A Cautionary Tale

Rather than place himself at the mercy of the Catron County Magistrate Court, Baker transferred the bogus criminal complaint to federal court where, not surprisingly, Farr dismissed the charge. Still, the court granted Baker's October 28, 2005 motion for sanctions against Farr, assessing her $6,409.34 to cover Baker's attorney's fees and other expenses and finding "that Ms. Farr's conduct [in this and past litigation] showed a disregard for the orderly process of justice," that she had "stubbornly and repeatedly ignored this Court's findings and conclusions on the underlying civil matters; attempted to block and circumvent the execution of this Court's Contempt Order authorizing impoundment by publishing public threats and mailing intimidating letters; and abused the judicial system by bringing contrived Magistrate Court criminal prosecutions complaints against Forest Service contractors," and that she had filed "frivolous and oppressive litigation brought in bad faith."

Tom Lustig, the National Wildlife Federation attorney who represented Baker and the environmental community in its interventions on behalf of fish, wildlife and wilderness, told me this: "Kit and Sherry were puppets. As the federal judge said during Kit Laney's criminal case: 'You've gotten some terrible advice. And you made a terrible mistake by acting on it.' The papers Farr and Laney submitted to the federal court in their attempt to defend their ongoing trespass were barely readable. They're like babes in the woods; and I kind of feel sorry for them for having to suffer the consequences of others' schemes."

While the Laneys are indeed hopelessly lost and hideously ill-advised in matters of the law, it's a mistake to dismiss them or their saga as aberrations. The story is less the behavior of Kit and Sherry than the behavior of their puppeteers, a group that abounds with livestock growers far less aberrant, in fact quite typical. The single honest and accurate statement I have heard from the Paragon Foundation is its declaration that "every livestock organization in the state of New Mexico" supports its outlandish contention that the Livestock Board shouldn't have acknowledged the Forest Service's legal right and public obligation to transport the Laneys' trespassing cattle.

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) requested an investigation by the US Department of Agriculture into the Forest Service's handling of the Laney case. "It should not have come to this point," he declared. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) saw an opportunity for the feds to mend their ways, stating "the end of the Laney case gives the Forest Service a window of opportunity to begin improving its relationship with permitees. The acrimonious atmosphere generated by the Laney situation is not helpful to the Forest Service or livestock producers." Domenici had written language for a 2003 insert into a budget bill that allows both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to automatically renew grazing permits under the same conditions and without environmental review until 2008.

"Are developments in southwestern New Mexico tumbling out of control and setting up a situation like the one at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where three innocent citizens were gunned down by federal law enforcement officials?" demanded The Lewis News internet service.

"The tragedy is that if the big guys succeed in taking the property and life work of several generations of Laneys, they can also take the property and life work of every other Western rancher whose livestock graze on so-called public land," proclaimed Henry Lamb, executive vice president of a front group called the Environmental Conservation Organization.

Range Magazine, which describes itself as an "award-winning quarterly devoted to the issues that threaten the West, its people, lifestyles, lands, and wildlife," ran a sob story entitled "Nightmare on the Diamond Bar" lamenting the Laneys' courageous and torturous negotiation of "twenty years of tough ranching terrain, every day with the hardship of a continuous losing battle with the Forest Service and nearly every anti-grazing, clean-water-loving, forest-guarding organization and concern in the country." The author reported (accurately enough save for the word "successfully") that "Kit, Sherry and friends found hope in the case of Wayne Hage, who has successfully waged a 20-year battle for vested rights on his ranch in Nevada [and who also had his trespassing cattle rounded up and sold at auction by the Forest Service]" and that "Kit Laney and Wray Schildnecht, an exhaustive researcher, familiarized themselves with the Hage case, poring over law dictionaries and books on private property rights. It gave them hope that the Diamond Bar too might win in court someday." Instructed a sidebar: "Put aside for a moment the overdrawn comparisons to Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union. Laney is an American political prisoner even if his iron shackles have been removed." The piece concluded with an editor's note urging readers to help the Laneys through the Paragon Foundation.

But after Kit Laney was carted off to federal prison, the Paragon Foundation expunged from its Web site all information about the allegedly tragic case of the Laneys. Their usefulness as puppets had run its course.

"Gila trout recovery is progressing in fits and starts," reports David Propst, project leader for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. Propst is less eager than the feds to downlist the fish, submitting that the recovery goal hasn't been met. That goal calls for the replication of each stream population in another stream far enough away that a natural catastrophe such as a forest fire can't extinguish both. "We've done that for every population except Whiskey Creek's," Propst says. Now there are 12 or 13 populations, (depending on how you count tribs), and 80 miles of occupied habitat. Soon there will be 100 miles. To me that's impressive, cons-idering what I saw in 1994 and what Propst and his state and federal colleagues have had to contend with since then.

But what's also impressive--and frightening--is that two rogue ranchers and their convoy of tacticians, attorneys, cheerleaders and financial backers could push the United States government around for two decades, intimidating federal resource managers into contravening the Endangered Species Act, separating US taxpayers from at least $150,000, and destroying fish, wildlife and plant communities on this fragile and beautiful public land.