The County Supremacy Movement pupated in Mew Mexico's Catron County--a 6,900-square-mile chunk of arid forest and high desert in the southern part of the state where a few loud, obnoxious Wise-Users got their backs up about new grazing and timbering restrictions on the Gila National Forest. In their capacity as members of the Catron County Commission, they ordained a series of outlandish, grossly unconstitutional laws that supposedly require federal agencies to ask county permission to manage federal resources on federal land.

Recently, the commission officially resolved that the Feds' "unabashed, open arrogance and disregard for our constitutional form of government has given rise to public anger, and if left unchallenged will undoubtedly lead to much physical violence."

In 1994, county supremacists frightened officials of the Gila National Forest and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish into indefinitely postponing re-introduction of Gila trout in two Catron County streams critical to recovery of this federally endangered species. Restoration had been about to get underway when the Gila Fish and Gun Club gushed crocodile tears about imagined environmental dangers of antimycin--the eminently safe, utterly dependable rotenone replacement by which the recovery team had planned to clean out the Gila trout's alien competition. In a statement released to the press, club president Manuel T. Serna warned against commitment to wild, self-sustaining populations of Gila trout, explaining that "fish hatcheries are a better alternative."

Clyde Brown of Catron County resents the business inconveniences caused by the endangered Gila trout, the southwestern willow flycatcher (proposed for endangered status), the threatened loach minnow and spikedace, and all the other silly, insignificant specks of genetic jetsam floating into oblivion. "Tell me, what earthly good are these 'blessed' minnows anyway?" he recently demanded of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "Just give me one good reason why they benefit mankind... I think you bureaucrats had better back off before someone gets seriously hurt. Who among you would want to lose your life for a bird, even if he can sing, or a nearly microscopic-size minnow?"

On August 2, 1994 Catron County passed a resolution stipulating that the heads of all households should own guns. Swaggering around the hearing with a pistol strapped to his protruding chest, was one Skip Price--a county supremacist who titillates the local press by flying the American flag upside down at his Double Heart Ranch outside Apache Creek. "Our country's sliding into the same thing Hitler had," the Albuquerque Tribune quotes him as saying. "He had brown shirts. They're green shirts and black shirts now--Forest Service and your SWAT teams, ATF. I've told them that if they come out here to fence off my streams, they're meeting bullets." Now Price tells me that, while those were indeed his words, he hadn't meant to imply he'd be knocking off any Feds. He's not really sure what brand of pistol he was packing: "maybe a Ruger."

And so far, the only thing he's shot is his truck, whose starter and manifold he took out with an accidental discharge through the floorboards.

--T.W. --

--Scott Reed, in The Idaho Law Review

County Supremacy - Just Another Wise Use Ruse

by Ted Williams

With dust in my nose and grit in my socks, I trudged up into a clutter of plywood casinos strewn between piles of silver-mine tailings on the badlands of southwestern Nevada. It was mid-September 1992, and I'd come to the remote town of Tonapah, the seat of Nye County, to document what overgrazing is doing to fish and wildlife and to interview a mob of shrill welfare ranchers who lease public rangeland at less than a quarter fair-market value and who are trying to depose the United States Forest Service.

Leading the federal government in this confrontation is Jim Nelson, 54, the smart, tough supervisor of the Toiyabe National Forest who won FR&R's Stickleback Award for defending America's fish and wildlife against me-first privatizers of a pseudo-popular movement which has changed its name with each defeat from "Sagebrush Rebellion" to "Wise Use Movement" to "Home Rule," and, most recently, to "County Supremacy."

"We could have another Waco out here," says Nelson. "Some of these guys are talking about killing us. If the counties did have this land, they'd hammer the hell out of it, and the public wouldn't have access, much less anything else. Riparian areas are the arteries of the planet, and they're getting destroyed all over the West. We're just not going to let that keep happening. We've had an ecology team working on riparian for the last five field seasons, and we're getting the science behind us to really support what we're trying to do."

Three years ago Tonapah rancher Wayne Hage, who is suing the Forest Service for grazing regulations that he says amount to a wrongful "taking" of private property, repeatedly defied orders to get his stock off sensitive public land. Finally, Nelson's patience ran out, and he rounded up Hage's cows and sold them at auction. This sort of bold enforcement action just plain wasn't done by federal resource managers, and for once the me-firsters were speechless, if only for a day or two. Soon, however, they were screaming for Nelson's blood. They got not a drop because he had taken the precaution of briefing Forest Service brass and even the U.S. Congress.

