Sagebrush Rebellion II
A Fire in Ruby Valley
First of a Series
Sagebrush Rebellion II
by Steve Miller
copyright © 1996, Electric Nevada
| That August in 1992 the fire in
Ruby Valley had swept across the rangeland and right up
to their home before coming under control at the last
minute. |
||
| So two years later, when Cliff
and Bertha Gardner saw the land around their Dawley Creek
Ranch again growing dangerously heavy with range-fire
fuel, they decided they had to do something different. They
believed that the '92 fire there in Elko County had been
as large as it was for two reasons: 1)
Exceptional rain and snow the previous winter had
produced a bumper crop of range forage that spring. 2)
U.S. Forest Service officials, believing that the range
had needed a year of rest, had designated it exempt from
grazing for that year. The
combination had been disastrous: acres of heavy forage,
ungrazed, had sat there until tinder-dry, says Reno
attorney Glade Hall, adding that when the summer
lightning storms came, as they always do, the land burst
immediately into flame. Hundreds of thousands of state
and federal taxpayer dollars were spent fighting the
fire, which burned over 2,000 acres. But
U.S. Forest Service officials apparently didn't
acknowledge they had done anything wrong. So they simply
reseeded the burned area and informed the Gardners that
now the land would need two years with no grazing. In
1993, the Gardners went along. But in April and early May
of 1994, a series of rain and snow storms again created
superb growing conditions for high desert vegetation and
the fields above the Gardner's ranch house again saw an
abundant burst of plant growth.
"The Gardners knew from experience," says a
brief filed by Hall with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
in San Francisco, "that if such forage were left
unharvested it would create an even greater risk of
serious fire.
"The Garners requested that someone from the Forest
Service investigate these condition and that they be
allowed to graze the areas adjacent to their home and
outbuildings," writes Hall. But
the federal forest service officials did not seem
concerned.
What was most important to them, Hall told Electric
Nevada, was the bureaucracy's official federal plan for
the Humboldt National Forest. And in the plan there was a
rule, he says, that "if there's a fire you should
let the land rest for two years." So
the Forest Service didn't bother to go out and look at
the heavy forage fuel load. Gardner's request that
someone investigate was simply denied. It
was the same with Gardner's request for temporary
permission to let cattle on the forage-heavy range so it
could be grazed down to safe levels.
Though federal regulations do allow Forest Service
personnel to issue "temporary grazing permits ... to
use forage created by unusually favorable weather
conditions," the Forest Service denied that request
by Gardner also.
"They just sat in their office and said 'no,'"
Hall told Electric Nevada.
What Cliff Gardner then said was, 'It's my family and my
home.'" And
with the fields above the ranch house again bursting with
ungrazed forage -- vegetation sure to become a fire
hazard as it dried over the coming hot summer months,
says attorney Hall - Cliff Gardner and his wife Bertha
sent a letter May 13, 1994, notifying the Forest Service
they were going to put the cattle out on the range
anyway, and graze it down to safe levels.
Events moved swiftly after that. On May 18, 1994, the
Forest Service came out and
|
officially "observed" Gardner's
cattle on the forbidden area. A day or so later a
hand-delivered agency letter notified Gardner he had
until May 22 to removed the cattle. On June 9th the
Forest Service cancelled his grazing permit and told him
he could appeal that decision. |
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