They are are saddened, but not surprised
The Bundy gang issued a “press release” on Facebook – in other words they wrote a short Facebook post. But they wrote PRESS RELEASE at the top so that we’d know it’s not an ordinary Facebook post. Still has comments like a Facebook post though.
PRESS RELEASE
Bundy Ranch Response to Gold Butte National Monument Designation
We, the Bundy Family, would like to say to President Obama that we are saddened, but not surprised, by the your decision to make our ranch and home a national monument. If any of this were really about protecting the land, you would come here, work with the local people who love this land, those who have a vested interest in this land, and take the time to learn what this land really needs. This is about control, pure and simple. You don’t love this land, you have never visited here, but you love being in control of this land. The problems we have had with federal land management have never been about cows, tortoises, or fees. It has always been about the constitutional limits on the federal government’s authority. While you enjoy a vacation in Hawaii we are here caring for this land and resisting federal overreach. Shame on you for undoing with your pen the good work we have done with our sweat for generations. We call on Attorney General Adam Laxalt to fight this to the fullest extent of the law!
Yeah, how dare those awful federal people not let the Bundys help themselves to land that isn’t theirs?
These are the exact same words I have heard ever since I went into environmental science – you can’t learn about the land from books, you have to come out here and work the land. I have worked the land. And I have studied the land – no ecologist gets their knowledge from books (well, some books, but mostly…from the land). The idea that the only way to love the land is to rip it apart, build fences, plant crops, and run cows is a very strong idea in this part of the country (west of the Mississippi), and the condescending tone of ranchers/farmers/miners/drillers, etc, toward people who want to protect the land from exploitation is a familiar one.
Thank you, Obama. I only hope it will survive the next President.
Teddy R. loved that land and had a vested interest in it. You can also bet he’d’ve sent a far more aggressive force in to take it back from those trogs…
Yes, and he’d have named them for what they are, the exact opposite of the patriots they claim to be. They are parasites, robbers, who take what belongs to all Americans to enrich themselves, and terrorists who point guns at people working for the public good.