“It was kind of a shock,” said Ann Fernandez. “It’s hard, because as a rancher with animals and employees you have to plan far in the future to know where your animals are going to be. With me in particular, it was really hard because my husband had just died.”

The trust mandate

The Department of Natural Resources manages over 1,000 active agricultural leases and rarely cancels any of them early. But because each cancellation can have an outsize impact on the life of an individual farmer or rancher, the 11 early terminations that occurred in Eastern Washington in the past five years have brought enough uncertainty to locals that state legislators have gotten involved. Prior to these cancellations and the resulting changes to state law, DNR was only required to give 60 days notice and zero compensation to farmers and ranchers forced to vacate public land years before their leases were up.

“As a freshman legislator last year, it sounded almost like a tenants’ rights issue,” said state Rep. Chris Corry, R-Yakima. In the 2019 legislative session, Corry introduced a bill dedicated to Max Fernandez that would have prohibited the state agency from canceling leases without the written consent of the lessee, effectively ending the practice.