie Dann, who have been at odds with federal authorities for nearly three decades over grazing and land ownership, sharply criticized the operation Sunday in Pine Valley in northeast Nevada.
They maintain the Western Shoshone tribe still owns much of Nevada under an 1863 treaty and the BLM has no jurisdiction over their ranching operation.
"It's domestic terrorism," Carrie Dann said. "Our homelands are threatened by the mightiest and most powerful nation in the world. To do this and take away our livelihood is morally and ethically wrong."
But BLM spokeswoman Jo Simpson said the courts have ruled the land in question is owned by the public, not the tribe.
"The courts have extinguished the treaty and directed BLM to manage those lands as public lands," she said. "Certainly, an impoundment is something we don't want to do. But the Danns' continued trespass has resulted in severe overgrazing and degradation of the land."
Simpson warned that the BLM would seize about 800 horses in the same area in the future if the Danns fail to remove them.
In May, the BLM seized and sold 157 head of cattle it says rancher Raymond Yowell and the Te-Moak Band of Western Shoshone were grazing illegally on public land in Elko County.
BLM officials said 99 percent of ranchers comply with terms of federal grazing permits, and they only are cracking down on flagrant violators.
The Danns received a notice last month from the BLM that their grazing privileges were being canceled, and an appeal period expired Sept. 16, said Julie Fishel of the Western Shoshone Defense Project.
The Danns maintain the treaty between the Western Shoshone and United States simply granted the United States limited access – not ownership – to 23.6 million acres. The Western Shoshone tribes live mainly in Nevada, California, Idaho and Utah.
Earlier this year, a preliminary report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States, accused the U.S. government of violating international human rights laws in its treatment of the Danns.
Even though the report made no determination of their legal land rights, it said the United States should provide the Danns an effective remedy to ensure respect for their claims to property rights on ancestral lands. |
