Land in Maude case has been farmed for years

Over the roughly 120 years since the United States Forest Service (USFS) was established as an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the USFS has pursued cooperative relationships with the agricultural community, particularly through managed grazing of federal lands. Its objectives published in 1905 state, “Every effort will be made to assist the stock owners to a satisfactory distribution of stock on the range in order to secure greater harmony among citizens...and to obtain a more permanent, judicious and profitable use of the range.”
One of its leading objectives at this time was to ensure “the best permanent good of the livestock industry through proper care and improvement of the grazing lands.” Its policies in 1936 recognized the importance of the national forests in supporting the agricultural industry and the national supply of beef and mutton through these grazing allotments, and stated that “every effort will be made by forest officers to promote the fullest possible use of grazing resources.”
Today, this continues. There are roughly 48 million acres of rangeland in the United States managed by the USFS, and 9,200 grazing allotments, which the USFS website states are “critical for the economic well-being of hundreds of communities.” It continues, “The partnerships between private land owners and land managers are key components of conservation.”
The Maude family of Caputa has been farming and ranching along the Cheyenne River since 1907 and has worked cooperatively with the government since the 1930s, when hard economic times drove them, like many others, to sell a portion of the ranch to the government in order to be able to keep the rest. However, they didn’t lose access to that land, thanks to land-use agreements and grazing allotments which have continued through the generations and remained in good standing to the present day.
The indictment of Charles and Heather Maude in July following a complaint made in March about a 70-year-old fence has caused much consternation in the ranching community, particularly among those who utilize public lands for their livelihoods. The Maudes, who utilize Buffalo Gap National Grasslands along the Cheyenne River for cattle grazing, and farm a small parcel of deeded ground adjacent to the allotment, have been individually criminally charged with theft of government property, facing a maximum of 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. The indictment states that they “did knowingly steal, purloin and convert to their own use National Grasslands….namely, approximately 25 acres of National Grasslands for cultivation and approximately 25 acres of National Grasslands for grazing cattle.”
In the context of vast acreages of grazing allotments, the 50 acres in question is minuscule, roughly the acreage required for a single cow-calf pair for a five-month grazing agreement, and generating approximately $7.50 of revenue for the USFS. The indictment suggests that it was Charles and Heather who were responsible for the farming allegedly happening on federal ground, but Marion Maude, Charles Maude’s father and a rancher along Spring Creek, says that simply is not the case.
“That piece of ground in question was in our hay bottom when my grandpa had it,” he said. “My grandpa had it almost since [South Dakota] was a state….when my dad took it over, we farmed different areas of that bottom to replant hayfields. So, the whole bottom was disturbed at one time or another.”
This difficulty of property boundaries and fence placement is due in large part to the topography along the Cheyenne River. Scott Edoff, a neighbor of the Maudes and a past president of both the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association and the state Public Lands Council, is familiar with the unique challenges of ranching in that region.
“The problem with this property is how the Cheyenne River moves,” he said, “sometimes a few feet, sometimes 40-50 feet in a spring.”
Riverbeds are particularly susceptible to the effects of erosion and resulting land loss, and erosion control is a significant and potentially expensive issue on both private and federal lands. In the USDA’s publication, Erosion Control Treatment Selection Guide, they write: “Much of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service infrastructure is located in areas of relatively steep, sometimes unstable, and highly erodible soil...effective erosion control may help reduce the spread of invasive plant species, part of the four threats to the nation’s forests and grasslands.”
“That piece of ground had been flooded over the years, and it left a mess,” Marion recalled, describing it as a “damned near worthless piece of ground.”
“When the river flooded, it most of the time flooded that piece of ground. Over time, it got to be where it was just blow sand...so my dad and my uncle worked on levelling it up, farmed a crop into it, irrigated it so that they could get it to grow, and left some of that crop to fall on the ground to stabilize that piece of ground,” he said.
The irrigation evolved over the years, with the knowledge and permission of the Forest Service, and there were easements in place to allow for the irrigating.
“We raised corn for probably 30 years and the piece in question was in there,” Marion said.
It isn’t surprising, then,  ranchers say, considering the challenging topography, the shifting riverbed, as well as less-precise surveying methods from the mid-1900s, that a fence line might be inaccurately placed. But year after year, the Forest Service signed off on the Maude family’s allotment management plan and, according to Scott Edoff, the Forest Service never brought this alleged fence-line discrepancy or the concern regarding the use of the ground to attention.
“[That] was never mentioned to the Maudes when they went in….[T]hey never did mention to the Maudes about farming that piece of ground, or that they were in violation, or a cease and desist letter. The way I see it, when they went in in April or March to sign up and do an allotment-management plan, that should have been discussed,” Edoff said. “[They should have] said, ‘We realize that you may be farming some of our ground, we’re not sure where the line is, we would like to survey this, please cease and desist farming the subject matter until we can verify who owns it. And if the Forest Service owns it, you will have to put it back to native grass, etc.’
“This should have been negotiated. This is why everyone is so frustrated, because we all have lots along the river that haven’t been surveyed out and nobody really knows who they belong to. So, will they just move up the river to the next guy and say, ‘Yep, you’re next, we’re taking you to court?’ There’s got to be a way to resolve this without taking it to criminal court.”
In Edoff’s opinion, the charges against the Maude family are absurd, and the threatened consequences are out of line with the scope of the alleged offense.
“Charles has probably never had a speeding ticket in his life. This lawsuit may just break Heather and Charles. It may collapse their ranch, and for no reason,” Edoff said. “When you have to sign your children over to someone else because there is a threat that you might be thrown in jail, that says something about the Forest Service.
“I hate to put my finger on the Forest Service until we really know who brought this and how it came about, because sometimes you get people who are innocent and then there’s just more relations that went down the tube. I’d be interested in finding out who is really behind this, and why.”
The Forest Service hasn’t disclosed the evidence that was used to charge Charles and Heather Maude in U.S. District Court, but Marion said that records show the east fence in question has been in place since 1950 or before.
“If they look in their own records, they’d see that we had the OK for that fence to be there. They say Charles did that, but it was put in in ’93. My dad and I did that, and we had the blessing of the Forest Service at the time we put it in there,” he said. “There were times more than half that fence was destroyed by high water, and we put it right back [like] we always did. It was just one of those things you had to do if you were going to live there and get something done. We had two years there [where we] were up and down that river every day for two weeks to finally get that river bottom fenced again, because the river had taken out so much fence. And the difficulty getting there – You could be half a day getting there.
“Once in a while you got stuck in the river trying to get across..our family has just taken care of that whole bottom forever. [As] far as them saying that Charles and Heather broke that ground up, it was done many times long before they were even born.”
The Forest Service has declined comment on this case due to it being an ongoing investigation. The Custer County Chronicle will continue to cover this story as more information becomes available.