Responsible ranchers across the country don’t go to the lengths Bundy did – refusing to pay grazing fees and embracing armed militias – to make their protest known.
But they do sympathize with the often-impossible working barriers built up by the government, all to save plants and animals (in Bundy’s case, the desert tortoise) that co-exist on the land.
But as Bundy’s protest has proven that when you fight an unfair law, you’re more effective making that argument after making an effort to comply with it.
In March, the Fish and Wildlife Service moved to place the lesser prairie chicken on federal listing as a threatened species. The threatened label is not as drastic or limiting as an endangered listing.
Nonetheless, the decision will have significant impacts on landowners and ranchers in Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas – five states rich in cattle grazing and oil leases.
Elected officials in some of those states responded with bills that would have made Bundy proud, expressing their refusal to follow the law since the feds have no power to enforce the policy.
Pleading that argument won’t win your case; in fact, it would get you thrown out of court.
The more effective evidence comes from states and ranching groups that had established years of effort to boost lesser prairie chicken numbers, even amid the harsh drought that ravaged the Southwest through 2012.
Voluntary initiatives striving to boost chicken numbers and improve brood habitats enrolled hundreds of thousands of acres into conservation agreements in Texas and neighboring states.
A similar group of private landowners and oil/gas developers used the same approach, dedicating millions of acres to restore the bird.
It’s this type of work that pays off in the long run when dealing with federal agencies and their high demands for endangered and threatened species.
The federal government recognizes as much and has granted more flexibility to states and groups in the lesser prairie chicken listing – through what’s known as a 4(d) of the Endangered Species Act.
The restrictions could still impose grazing limitations in areas with more bird habitat, but working with agencies does pay off with more local control.
That approach was learned the hard way with Canadian gray wolves in the West. Mountain states in the ’90s refused to play any part in wolf reintroduction out of pure principle.
That attitude only led to more dead cattle, sheep and elk. States saw the wisdom of actively managing species by lobbying for local control. Now the environmentalists are the ones doing all the howling.
Raging against the ESA may sound justified, but it puts ranchers’ survival in jeopardy. Until political powers change the ESA, it’s vital that ranchers participate in conservation efforts that protect not only wildlife, but also their ranching way of life. 
