may be taking their protest to the strip. That might make the federal sniper's job easier too.

Spent time on my great aunt and uncles homestead in Idaho, and learned a few things on these matters. Most of the homesteaders had little money, and the acreage that they were limited to was too small to support a herd of cattle big enough to make a profit. The adjacent federal lands could be used for grazing if they obtained a permit, put if a rancher had a bad year, there was little or no money for the permit, so he'd take his chances. More often than not, the rancher made out, because his cattle were left alone, or not found. Too, often though, some of them got use to winning the bet each year, until they lost the following year. Even then, they still may have made out overall, thought now they were on the government's radar, and if they'd gotten themselves in a deep enough hole where they could not pay the permits every year, they were left to herding sheep, and that made the rest of the ranchers unhappy. I also learned a lot about fights over water rights. One day we woke up, ate our breakfast, and went out to do our chores, and the creek was dry. My great-uncle suspected one of two things. Either the beavers had made a dam upstream or one of the ranchers, upstream was siphoning water off, and leaving the rest dry. Given the look on his face, and him hauling off down the road with his rifle, I think he more suspected the latter. We'll that happened several times while I was there. Half the time it was the former, and of the time it was the later.

Now, that being said, that land is my land, and it's your land, and I'm counting on the Federal government to manage it wisely, for my generation, and generations following. I know it's an extreme example of poor land mismanagement, but just look at Haiti vs the Dominican Republic.