[pct-l] Defiant rancher once more loses grazing case, may now go to jail

Not PCT, but a subject close to some
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  Defiant rancher once more loses grazing case, may now go to jail

  By Scott Sonner 
  ASSOCIATED PRESS 

  November 18, 2000 

  RENO -- A Nevada rancher who challenged federal authority over the national forests was found guilty yesterday of illegally grazing his cattle on government land, and prosecutors said they'll ask that he be sent to jail.

  Ruby Valley rancher Cliff Gardner has battled the government for six years, defying orders to remove his livestock from a national forest even after losing an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

  U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben in Reno found Gardner guilty yesterday of two counts of failure to remove unauthorized livestock from the national forest system, each punishable by up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

  The Justice Department sought the criminal misdemeanor charges after federal agents allegedly caught Gardner's cattle on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest near Elko, Nev., again this past April and July.

  The Forest Service revoked Gardner's grazing permit in 1994 for violation of the terms and conditions outlining allowed uses of the national forest lands adjacent to his Ruby Valley ranch.

  The Justice Department won an injunction in U.S. District Court a year later to keep Gardner's cattle out of the national forest.

  Yet Gardner refused to recognize the Forest Service's control of the land and challenged federal ownership in an appeal to the circuit court in San Francisco.

  The 9th Circuit reaffirmed the government ownership of the land in 1996, said federal officials.

  Copyright 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. 
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/sat/news/news_1n18rancher.html



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