Malheur occupation impacts linger throughout the West - #BundyTeaParty
Tay Wiles
Oct. 4, 2016
... IN NEW MEXICO, a rancher who visited the Malheur refuge during the occupation and threatened to terminate his grazing contract with the Forest Service, is now all paid up. In January, Adrian Sewell, who uses 33,000-acres of public land near Silver City, New Mexico, made a public statement while at Malheur: “I am hereby giving notice of termination of all contracts between me and the Bureau of Land Management and United States Forest service – I shall no longer require their help in managing my ranch.” But Forest Service District Ranger Diane Taliaferro said in an interview last week that rancher Adrian Sewell’s permit was never cancelled and he has continued to pay his fees on time.
“Everything is good from this end,” Taliaferro said. “He’s asked if he could put more cattle on the allotment, and we’ve allowed him to do that, as long as it’s within the amounts in his operating plan…I’ll be honest, I barely have seen him. He’s been pretty elusive.”
Exactly how Sewell went from being fired up enough to travel to Oregon to support the Malheur occupation, to quietly cooperating with the Forest Service is hard to tell. But it seems that local ranchers — themselves with mixed views on the Sagebrush Rebellion, the Bundys and the land transfer movement — nipped Sewell’s one-man revolution in the bud ...
“From my understanding, several ranchers and permit holders engaged Sewell (in February) and made it clear this isn't a battle that he should take on,” Amaro says. “I also think that there was a lot of pushback from non-hobby ranchers that understand that any type of disruption could impact their businesses.” A Silver City rancher who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation also told HCN that ranchers spoke with Sewell to encourage him to stop his anti-federal antics ...
http://www.hcn.org/articles/ammon-bundy-malheur-standoff-effects-sagebrush-rebellion
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