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Nightmare on the Diamond Bar
New Mexico ranchers Kit and Sherry Laney won awards for stewardship. As thanks for their good work, and thanks to the feds, Kit was jailed.
By Susan Christy It's been nearly 20 years since Kit and Sherry Laney first saw the Diamond Bar Ranch in southwest New Mexico. They were really just kids then, full of dreams they never suspected would become a nightmare. The years have aged them now beyond their still-young appearance of only 43 and 42. But it was not from the hard horseman's work on the roadless ground that crosses the Gila Wilderness. It wasn't the sacrifices they made of ordinary modern conveniences that tore them apart as a couple. It wasn't even the gut-wrenching bitterness they felt toward the unfair way they were treated that finally brought Kit to jail, held indefinitely as a political hostage. What has changed the once idealistic couple so deeply and forever are the legal betrayals that pile up higher around them than the fines they face for trespass on their own ranch. Intent on continuing their families' tradition of tending to cattle in Catron and Sierra county, Kit and Sherry, at 22, found the broken-down Diamond Bar unimpressive, but in their price range. Stressed by nature and previous tenants, plagued by periodic drought that left some areas mere tufts of grass on barren ground, the Diamond Bar held an 1860s' heritage, but a recent history of neglect. They thought they had the youth, endurance and optimism to improve and restore the range, and they were even encouraged by a Forest Service Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the ranch requiring water source development that would keep cattle further away from canyon streambeds. The Laneys made a low offer on the place that no one thought the bank would take, but it did. Diamond Bar Cattle Company and Laney Cattle Company were in business with a permit for 1,188 head in January 1986. Sherry remembers that even though they were asked to quit making improvements for a time because of environmental reviews, ranching on the Diamond Bar was a good life, full of optimism, until about 1993. Four years later, in 1997, they were forced to leave. Diamond Bar's wilderness area prohibits motorized vehicles on about 85 percent of the range. Elevations on the approximately 272 square miles of the ranch range from 6,000 feet along the Gila River's East Fork to Diamond Peak at 10,000 feet. Temperatures stretch from subzero cold in the high canyons to a low broil on the summer flats. Trails are steep, snow can be belly deep and scrubby vegetation is just all that's there in some places, with or without cows. It is a land of challenges. "You’re not going to get up in the morning out here and get in your pickup," says Sherry. "You're going to go saddle your horse and ride many miles every day." Ride, they did. The Laneys' perseverance on the Diamond Bar earned them an Excellence in Grazing Management Award from the New Mexico section of the Society for Range Management in 1993. Even the Forest Service acknowledged that forage on 98 percent of the ranch's grazeable acreage was in fair or better condition. The Laneys worked hard to keep it that way. After ash and sediment from fires choked creeks, they kept cattle off succulent regrowth to help the watersheds recover. Thick trees crowded grasses, drought endured, and no matter what—to those who only saw without understanding—the Laneys were attacked, their cattle held to blame. In retrospect, environmental advocates began protesting the presence of cattle on the Diamond Bar almost immediately, when conservationists of many stripes and agendas began to chafe at the fact that cows were on "their" public land. Silver City resident Susan Schock, admittedly uncomfortable among rough stock raisers in her newly adopted home, had a Forest Service friend over for dinner in 1987. He told her that the Laneys wanted to build stock tanks and mentioned that someone ought to do something about it, since it could be a violation of the Wilderness Act. Schock and her friend Mike Sauber formed Gila Watch to block construction, alleging that stock tanks would corrupt the value of the wilderness they claimed to know by vicarious sense.
