On April 28, the Trump Administration announced criminal charges against Charles and Heather Maude were being dropped. The South Dakota ranching couple was preparing for trial over a land dispute with the U.S. Forest Service.
The husband and wife duo, who were charged individually with criminal trespass, have a small cattle and hog operation with land adjacent to the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. The ranch land has been in the family since the 1910s.
“The Maudes are not criminals. They have worked their land since the early 1900s and something that should have been a minor civil land dispute that was over and done with quickly turned into an overzealous criminal prosecution on a hardworking family that was close to losing their home, children and livelihood. Not in this America, not under President Trump,” said Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in a statement released by USDA.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi echoed those thoughts: “The prior administration’s misguided agenda must be reversed in order to make America safe again. This Department of Justice will spend our resources and efforts on prosecuting criminals, getting drugs off the streets, and identifying and dismantling the weaponization.”
Additional news about civil charges is pending.
For several months, news of the couple’s case has circulated on social media and garnered national attention with concerns of government overreach. During that time, cattlemen’s groups and legislators urged those in Washington, D.C., to reconsider the facts and come to a reasonable solution.
“No family farmer or rancher should have to go through what the Maude family did,” said NCBA President Buck Wehrbein, a Nebraska cattleman, in a joint statement from NCBA and the Public Lands Council. “The targeted prosecution of the Maude family was way out of line for the U.S. Forest Service, and this was a clear example of government overreach that had direct, catastrophic impacts for a hardworking fifth-generation ranching family.”
PLC president and Colorado rancher Tim Canterbury says it’s important for permittees and the agencies to work together to come to a resolution when issues like these arise.
“As permittees, we are required to work collaboratively with the government, but when federal agencies view ranchers as the enemy, it threatens the trust that every single rancher has in their federal partners,” Canterbury shared. “The public outcry we saw on behalf of the Maudes goes to show that public lands ranchers everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief that the USDA under Secretary Rollins is no longer trying to slap handcuffs on hardworking farmers and ranchers.”
For the Maude’s work on the ranch continued has usual with the couple tending to their cow herd, pigs and two children.
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