BLM won’t enforce Nevada grazing restrictions in new dispute

BATTLE MOUNTAIN — Federal land managers say they won’t immediately enforce drought-related grazing restrictions in northern Nevada so as to avoid confrontation with ranchers openly defying the order.

Conservationists say it’s another example of the government caving in to “scofflaw ranchers” like Cliven Bundy, who continues to graze his cattle illegally in southern Nevada after the BLM backed down from an armed standoff last year.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesman Rudy Evenson says ranchers Dan and Eddyann Filippini have been notified they’re violating the closure ordered in 2013. But he says BLM acting-state director John Ruhs told them the agency won’t try to stop them while they continue negotiating a compromise.

Evenson told the Elko Daily Free Press, “We’re not going to come out there and have a big confrontation.”