The Toiyabe's Tonapah Ranger District is everything the town is not--big and lovely, though sometimes the beauty is the sterile, lunar sort of Keats' riparian zone where "the sedge has withered from the lake, and no birds sing." At 1.2 million acres, it is larger than many national forests, and it contains a third of all designated wilderness in Nevada. District Ranger Dave Grider--one of Nelson's equally resolute understudies--figures this cold, fragile desert country can safely support about one cow per square mile. In comparison, some parts of the Mid-West can support ten per acre.

Standing between aspen-clad Table Mountain and the bald Toquima Range, Grider and I looked out over 25 miles of Monitor Valley. Now, where Great Basin wild rye once lapped the stirrups of the pioneers, dust devils danced over a dead sea of purple sage. "You can't blame all this on the ranchers," Grider declared. "The Forest Service hasn't always done its job."

Throughout Hage's allotment Grider and I encountered hideous erosion, an invasion of rabbit bush, wire grass and sage, hoof-hardened earth that shed rain like oiled canvas, and blown-out carcasses of trout streams whose dry channels were 20 feet across and 15 feet deep.

When streamside vegetation is healthy it cools and stabilizes trout habitat, slows and spreads runoff over the floodplain so that rich, renewing sediments settle around stems and roots. But when riparian cover is ripped out and beaten down by bovine teeth and hooves, rain and smowmelt blast away stream banks, setting off "headcuts" that race along narrow channels, unzipping them like overstuffed duffel bags. The rapids that form at mouths of feeder creeks set off more headcuts, and soon a delicate vascular system transporting the West's life's blood opens into one gaping wound. Surface water warms, stagnates, evaporates. Groundwater drops. Streams and wetlands cease to exist, and the land takes on a new, stable, hopeless condition called "ephemeral wash."

Cow-induced desertification of Monitor Valley got underway long before Nelson, Grider or even Hage arrived on the scene. As bad as it is, however, the disease is not terminal on Forest Service land. I wasn't so sure about the prognosis for Hage's private holdings. Displayed here was the national, cow-pie-in-the-sky promise of County Supremacy--scarcely a five-o'clock shadow of grass roots, just a dusty rodeo-scape of compacted dirt and encrusted dung under obscene, fish-spangled signs that shouted: "Member Private Land Wildlife Stronghold. A nationwide project. This landowner cares! He has committed his property to a significant conservation and wildlife program benefiting YOU."

All modern maps show that 87 percent of Nevada is federally owned; but Nye County Commissioner Dick Carver says this is just a superstition. "There is no such thing as a national forest," he proclaims. Carver and his fellow county commissioners have passed a resolution "recognizing that the State of Nevada owns all public lands within the borders of the State." In addition to annexing the Toiyabe National Forest, the Nye County Commission has announced that "all ways, pathways, trails, roads, county highways, and similar public travel corridors...on public lands in Nye County are hereby declared Nye County public roads." Jim Nelson, however, has no plans to deed over the forest because, as a condition of being admitted to the union, Nevada voluntarily relinquished this and other territorial lands to the federal government in 1864.

Last summer Nye County revealed that it would celebrate the Fourth of July by constructing an unauthorized road through Forest Service land in Jefferson Canyon. When the commission so informed Dave Grider, he advised it that such a project would amount to criminal activity. But County Commissioner Carver claimed it was the Feds who were the scofflaws. Stepping briskly to the grandstand, he issued this statement to the press on July 3, 1994: "I have asked the Nye County Sheriff's Department to have a deputy here tomorrow, and if anybody obstructs us putting in this road, I want them hauled to the slammer."

The morning of the Forth found Carver mounted on a county bulldozer at Jefferson Canyon, pontificating about the vile, ubiquitous Feds to an enthusiastic rabble of several hundred county supremacists, some of whom wore sidearms. When Carver at last commenced hacking out the road, Grider declined to provide the hoped-for fireworks. Instead, Special Agent Dave Young vainly held up a sign that read: "Stop Disturbance. Not Authorized." At this writing (mid-November) no charges have been filed, but Grider says: "We are completing a detailed investigation, and it's our intention to turn over the factual account to the U.S. Attorneys and let them decide about citations." Meanwhile, Carver has filed a complaint with the Nye County District Attorney, charging Young and Grider with" obstructing a public official in performance of his duties." Comments Grider: "If the Toiyabe really belongs to Nevada, read me where it says a county commissioner's duties involve climbing on a county cat and bulldozing across state lands."

