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SAN JUAN COUNTY — Ask most Utah ranchers about their relationship with the federal government, and they'll tell you it's rocky at best. While most view Cliven Bundy as extreme, they still sympathize with their neighbor in Nevada.
The federal land that is owned by Americans who can hike, ride their bikes or camp there is the same land on which ranchers run their cattle. The problem between ranchers and the government comes with the concept of shared use and what that means going into the future.
“I've been riding a horse and taking care of them — ever since — ever since someone could hold me on the horse,” said Utah rancher Preston Johnson. ”I'd like one of my kids to take it over. I've got children who really like coming out here and taking care of the cows and working... it's a good family based life style to have.”
But these days, even on the wide open range, miles from people or even cell phone service, Johnson has worries. His family has ranched this land, owned by the Bureau of Land Management, for generations.
He sees it as a right granted by the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934 which created grazing districts on public lands.
But changes in federal policy has Johnson feeling under siege.
I'll stay here till they have to run me off. And with everything they got because I ain't going nowhere.
–Utah rancher Preston Johnson
“I'll stay here till they have to run me off,” he said. “And with everything they got because I ain't going nowhere.”
Johnson, his parents Sandy and Gail, and ranchers for miles around, base their mistrust on the BLM's methods for managing millions of acres of range land.
Endangered species protections, grazing restrictions, an armed enforcement presence, all rankle ranchers far and wide across the west.
"The government has pushed us and pushed us till we're tired of being pushed and we've done the things we need to do like pay our grazing fees and everything," Sandy Johnson said.
That's where most ranchers part ways with Bundy, who is refusing to pay his grazing fees. But at their core, Utah ranchers like Zane Odell agree with Bundy about overreach.
Ranchers fear the BLM has an agenda to eventually move all of them — and their cattle and corrals — off the land.
That's something the BLM categorically denies.
“The Bureau of Land Management recognizes that cattle ranching is part of the fabric of the American West," said BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall. “It's part of who we are. And that's not going to change.”
The Bureau of Land Management recognizes that cattle ranching is part of the fabric of the American West. It's part of who we are. And that's not going to change.
–BLM spokeswoman Megan Crandall
Friends of Cedar Mesa, a conservation group based in Bluff, Utah, and founded by a former BLM employee, is pushing the federal government to establish a Canyonlands conservation area or have the president declare another national monument in the area with the goal of conservation and tourism in mind. This effort is another concern for Utah ranchers. “In my opinion, the cows ain't what the impact is,” Sandy Johnson said. “This tourism is going to well destroy this country because there's roads out here that never was there.”
Gail Johnson tries to keep the focus on ranching and not think about President Obama possibly creating another monument.
“I'm not going to sit and cry and worry, but I do think it's an abuse of power if the president does it,” Gail Johnson said.
No one in San Juan County anticipates a confrontation like at the Bundy ranch, but ranchers there said they stick together and it could happen.
