The Bundy standoff was an armed confrontation between protesters and law enforcement that developed from a 20-year legal dispute between the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, over unpaid grazing fees on federally owned land in southeastern Nevada.
The ongoing dispute started in 1993, when, in protest against changes to grazing rules,
[2] Bundy declined to renew his permit for cattle grazing on BLM-administered lands near
Bunkerville, Nevada.
[3] According to the BLM, Bundy continued to graze his cattle on public lands without a permit.
[4] In 1998, Bundy was prohibited by the
United States District Court for the District of Nevada from grazing his cattle on an area of land later called the Bunkerville Allotment.
[3] In July 2013, the BLM complaint was supplemented when federal judge
Lloyd D. George ordered that Bundy refrain from trespassing on federally administered land in the
Gold Butte area of
Clark County.
[5]
On March 27, 2014, 145,604 acres of federal land in Clark County were temporarily closed for the "capture, impound, and removal of trespass cattle".
[6] BLM officials and law enforcement rangers began a roundup of such livestock on April 5, and an arrest was made the next day. On April 12, a group of protesters, some of them armed,
[7] advanced on what the BLM described as a "cattle gather."
[8] Sheriff Doug Gillespie negotiated with Bundy and newly confirmed BLM director
Neil Kornze,
[9] who elected to release the cattle and de-escalate the situation.
[10][11]
As of the end of 2015, Bundy continued to graze his cattle on Federal land and had not paid the fees.
[12][13]