On the Humboldt National Forest, which Nelson has been looking after as acting supervisor since last June, me-first ranchers in the guise of county government are even more defiant. In 1994--the eighth year of a severe drought cycle--they bawled like branded calves when the Forest Service sent their stock home early. "We're not trying to eliminate grazing," declares Humboldt resource staff officer Ben Siminoe. "We're just saying, if we're going to have grazing out there, it's going to be in conjunction with the other resources and in compliance with our forest plan."

The Humboldt is a beautiful, delicate forest with important habitat for redband trout (a state species of special concern), bull trout and Bonneville cutthroats (designated as "sensitive" by the Forest Service), and Lahontan cutthroat trout (a federally threatened species). "I was just out there on the ground," says Jim Nelson, "and in every case [cattle] utilization in riparian zones was between 80 and 100 percent. The riparian areas are just plowed. I understand why this has happened--we've never really dealt with that issue in an aggressive way over there. But I told everyone on the forest that I don't want to see those kind of conditions again. I want the land administered according to the standards. Next July when the cows go on, and we start administering those standards, the scat's really going to hit the fan."

Apparently impressed by all the flap about national forests being make believe, Elko County rancher Don Duval drove his backhoe onto the Humboldt and installed a collection box in a natural spring used by mule deer and other wildlife. That done, he ran 350 feet of pipe down to his cattle, thereby eliminating the riparian zone. The Forest Service was not amused. It hauled him into federal court, where Magistrate Phyllis Atkins sentenced him to one year's probation and a fine of $2,000, $1,800 of it to be suspended if he restored the spring "to the satisfaction of the Forest Service."

Duval had packed gravel around the spring box and left the surplus on the ground. Rather than make him pick it up, the range conservationist who wrote the rehabilitation plan said he could just spread it around and cover it with sufficient topsoil to allow revegetation. Rummaging about for a means of distorting the facts, county supremacists seized upon the topsoil option. The "dirt," they said, would "destroy" the spring. State Assemblyman John Carpenter (R-Elko) filed a petition for declaratory relief, alleging that the removal of Duval's unauthorized development would cause irreparable damage to land and wildlife. The sycophantic Elko Daily Free Press rhapsodized about Duval's "improvement" and, using the Elko County Commission as a Greek chorus, whipped local ranchers to prayer-meeting frenzy. A phone-a-thon to "save" Kelley Spring was organized by a group calling itself the "Kelley Spring Protective Association." There were meetings, rallies and demonstrations. Children were made to stand beside the spring and sing the national anthem.

On September 24, 1994, in what the Free Press gleefully called the "Ruby Valley Tea Party," perhaps 300 county supremacists assembled at Kelley Spring and erected a fence, thereby preventing deer and other wildlife, supposedly flourishing because of Duval's "improvement," from drinking. The Elko County Commission, which had voted to endorse the fencing, donated a metal stake. Another stake bore the name of Nye County. Signs were posted around the perimeter: "No Trespassing for the purpose of destroying this spring." And: "The land inside this enclosure, and the water, belong to the people of the great state of Nevada as well as all other public lands within the external borders of the State of Nevada."

Rancher Duval rose eagerly to the role of abused child. "I morally cannot force myself to throw dirt on top of clear water and make a mud bog that will destroy the resource," he sniffed in a letter to Magistrate Atkins which she read first in the Free Press. Nelson and Atkins, however, weren't messing around, and, as Duval himself cannily prognosticated, it was either return the water and replace the riparian zone or "be thrown in jail." So on October 4, he backed down and took out his development.

The next day about 40 county supremacists put it back in. "The citizens of Elko County have shown they have the guts to take matters into their own hands and they will continue to fight small battles here and there to improve their own lives," oozed the Free Press. At this writing, box and diversion pipe remain in place, and Kelley Spring is still fenced. The Forest Service vows to act, but--to avoid the confrontation and media circus sought by the ranchers--after things have "cooled down."

