Where this becomes a two headed snake is who's name is on the deed, so many of these "ranchers" consider land that they lease is "their land", instead of "Americans land".
After ranching BLM for many years, and knowing the full gamut of ranchers that did likewise, I never actually ran across one that thought of the land as "theirs".
I have however shared the knowledge that when you pay for the grazing permit per animal unit and pay the annual lease, then you do indeed own the grazing rights.
Those grazing rights can be bought, sold, traded or bartered and have a real value very comparable to deeded land.
Yes, but it is a contractual right; one that stems from the lease contract. That contract, like any lease contract, is subject to change. If the landowner wants to change the provisions of leasing their property, they have the real property right to do so. That, then, changes the contractual right under any such lease. A leaseholder can transfer their contractual right to another, and it does have value. However, they cannot force the owner of real property to continue to convey to them any contractual right beyond that desired by the property owner.
Take, for example, a hunting lease. X owns property. X leases property to Y for a term of years and for a set fee, and within that X retains the right to change the terms of the lease while Y, so long as they pay the lease fee, has the right to transfer their contractual right to another. During that lease, Y can sell his rights under the contract to Z; Z then is subject to payment of fees to X and the contractual obligations and benefits of the lease. X can also rescind the lease subject to any penalty clauses within the lease, or change the provisions accordingly. Y can then opt out, not renew, or agree to the new provisions. Y CANNOT, however, force X to guarantee Y the same rights and privileges in perpetuity under an old lease should X decide to change the provisions, and Y CANNOT force X to allow Y to continue practices previously conducted under the lease should Y stop paying the lease fees.
That's the situation with the Bundys and others. They have a contractual lease agreement with the landowner (Feds). The landowner has, and can under the law, change provisions of that lease. The Bundys have decided that they are not bound by the law because they don't like the new lease terms, so not only are they refusing to pay the lease fees but they are insisting that they can continue to operate ON SOMEONE ELSE'S PROPERTY outside of a lease agreement, just because they used to be able to operate that way under an old lease.
