Five Thirty Eight with a decent article around the economics of the whole situation. Basically the BLM was requiring a fee for grazing rights that the ranchers wanted for free. Most private land owners would charge a fee for grazing on private property, the government did the same except
the governments fees are 93% cheaper and the rancher's militia still refuses to pay. Seizing the land by force seems utterly unnecessary and would be in most countries be considered armed theft.
Quote:
The takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon appears to be more than just a protest of the impending imprisonment of two ranchers who set fires that spread into public lands. The armed demonstrators are led by Ammon Bundy, whose father, Cliven, has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the federal Bureau of Land Management to own some public lands or to regulate their use for grazing. But the government is giving the Bundy family a pretty good deal on the grazing rights it refuses to pay for.
In 1993, the bureau declined to renew Cliven Bundy’s grazing permits in parts of Nevada that were reserved for a threatened desert tortoise. But Bundy continued grazing his cattle there anyway and refused to pay any fines or fees. He claimed that the land really belonged to him, so why should he have to pay over $1 million in fines?
Now his son has furthered the fight by seizing the Oregon refuge. In a news conference Sunday, Ammon Bundy explained that he was there in protest of the “unconstitutional transactions of land rights and water rights.”
Those transactions, though, can be a pretty good deal, regardless of their constitutionality. According to a 2015 report by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Bureau of Land Management’s fees for grazing cattle on public land are much lower than the fees charged by private landowners, and they’ve only become cheaper in recent years.
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http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...cent-discount/