A Cautionary Tale

The Laneys refused to sign the Forest Service permit with the new limits on their cattle use. Instead they continued grazing--without a permit--while they filed a lawsuit claiming that, because they controlled water rights, they, not the American public, owned grazing rights on the 145,000-acre Diamond Bar Allotment. It was a bizarre notion eliciting incredulity from anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of the law; but it made perfect sense to the Laneys and their support group of livestock and property-rights activists and organizations, including the Paragon Foundation, an outfit out of Alamogordo, New Mexico, which provided free legal counsel.

During the course of this litigation, which the Laneys lost, they continued to trespass their cattle on the public's land without a grazing permit, ignoring citations and declining to pay fines. These purposeful violations drew a countersuit from the US Department of Justice in which the court enjoined the Laneys from all grazing in the Gila National Forest and ordered them to remove their cattle and pay fines and damages. The Laneys appealed to the Tenth Circuit, which affirmed the lower court's decision in favor of the United States, ruling that the Laneys never held a vested property right to graze cattle on public lands. By this time it was 1999, and the Laneys' cows had been pounding fish and wildlife habitat for 11 years. Now the Laneys tried an entirely new tactic--obeying the law. They rounded up their cattle, settled their debts with the Forest Service, and vacated their ranch.

With the cows off the Diamond Bar Allotment, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Game and Fish began to make major progress with Gila trout recovery. The land began to heal. Stream banks stabilized. Subtle promises of riparian forests broke through parched earth. Water started flowing again, and even in the dry washes grass components reappeared.

Meanwhile the livestock industry and the property-rights community were hissing into the Laneys' ears, convincing them that public-lands ranchers everywhere were counting on them to establish case law, and that they could prevail in court. In March and April of 2003 the Laneys (now divorced but still ranching together and warming to the role of martyrs) filed declarations of ownership in Catron, Grant, and Sierra counties whereby the grazing permits for the Laney and the Diamond Bar Cattle companies were transferred to them personally--an arrangement they contended absolved them of former legal obligations but which was later defined by a federal judge as a "duplicitous attempt to evade the operation and effect of this Court's Orders and the judgment of the Tenth Circuit."

With that, the Laneys turned their stock back into the wilderness. They ignored repeated Forest Service orders to remove their trespassing cattle, reasserting their already discredited claim that their alleged but unproven water rights allowed them to graze their cattle on the Diamond Bar Allotment whenever and however they pleased.

So the Forest Service sought and secured an order to hold the Laneys in contempt of court. The judge gave them 30 days to remove their trespassing cattle, after which time the Forest Service could round them up and sell them at auction. In response the Laneys seized upon the New Mexico Livestock Code, which they professed made it unlawful for the Forest Service to transport impounded cattle through the state. In this effort they acquired the enthusiastic support of Catron County Sheriff Cliff Snyder, who vowed that he would "not allow anyone, in violation of state law, to ship Diamond Bar cattle out of my county." Informed by the district attorney that he could face arrest by federal marshals, Sheriff Snyder eventually backed off.

Now the Laneys began contacting livestock auction houses, persuading them that if they dealt with the Forest Service, they'd be boycotted by other ranchers. In one such warning they declared that "any cattle carrying [our brands] that may be brought to you will have been unlawfully and illegally stolen from us . . . and the individuals (including Forest Service personnel) involved in the theft will be subject to arrest and prosecution." It worked, leaving the Forest Service with nowhere to unload the trespassing cattle. Finally, the agency lined up an auction house in Oklahoma and kept the deal quiet.

The actual roundup, a monumental undertaking requiring hired contractors, armed agents, trucks, horses and helicopters, didn't get underway until March 2004. Despite pious pledges to fellow ranchers and the media not to obstruct justice or otherwise interfere with the court-ordered operation, Kit Laney appeared on horseback in one of the corrals on March 14. According to court documents, he charged at federal law enforcement officers, threat-ening them, yelling profanities, lashing them with his reins, knocking down and injuring one of them, and attempting to tear down the fence. It took four officers and a blast of pepper spray to wrestle him, kicking with boots and spurs, to the ground. Eleven days later he was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of obstruction of justice, five counts of assaulting and interfering with federal officers and employees and one count of interfering with a court order. He faced up to 63 years in prison, but a plea agreement reduced his sentence to six months. Proceeds from the sale of the stock went to the government as partial reimbursement, leaving taxpayers about $150,000 short, according to the Forest Service.

But the Laneys and their ever-growing support group weren't finished. Sherry, who now called herself Sherry Farr, filed criminal complaints, signed by Sheriff Snyder, against a cowboy and a cattle hauler the Forest Service had hired to round up the trespassing cattle, alleging that they had transported animals in violation of the state Livestock Code. The cowboy, 20-year-old Isaiah Baker of Durango, Colorado, was stunned when he opened a "Criminal Summons" directing him to appear on June 14, 2004 at the Catron County Magistrate Court in Reserve, New Mexico, (about an eight-hour drive from his home) and warning that if he didn't show up "a warrant will be issued for [his] arrest." A conviction could have gotten him a year in jail.

Baker had never met Farr, and his contact with Kit Laney had been limited to getting whipped with his reins. Moreover, on the day he was alleged to have been transporting livestock he had actually been doing mechanical repairs at a Forest Service camp. According to a written and sworn declaration filed with the court by the Forest Service, Farr had evidently acquired Baker's contact information from the Catron County Sheriff's office, whose uniformed deputies had stopped both Baker and the cattle hauler "for no apparent reason other than to ascertain their identities."