U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Travis Lunders arrived unannounced, armed and in full tactical gear, at the home of Charles and Heather Maude of Caputa, South Dakota, to hand them each a federal grand jury indictment for theft of government property stemming from a border dispute and related property that has been managed in the same manner by the Maudes for generations.

Charles Maude bought the operation from his family when he was just 17 years old, and he is the fifth generation on the farm and ranch. He was given his first cow to start his own herd before he was born, and his love of the land is undiminished. His grandfather, Walter Maude, challenged him to a wheat-growing contest, and Charles was in. He dragged a hose from the farm across the driveway to “water” his crops in hopes of finishing the season with a higher yield than Grandpa. Grandpa won.

Heather grew up in eastern Wyoming and is also the fifth generation to work on her family’s cattle and sheep ranch. The ranch was 56 miles from town, 20 of which were dirt roads, and Charles joked when they were together that she lived “16 cattle grids from the highway.”

They both graduated, Charles in 2007 from South Dakota State University in Animal Science with minors in Agricultural Marketing, Range Management and Agronomy and Heather in 2008 from the University of Wyoming in Animal Science with Production and Communication options. They married in 2013 and are raising their young children on the Maude farm, as well as cattle and hogs.

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This is not an attempt to elicit pity, nor is it a call to arms. This is a cautionary tale that should raise the hairs on the back of every American who benefits from agricultural production and multi-use public lands. The USFS says it wants to be a good neighbor, but you don’t get there by shooting at easy targets. There is a time and a place for tactical gear and federal charges, but to dish both out to a family that is fully cooperating and working in good faith toward a solution is unfortunate.

Only 87 days passed between the day Charles and Heather Maude were asked to remove a “No Trespassing” sign from a 75-year-old fence and the day Special Agent Lunders showed up at their door. However, it didn’t take long for word of the situation to reach the leadership of local and state associations and all the way to Washington, D.C. Both the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Public Lands Council quickly took the issue to the top of Capitol Hill.

Ethan Lane, NCBA vice president for government affairs, said the D.C. groups involved in the oversight were angry but not particularly surprised. He said the news was met with the same anger he felt, and the Natural Resources Committee chairman and his staff were “very aware of this long history of abuse by the Forest Service in this part of the world.”

As I reported in The Fence Post Magazine in March, Special Agent Lunders and U.S. Forest Service Patrol Captain Jeff Summers showed up at the Maudes’ home and said they had received a complaint from a hunter that a “No Trespassing” sign was posted on a fence erected on the proper property line. The Maudes removed the sign from the fence, which had been erected sometime before the 1950s. The family has owned their property adjacent to the U.S. Forest Service-managed Buffalo Gap National Grasslands (BGNG), part of the Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands, since 1910.

Sometime between 1910 and 1950, William Maude built a dam and fence, and this fence served as the physical boundary between the Maudes’ properties and the BGNG. This boundary fence and associated holdings have been recognized by the USDA through certification of the properties by the USDA Farm Service Agency every year since the National Grasslands were created in 1960.

The Maudes met with Special Agent Lunders and USFS District Ranger Julie Wheeler on May 1. They concluded that a land survey was needed first and foremost, and that this would take up to a year, according to Wheeler. The Maudes scheduled a meeting on the property so the District Ranger could inspect the fence and work toward a solution.

Although it was done at the same speed as the federal government, this would have been a factual and reasonable approach.

Five days later, Special Agent Lunders arrived with a reconnaissance party to complete a reconnaissance in which the Maudes were not involved. Neither a copy of the reconnaissance nor a copy of the original complaint, allegedly filed by a hunter, was provided. Federal charges followed, and it is the first time a man and woman have been charged separately in a case such as this.

These allegations should be dismissed immediately. The issue has risen to the very top in Washington, and since the Maudes are in the right, the systems in place will work to resolve the issue without torches or pitchforks, although this should remain front-page news until there is accountability from the top down in the USFS.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is the assistant editor of Fence Post Magazine, the region’s premier agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 ranching families. She has written children’s books that are used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.