Kevin Macdonald, with Clark County Air Quality Management, releases a desert tortoise into the wild after being recovered at a construction site earlier this year, Tues. Oct. 15; 2019.
Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023 | 2 a.m.
An environmental conservation group is suing the federal government and Clark County on claims of failing to protect the Mojave desert tortoise and other wildlife species in Southern Nevada from habitat destruction caused by illegal grazing on federal lands they say can be partially attributed to noted rancher Cliven Bundy.
The Western Watersheds Project, an Idaho-based nonprofit with more than 14,000 members nationally and offices in 11 Western states — including Nevada — filed a 29-page complaint Thursday in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.
The lawsuit names Clark County, as well as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The group argues that defendants have failed to protect the Mojave desert tortoise — which it claims should be considered endangered — as well as 77 other “rare” species subject to the Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan, or MSHCP. The plan was agreed to in 2001, allowing the development of about 170,000 acres on the outskirts of Las Vegas in exchange for increased wildlife protections, according to the filing.
For decades, the group argued, unchecked trespass livestock grazing has decimated the tortoise population, throwing it into “long-term decline” and potential extinction that can be further exacerbated by a slew of solar projects spanning more than 13,000 acres in the tortoises’ habitat.
“Between the impacts of Cliven Bundy’s 30 years of trespass livestock grazing in Gold Butte National Monument and the conversion of ungrazed desert habitats to solar farms, the desert tortoise and other species are getting cheated out of their side of the Habitat Conservation Plan bargain,” Erik Molvar, executive director of Western Watersheds Project, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit.
“These species were supposed to be getting increased protection on public lands in Clark County in exchange for having their habitat on private lands permanently destroyed,” Molvar continued. “But the federal agencies have failed to deliver.”
The Department of the Interior and Clark County declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.
The Western Watersheds Project argues that the terms of the MSHCP were supposed to permanently close the area to livestock grazing, though Bundy has “notoriously continued to illegally graze his cattle in trespass on these fragile desert lands,” the release states.
Bundy is not mentioned in the complaint.
The nonprofit further alleges the solar projects approved by BLM will “fragment and degrade” tortoise habitat on further lands, and due to their falling population constitutes a violation of the Endangered Species Act.
“Clark County and the federal agencies wanted to preserve public lands to compensate for development around Las Vegas, but they haven’t ensured that the mitigation lands it is counting on to recover desert tortoises aren’t being destroyed by livestock operators and energy developers,” Molvar said in the release. “Otherwise, it’s a lose-lose proposition for wildlife, and that violates the recovery mandate of the Endangered Species Act.”
Bundy, 78, was accused of leading an armed standoff that stopped federal agents from rounding up his cattle in 2014 after failing to pay grazing permit fees since 1993, amassing more than $1 million in fines. A mistrial was declared in 2018, and the 15 counts against him and his sons were ultimately dismissed in federal court.
The standoff was sparked after protesters, many of whom were armed, traveled to his Bunkerville ranch about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas from around the country en masse to prevent BLM agents from seizing the cattle. Bundy, a proponent of the sovereign citizens movement, had argued his family had owned the ranch since before the federal government held jurisdiction, thus rendering the government’s authority meritless.
The protests ultimately culminated in an hourslong blockade of Interstate 15 near Bunkerville on April 12, 2014, that entailed a standoff between protesters and approximately 200 federal agents. Then-Clark County Assistant Sheriff (and current Nevada Gov.) Joe Lombardo reportedly defused the situation, leading BLM to ultimately stand down and suspend its cattle roundup.
Many of those protesters included far-right militia members from extremists’ groups such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, who stayed at the ranch after the standoff ended.
Bundy was quoted in 2018 saying that if BLM ever came to seize his cattle over unpaid grazing fees again, they would encounter “the very same thing as last time.”
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