Another Elko County resident who has taken matters into his own hands is Cliff Gardner, an aspiring guru of County Supremacy who thinks John Carpenter is soft on federal intervention and last November lost to him in a bitter campaign for State Assemblyman. In late August 1992 a major range fire swept across a Humboldt Forest allotment where Gardner was allowed to graze his cattle. To protect Gardner's ranch from flood damage, the Forest Service spent $33,700, not counting labor, planting grass, forbs and shrubs; to rehabilitate 1,000 acres of prime winter deer range, the Nevada Department of Wildlife contributed labor and $5,200; and to be a good neighbor, Placer Dome (a mining company) kicked in $1,800.

Because the forest plan required that the area be rested from cattle for at least two years, Gardner was informed that he wouldn't be permitted to run his cows on the burned area in 1994. He could, however, graze the rest of the allotment if he'd erect a fence around the burned part--a project the Forest Service said it would be pleased to help him with. Gardner agreed, but when district personnel came out to help him with the fence, he changed his mind. Then, on May 18, he defied the Feds by turning out 100 head of cattle. The Forest Service revoked all his grazing privileges in June, but at this writing he has 160 head trespassing on the burned area. "We chose not to round them up and auction them off," says a Humboldt Forest spokesman, "because we think his strategy is the same as Wayne Hage's, that he wants another 'takings' court case... The criminal investigation is ongoing, and appropriate action will be taken."

The burned area sustained not only deer but, in Dawley Creek, wild brook trout. Was it really wise to sprinkle unauthorized cows among the ashes, I asked Gardner? Absolutely! "Cattle," he averred, "are a boon to fish and wildlife. It's a complete fallacy that grazing is destructive. Picture your yard. You go out there every week and cut that grass back." I then asked Gardner if he thought the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation had chosen wisely when it recently presented its coveted Chuck Yeager Award, for valor in defense of fish and wildlife, to Jim Nelson. No, he did not. "Jim Nelson," he cried, "is one of the leading socialists within the Forest Service. He has done more to run key ranchers off the range than any other forest official." But Nelson, who calls himself "the best friend the ranchers have," points out that it's not in the ranchers' interests to destroy the earth's capacity to produce forage. "I want to keep cattle on the public range," he says. "It's a way of life; it's important for local economics... But we have to have good management."

Will Gardner continue to flout grazing regulations in 1995? You bet! "I'll just put my cattle out because those permits were only issued in recognition of my underlying right that existed before the Forest Service existed. It's just eliminating their management of the land, is all it's doing. My sovereignty still exists out there."

Hage, Carver, Carpenter, Duval and Gardner had shown me what County Supremacy promises for wild things and wild places. Three hundred miles northwest of Tonapah, in the Toiyabe's Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, District Ranger Guy Pence showed me the promise of enlightened stewardship. As we trotted our horses up along the East Branch of the Carson River, grasshoppers clattered underneath us, and ferruginous hawks orbited beside mountain-top aspens that glowed neon yellow in the low morning sun. Soon we were up and into the open woods, threading between thick-trunked Jeffrey pines on the rough river-side trail to a big, wet meadow acquired by the Forest Service three years earlier. A black bear watched from a pine-cone-littered slope. A bald eagle sailed out of a cottonwood. Little Lahontan cutthroats held in green, graveled pools.

Pence, who had decided that the meadow needed a chance to heal, had kicked the cows off three years earlier. It was still in dreadful shape, but now willows, alders and aspens were growing back. Now the raw banks were closing and stabilizing, and unpalatable plants like cheat grass and iris were retreating toward the uplands. At marked reference points we dismounted, and Pence held up photos he'd taken when the cows were on. Only three years, and the difference was stunning. Given half a chance, nature can fix almost anything we do to fish and wildlife habitat.

Each spring now, more vegetation will slow the floods. More fertile sediments will settle out, encouraging more growth. Bars will build to the top of headcuts. The canopy will close, and the stream channel will zip itself up. The East Branch of the Carson will cool and deepen. Benthic organisms will flourish. Lahontan cutthroats will proliferate and grow larger.

Maybe one day soon you will float a dry fly down a dark, wild, deep glide and watch a two-pounder turn and follow and drift up to intercept it. Maybe Jim Nelson will still be running the Toiyabe and Humboldt National Forests. Maybe the county supremacists will be calling themselves something else. Maybe they'll be venting even more gas and wind.

Maybe no one will be listening.

© Ted Williams

Reprinted here with his permission. Williams is the conservation editor for Fly Rod & Reel magazine, where this article first appeared. He is also the "Incite" columnist for Audubon magazine.