Gila Watch placed a full-page ad in the Albuquerque Journal in April 1995 showing a bone-thin calf on a worn pasture and claiming that, "one rancher commands the use of 145,000 acres of the…wilderness through the ownership of only 115 acres of private land. "The ad coincided with New Mexico's congressional delegation lending an ear to a new form of grazing permit Kit Laney was drafting to recognize private rights to water and access to the land. In the urban population center of Albuquerque, the ad was received like it was a dolphin-free tuna campaign. Confronted with the implied opposition, the Forest Service refused to accept the Laneys" allotment proposal despite its merit based on direct study of the watershed. The fight was on. After they built the first two upland water sources, as required, by the Forest Service MOU in the late 1980s, the agency asked the Laneys to hold off on any improvements for a year so some environmental reports could be done. Then the Forest Service left Diamond Bar's MOU out of the Gila Forest Plan in 1986. That oversight necessitated an evaluation under the litigation-friendly National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which has been so successfully used by environmental organizations to reduce grazing on public lands that there is now a how-to guide for it on the Sierra Club website. The environmental evaluations, most open to wildly non-scientific public comments, meant that the Diamond Bar went without improvements—not for just the year, but until 1995 when the Laneys were abruptly told to reduce their herd to 100 head, a catastrophic reduction in their investment. After appeals and congressional intervention delayed that decision, a June 1995 Record of Decision authorized just 300-800 cattle and 20 horses. Appeals went to deaf ears.
By the time the Diamond Bar's grazing permit expired in 1996, the Laneys weren't very trustful of the Forest Service-the agency had not upheld its side of the contract. When their proposed alternative permit was denied, Diamond Bar Cattle Company (DBCC) filed suit against the United States, declaring the ranch as lawful owner of water and grazing rights on forestlands within the allotment. In April 1997, the Federal District Court ruled in favor of the U.S., dismissed the complaint and ordered the Laneys to remove their livestock and pay grazing fees for the unauthorized grazing during the litigation period. An appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals was lost. As the Laneys were hopelessly pursuing a fair look at their rights in court, the Forest Service called for no grazing at all on the Diamond Bar, supposedly due to "extreme overgrazing during the period that DBCC's lawsuit was being proved through Federal District Court." The decision left open the possibility of allowing for possible grazing of 300 cattle and 20 horses at an undetermined future point in time. The Laneys paid the fines and left the Diamond Bar in 1997. They tried to ranch for four years on a place down at Gila, then on two different ranches over at Logan. Sherry says it was six years of hell. Their living conditions were meager. Winters were spent in a summer cabin with no running water. There was nowhere that they could really call home. Both Kit and Sherry kept riding, trying to keep their stock alive and well so that someday they could go home. "We took them off, we paid all of the fines. They said they’d let it rest for three to five years," says Sherry. Fines were not the only thing that Kit and Sherry paid. They divorced in 2000 and Sherry broke down, emotionally and physically. "I went through a lot of physical problems that had just been building up, "she says. "I was so give out. I was depressed. Mainly, I stayed at my mom's for two years and I felt like all I did was sleep." Kit and Sherry kept in touch by phone, mostly because of their shared cattle. "The cows kept us together," Sherry says. "I didn’t want to get rid of my half and couldn’t find a lease, as dry as it was." Kit was there for Sherry when her sister and her sister's children were murdered in July 2001. They talked through many issues that had gone unnoticed or ignored, and finally they reconciled. Sherry admits ruefully that though she's built herself back up, she just can't work as hard or ride as hard as she used to. But there was trouble to come at the Diamond Bar. The Laneys filed for a permit for 300 head at the Diamond Bar three times from 2001 to 2003 and, each time, a denial letter came in the mail. "They never say why. They didn't even give us lip service," says Sherry. "Just that they wouldn't consider it at the time." Range and riparian experts called in to assess the Diamond Bar's suitability for grazing said the allotment was in good-to-excellent shape. Environmentalists dismiss these studies, saying the experts are rancher-friendly.
