More than 200 armed federal agents and snipers were deployed on Tuesday to forcibly remove the cattle of a Nevada rancher – signaling a dangerous escalation in the two-decade long constitutional land dispute over an endangered tortoise.

Cliven Bundy, the last rancher in Clark County, Nevada, has been battling the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) since 1993 when he refused to pay for the right to graze on the 600,000-acre Gold Butte land he says his family have owned since the 1870s.

Claiming that the government has ‘brought everything but tanks and rocket launchers’, Bundy said his livelihood is being taken away from him by agents carrying, ‘Automatic weapons, sniper rifles, top communication, top surveillance.’

‘The battle’s been going on for 20 years,’ Bundy told theWashington Free Beacon from his ranch 75 miles outside of Las Vegas.