Gold Butte, Nevada, two years after the standoff - #BundyTeaParty

[struggle4progress]

Anna V. Smith
Sept. 28, 2016

In June 2015 .. the Bureau of Land Management sent a survey crew to the Gold Butte area near Bunkerville, Nevada. The three surveyors from the Great Basin Institute were there to inventory springs, cattle troughs and seeps. According to contemporary news reports, they encountered Cliven Bundy and his son, Ryan Bundy, who spoke with them briefly and asked what they were doing. Later that night, as the surveyors were getting into their tents, a vehicle lit up the camp with its headlights as it drove by, and shortly afterward, three gunshots rang out nearby. An hour later, they heard three more shots. The surveyors packed up in the dark, left and did not come back ...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid .. has been blunt about the link between the militia atmosphere created by the Bundys and the continuing threats to BLM workers. “Because of trouble caused by the Bundys and their pals, the federal employees tasked with safely guarding these antiquities were prevented from doing their jobs,” Reid said on the Senate floor in April. “These employees have been under constant physical and mental threat for doing what the American people have tasked them to do.” Nationwide, threats against BLM employees shot up 87 percent during 2015, and by 60 percent against U.S. Fish and Wildlife employees ...

The absence of federal workers did not go unnoticed. Friends of Gold Butte published a report .. detailing the damage ... Graffiti and bullet holes riddle the petroglyphs and red sandstone, signs have been removed, and the area is marred by off-road tire tracks and trash. Twenty-two miles of illegal irrigation have been trenched through the desert, and a chopped-down Joshua tree was left to rot. The BLM is continuing to assess the situation, and so far staffers can’t say how much the illegal irrigation trenching and vehicle incursions have affected local wildlife populations. “Once this happens, it persists through time” ...

The damage has given advocates even more reason to fight for a national monument designation, something Friends of Gold Butte and the nearby Moapa Band of Paiutes have been advocating for years. The area is currently designated as an area of critical environmental concern because it provides habitat for the threatened Mojave desert tortoise and for desert bighorn sheep. It’s also of cultural significance to the Moapa Band of Paiutes, whose ancestors created the ancient petroglyphs. The area was included within their reservation boundaries in 1873, and then cut out years later. Making Gold Butte a national monument would secure the Moapa’s heritage sites from further destruction, former tribal chairman William Anderson says ...

http://www.hcn.org/articles/a-look-at-gold-butte-nevada-two-years-after-the-cliven-bundy-standoff

[Coyotl]

1. "Graffiti and bullet holes riddle the petroglyphs ..." and these people oppose Bears Ears NM

Graffiti and bullet holes riddle the petroglyphs and red sandstone, signs have been removed, and the area is marred by off-road tire tracks and trash. Twenty-two miles of illegal irrigation have been trenched through the desert, and a chopped-down Joshua tree was left to rot. The BLM is continuing to assess the situation, and so far staffers can’t say how much the illegal irrigation trenching and vehicle incursions have affected local wildlife populations. “Once this happens, it persists through time,” Moan says of the graffiti and general disregard for the area by visitors.............