Speaking to a local TV news program Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada declared: “This isn’t over.” And he is certainly correct. The showdown between BLM and Cliven Bundy – the last rancher in Clark County, Nev. – was but the latest battle in a long-running conflict.
Supposedly at issue was the desert tortoise, a reptile on the endangered species list that purportedly could not coexist on the land with Bundy’s cattle. But why, many asked, would the turtle suddenly be threatened by animals it had cohabited with for the 100-plus years the Bundy ranch has been in operation?A BLM document unearthed last week discusses mitigation strategies for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone, just southwest of the Bundy ranch. The “mitigation strategy” proposed to use the grazing lands near the Bundy ranch as a kind of sanctuary for the desert tortoise, because the entire region is slated for a large number of solar, wind and geothermal energy generation facilities.
The solar projects will obliterate most of the turtle’s natural habitat.
Bloggers quickly made a connection between the effort to remove Bundy’s cattle and a solar energy project in Southern Nevada financed by the communist Chinese energy firm ENN. It was to be the largest solar farm in the U.S.
Reid had lobbied heavily for the company’s business, even traveling to China. Reid’s son, Rory Reid, formerly a Clark County commissioner, became a lobbyist for ENN, and the Senate majority leader’s former senior adviser, Neil Kornze, now leads the BLM.
But the solar energy complex financed by the communist Chinese was not at the heart of the Bundy Ranch fiasco after all. The project died last year.
However, the BLM’s library of renewable energy projects revealed it was only one of more than 50 solar, wind and geothermal projects planned for Nevada, California, Arizona and other Western states. Reid was focused on at least one, and maybe more, of the projects, much closer to the Bundy ranch.





















