LAS VEGAS — A year since a tense standoff between a Nevada rancher’s armed supporters and federal land managers, Cliven Bundy’s cattle still roam public lands, more than $1.1 million worth of grazing fees have yet to be paid and Bundy has become a Tea Party celebrity in the West.
How to mark the anniversary? Invite people to camp, splash in the Virgin River and barbecue homegrown Bundy beef near where Bundy says he took a constitutional stand against federal authority on state land.
“People are here to just show their love, without the high tension there was. We’re celebrating freedom,” family matriarch Carol Bundy said Friday as campers arrived in motor homes and tents for a three-day event at the Bundy melon farm and cattle ranch outside Bunkerville. American flags and other banners fluttered from poles Friday at a site that became a speakers’ platform during the days before and after the standoff last year. Volunteers set up chairs and lighting below a highway bridge over the river plain.
Bundy has unfinished business with the federal Bureau of Land Management — and perhaps with the FBI, Las Vegas police and other agencies — after the April 12, 2014, standoff.
It pitted federal BLM police against heavily armed states’ rights advocates who had converged on the Bundy ranch to stop a roundup of Bundy cattle from public rangeland.The BLM backed off, citing safety concerns.
Bureau spokeswoman Celia Boddington released a statement Friday saying the agency “remains resolute” in its goal to resolve the Bundy cattle dispute administratively and judicially.