Neighbors have always been supportive, but one has been missing over the past few years. Gila Permittees Association President Laura Schneberger recalls that the Forest Service and ranchers "used to be neighbors. The Forest Service used to sit down with ranchers to write Annual Operating Plans. Now, they issue edicts that ranchers must comply with." If you listen for awhile, it’s readily apparent that the Laneys are by no means the only ranchers having problems dealing with unrealistic management from an agency that has chosen to favor environmental agendas rather than the people on its land. Especially targeted are those near the wilderness area, long considered to be a lynchpin in the formulated Wildlands Project meant to remove human presence from as much as one-third of the North American continent. In February 2003, Kit, Sherry and friends found hope in the case of Wayne Hage, who has successfully waged a 20-year battle for vested rights on his ranch in Nevada. Kit Laney and Wray Schildnecht, an exhaustive researcher, familiarized themselves with the Hage case, poring over law dictionaries and books on private property rights. It gave them hope that the Diamond Bar too might win in court someday. But Hage, in a coldly intellectual manner that few understand, usually cautions his followers to patience. The Laneys hardly had such time. At the time, Sherry says, "We were pretty tapped out. On one place, they gave us two weeks to pay double on our lease. There wasn't anyplace in the world with any grass, except the Diamond Bar. We thought, there's a world of grass out here, why don't we use it?" Armed with Hage's inspiration and working to simplify the matter of preexisting water, property and use rights, the Laneys disbanded the Diamond Bar Cattle Company and filed in Catron County for their rights in the form of a deed. Since the company had lost it all, Kit and Sherry's recourse was to form a warranty deed and file for their property as individuals. In April 2003, Kit and Sherry moved home to the Diamond Bar. One night, a local ranger called the house and said the Forest Service wondered what their intentions were. Sherry told him simply, "We intend to use our private property." Environmentalists began visiting the Diamond Bar and reporting what they saw as livestock damage to Gila Forest Supervisor Marcia Andre. In June, the U.S. Attorney's office filed to enforce the 1997 decision to remove cattle from the Diamond Bar due to a lack of permit. Federal Judge William P. Johnson ruled in Albuquerque in December 2003, that Diamond Bar Cattle Company, and Kit and Sherry Laney, were in contempt of the previous court order and gave them 30 days to remove their cattle. The ruling was good news for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Center for Biological Diversity, Gila Watch, New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Trout Unlimited and Wilderness Watch. After reactivating and updating their 1996 motion to intervene, which came too late that time, the groups asked for an injunction last fall for immediate cattle removal from the Diamond Bar. They were recognized as interveners just two days before the judge's December decision. Negative editorials about the Laneys and the range conditions on the Diamond Bar read word for word from environmental organization press releases. Claiming that the U.S. Attorney's trespass charge against the Laneys "didn't show the extensive damage being caused by cattle," NWF staff attorney Tom Lustig said, "we intervened to show the court that the ongoing trespass was causing substantial environmental damage." Pictures disagree. Gila ranchers say that environmentalists know just where to go to get the pictures that they want. Point the camera 100 yards in another direction, says Schneberger, and you"ll get thick, high grass. "One hundred yards from a tank, everything is fine. When you have cattle that need water, areas near it will get heavy use. Kit and Sherry tried to develop water sources to keep the cattle out, but they [environmentalists] sued." Pictures taken by the Center for Biological Diversity and their friends point to a cozy relationship with the Forest Service. After visiting South Diamond Creek for two days in July, the Center sent Andre photos of cows, noting "cow manure everywhere" and complaining of trails that were "pounded to fine dust with cattle hoof marks everywhere." Lustig crowed that once the Laneys are off the ranch, the agency would inspect for damage, tally the costs and charge Kit and Sherry for stream degradation, replanting of wild grasses and anything else they could find. The Forest Service has already done worse. The contractor they hired to impound the Laneys' cattle was no cowboy. Guarded by 40 or so armed Forest Service personnel, the ranch was crisscrossed by helicopters in early March searching for cattle. Roads and trails were blocked, the Laneys were watched as trespassers on their own ranch. Other ranchers went to the New Mexico Livestock Board to ask for help after word spread that no auction in New | |||||||||||||
