Sierra County passes resolution recognizing ranchers’ ownership rights in cattle-grazing allotments

by Kathleen Sloan | March 2, 2020
4 min read
​Sierra County Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution pushing back on the U.S. Forest Service’s treatment of ranchers as renters who can summarily have their grazing cattle kicked off federal land and not respected as rightful co-owners ranching on the lands for generations. 

Exemplifying generational ranchers were Colette and Scott Chandler, husband and wife who attended the Feb. 25 meeting, with Scott Chandler giving a presentation. 

The Chandlers are “buying my folks out,” he said, who have headed the Tierra Blanca ranch for 45 years. “We are the largest private land owner in the Gila,” Chandler said, referring to the Gila National Forest, managed by the U.S. Forest Service. 

The Chandlers said their private land and the allotments total about 30,000 acres, “and the whole thing is considered the ranch.” 

They had to go through a new grazing-permit process because of the buy-out and change of ownership. The family has built “corrals, wells, fences—we are taxed [by the IRS] on those [improvements] as part of the value [of the allotment]. We also have to pay by the cow unit for the allotment.”

In addition, by tracing title farther back than their parents’ 45 years, the Chandlers assert they also have water rights, since the various springs and creeks and rivers on the property have continuously been diverted and used to water cattle since before the U.S. Forest Service took over the management of the allotment land around 1905.

Both the Chandlers and the County resolution support the argument some ranchers have allotment co-ownership rights, if they have a water right, pointing to a 2017 federal court case. 

In Sacramento Grazing Association v. the United States, the judge ruled a ranching family had a property right because they used the land and water for cattle grazing since before 1905, before it was the Lincoln National Forest. A water right is based on continuous beneficial use, the court noted, citing New Mexico water law. 

The Forest Service had gradually reduced the ranching family’s access to water and the number of cattle allowed to graze. The court ruled the federal government was in violation of the Fifth Amendment, and must compensate them for an illegal taking of property. 

The Chandlers, in their new 10-year grazing permit, had to fight to have a letter attached to the permit asserting their property rights, such as the improvements and water rights, as well as their protest of certain Forest Service land-management practices. “They finally did allow us to put in our reservations,” Colette Chandler said. 

One such reservation was, “the introduction of The Mexican Wolf Blue Range Reintroduction Project,” Collette Chandler said. “We simply stated we object that the wolf program should impede on our grazing rights.”

Scott Chandler related to the County Commission that they told the Forest Service they could be allies when environmental groups sue them under violations of the Endangered Species Act. 

They pointed to the Jan. 24 filing by the Center for Biological Diversity that could affect 30 grazing allotments totaling about 500 square miles in Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and about 1,000 square miles in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest. 

The Chandlers said their allotment is not included in the court case, “which hasn’t crossed the mountain yet.” 

The Center for Biological Diversity claims, according to its website, the Forest Service agreed in 1998, after a long and drawn out prior court case, to keep cattle away from rivers and their tributaries, agreeing it was ruining riparian habitat. In a recent survey, the Center claims cattle have not been contained, in violation of the Endangered Species Act and the earlier legal settlement. 

They ask the court to remove all cattle from the riparian areas until a more stringent monitoring agreement is put in place, with monthly, not yearly surveys of riparian areas. 

The waterways affected, the Center said, are the Gila, San Francisco, Tularosa and Blue rivers. 

Endangered species affected are the Southwestern willow flycatcher, yellow-billed cuckoo, loach minnow fish, Chiricahua leopard frog, northern Mexican garter snake and two grass species. 

The County’s resolution does not mention the Endangered Species Act or recognize its constraint on the Forest Service’s management of federal land. 

It states that since 1905 the Forest Service has recognized the benefit of grazing sheep and cattle on public land, not only for supplying food, but also to prevent forest fires. The resolution notes President Donald Trump’s recent executive order for removing underbrush to prevent fires. 

The resolution also refers to the Sacramento Grazing Assoc. v. U.S. court case and ranchers’ water rights, if pre-1905 use of stock water for grazing is established. 

The resolution states the “representatives of the Federal Government have taken a  hard-handed approach regarding our constituents’ grazing permits, refusing reasonable modifications proposed by the allotment owners. . .” 

In the last whereas, the resolution is most forceful: “Whereas the Federal Government’s unwillingness to permit our constituents to note their objections to terms of the permit or to otherwise reserve their rights is tyrannical and detrimental to the interests of Sierra County and its residents.”  

The resolution was passed unanimously by the County Commission. 

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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