Land barons

Mesquite cattle rancher Cliven Bundy says Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie told him this week that word had come down from Washington, D.C.: The plans of the Bureau of Land Management to seize Mr. Bundy's 500 head of cattle grazing south of Mesquite have been suspended, for now.

"He said I should get back to ranchin'," Mr. Bundy said.

But Mr. Bundy, 65, realizes this is just a truce in an ongoing battle. He is the last active cattle rancher in Clark County -- his family has been using the land for more than 100 years. But the BLM wants him off.

The dispute has dragged on for more than a decade, ever since a federal court sided with the government. Things grew more tense in recent weeks when the BLM threatened to forcibly round up the cattle and Mr. Bundy made noise about resistance.

Could we have a better case study to highlight that the federal government controls too much land in Nevada?

Citizens of any state east of the Rockies would likely riot if the federal government proposed to take over 86 percent of their land. The crippling economic consequences of such a taking would be obvious.

Yet that is precisely the situation in Nevada.

Yes, in recent years members of our congressional delegation have successfully shepherded through Congress legislation that allowed the BLM to auction tracts of Southern Nevada real estate for development or other use. But the resulting revenue was used, in part, to purchase "environmentally sensitive" property in other areas of the state, leaving no net reduction of the acreage in federal hands.

More must be done.

Nevada lawmakers should join Utah and Arizona in attempting to wrest control of federal land. Their legislatures are pushing bills that urge Washington to hand over much of its vast holdings -- excluding national parks, wilderness areas or military installations -- to the states within a couple of years.

It's a battle worth fighting. The federal government controls too much of Nevada.