03:56 PM MDT on Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Associated Press

RENO, Nev. -- Wayne Hage, who battled the federal government for decades over public lands and private property rights and came to epitomize Nevada's Sagebrush Rebellion has died.

Friends say Hage had been ill with cancer and died Monday at his Pine Creek Ranch near Tonopah. He was 69.

A memorial service is planned Saturday at the Hage ranch in Monitor Valley.

A widower, Hage married former U.S. Representative Helen Chenoweth, an Idaho Republican, in 1999.

A longtime state's rights activist and author of "Storm Over Rangelands," Hage filed a federal claim in 1991 seeking $28 million in damages after Forest Service officials

confiscated his cattle and suspended his grazing permits on parts of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

In 2002, a U.S. Claims Court judge ruled that Hage had a right to let his cattle use the water and forage on at least some of the federal land where he held a grazing permit.