After nearly five years of haggling over how many
cows should be allowed on the Diamond Bar grazing allotment in New
Mexico, U.S. District Judge Howard Bratton ordered Dec. 4 that all
863 cows belonging to ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney must leave
national forest land.
The Laneys had sued last
spring when Forest Service officials cut their number of permitted
cattle to 300 and forbade them to install new watering tanks on
their Catron County allotment, which lies inside two wilderness
areas (HCN, 3/4/96). The ranchers let their permit expire in March
but continued to graze cattle illegally, arguing that they had
grazing rights tied to territorial water rights from the1880s.
Judge Bratton disagreed. He fined the Laneys $42,000 for grazing
unauthorized cattle.
Environmentalist Susan
Schock, whose group Gila Watch criticized overgrazing on the
Diamond Bar, called the ruling a sound victory. “They said it
couldn’t be done,” she says. “We did it without compromising.”
Because Judge Bratton did not set a timetable
for removing the cattle, Chuck Sundt, range specialist for the Gila
National Forest, says his agency will go back to court to set a
date.
As for the Laneys, they say they will fight
the decision all the way to the Supreme Court if need be.
Meanwhile, with no place to graze, they will likely be forced to
sell their cows. “It’s no longer our ball game,” says Kit Laney.
“It’s the bank’s.”
* Tony
Davis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Judge kicks out cows.
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