Letters to the Editor on Armed Occupation in Harney County

Occupation not a peaceful protest

As residents of rural Columbia County, we condemn the actions of the out-of-state militia group now occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. The armed seizure of public land hardly counts as “peaceful” protest. We value resolution of problems through dialogue and mutual arrival at solutions, not cowardly intimidation tactics.

Rural communities are in need of increased investment in infrastructure and secure, living-wage jobs to replace land-based forms of work that are no longer environmentally or economically sustainable. However, anyone who attempts to exploit the vacuum left by economic decline for the purposes of privatization and profit is no friend of ours.

As a pretext for invading Harney County, the Bundys and their ilk used a court case focused on two local ranchers who are serving prison time under federal anti- terrorism and mandatory minimum-sentencing laws. We do not support mandatory minimum sentences in any kind of criminal case. But this outsider militia group is using the situation to pedal their own ideological agenda. They do not speak for rural Oregon. Indeed, a show of hands at a recent Harney County public forum indicated that a majority of community members wish the occupiers would pack up and go home.

We hope that this community can soon resume its everyday activities, allowing children to return to the classroom and visitors to appreciate the beauty of a protected wildlife sanctuary without the looming threat of profiteering, misguided outsiders.

Joe Lewis and Sara Appel Columbia County Coalition for Human Dignity

Dear Editor: My letter on the militia occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge follows.

Bill Whitaker, 1108 G Ave., La Grande, OR 97850 541-805-5681

The Rural Organizing Project condemns the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as a publicity stunt by militia groups from outside of Oregon to further their own ideologically-driven agenda. The activities of the occupiers ignore and disrespect the local community’s calls to handle the situation peacefully.

This stunt distracts from the real and pressing economic crisis that the residents of Harney County and much of rural Oregon face. Jobs have disappeared and no new economic engine has replaced the old economies based on natural resources. Public services like schools, libraries, public safety, and public transportation have been defunded for years, leaving communities without basic services. Militia groups in many parts of rural Oregon are using this crisis as an opportunity to grow and recruit new members in the vacuum left from the destabilized infrastructure, positioning themselves as alternatives to public services.

Communities who have been suffering from this economic crisis are now being subjected to an increasing atmosphere of tension and potential violence. We need to focus on meaningful investment in rebuilding public infrastructure so that the residents of rural Oregon have the support they need on a day-to-day basis. In counties so underfunded that many areas do not have reliable access to basic public services, we need real solutions for the community, not distractions.

Bill Whitaker

Bill Whitaker is a former board member of the Rural Organizing Project. He can be contacted at [email protected]

Occupiers Don’t Serve the Interest of the Public:

Published Jan 9, 2016 at 12:02AM / Updated Jan 11, 2016 at 01:27PM

I am a little confused with these goings on out on the Malheur game refuge and was hoping for a little clarification.

Before sharing my confusion, I want to provide a little disclaimer. First, I have only lived in Prineville since 1949, when my cattle ranching father moved us here from Washington.

Although I used to hunt annually, I no longer hunt. I am not a bird-watcher, although I have experienced a beautiful sunrise watching sage grouse dance on a lek out by Millican. I do not consider myself a tree-hugger, although I am an outdoorsman who loves our forests as much as our deserts.

So, it is as an outdoorsman that I garner my confusion. First, I do not consider the public lands in our state and country as “property” of the federal government other than as a convenient label.

I thought public lands belonged to the public and the federal government was charged with managing that land for the public. In my recollection, there seems to be a term “multiple-use” that used to come up in such conversations. My notion was that it meant that public lands could be used by lots of people. Timber companies could purchase the timber from a given hillside, ranchers could graze their cattle on the same land, hunters and other wanderers could trek up and down those same hillsides, and in the winter skiers and snow machiners could do their thing (obviously I am not actually speaking of the same 40-acre piece).

It was the federal government’s job to juggle this balancing act to meet the desires of all of the different public interests.

Now, I am not a historian, nor have I spent time doing research for specific dates, but I always thought the notion of public lands came into existence with old Teddy Roosevelt around the turn of the 20th century, over a hundred years ago.

So, am I hearing correctly that these militia folks want to take over a public wildlife refuge and give it to private landowners, ranchers, or timber companies because they think a private entity could better manage this public property?

Are these the same private landowners who have locked their gates so I no longer have access to vast sections of public lands upon which to hunt, hike, or four-wheel?

Now, are any of these landowners of the few who put more cattle on public grazing allotments and overgraze the land?

Are any of these timber companies of the few who cut outside or move the boundaries of timber sales so they can cut and basically steal publicly owned trees?

If these are the goals of this militia group, I wonder for whom their interests lie. It does not seem to me that they serve the interest of the public landowner.

As a final note, I am a veteran who served honorably overseas in the U.S. Army as a draftee in 1969. Considering the observation of Samuel Johnson in 1775 that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” I am very careful how I refer to myself as a citizen.

— Walt Bolton lives in Prineville.

Refuge occupiers unwelcome at Oregon’s Malheur

By Martin L. Peterson

The new year begins with the media taking a nonstory and blowing it up into front- page stuff in The New York Times and the lead story of CNN. The story concerns a band of armed know-nothings from Nevada who have taken over the visitors center at Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

I have spent a lot of time in that area over the years. We visit there each spring and each fall relishing an area generally without cellphone service and more cattle than people. As a result, I have gotten to know a number of area ranchers and county officials quite well. I also know the area’s history. And when you put that all together, it is little wonder that Harney County’s local officials and ranchers want nothing to do with these interlopers.

The catalyst for this effort is the sentencing of two local ranchers on a charge of arson for setting range fires on federal land. Just as people in Idaho’s Owyhee desert and Clearwater Valley take the threat of fire very seriously after major fires this past summer, range fires are also a major threat in the high desert of Harney County. The Miller Homestead Fire in that area in 2012 burned 160,000 acres and forced the evacuation of the community of Frenchglen.

The Nevada group says it is prepared to occupy the facility until federal land in the area is returned to state and local governments. That is the first hint that these folks did no homework before staging their takeover.

In 1876, Dr. Hugh Glenn, a successful California rancher, dispatched one of his employees, Pete French, with 1,200 head of cattle to be trailed to Oregon in search of pasture land. French found it in southeastern Oregon. Forming a partnership called the French Glenn Company, eventually the firm owned more than 70,000 acres of land and 45,000 head of cattle. But, just as today there are protesters upset with the federal government, in 1897 there were homesteaders upset with Pete French and his control of so much land. On Dec. 26, 1897, one of those upset homesteaders, Ed Oliver, pulled a gun on French and killed him.

The property was eventually purchased by Swift and Company. By 1935, they determined that it was unprofitable and sold 64,717 acres to the federal government for $675,000. This is now most of the land that makes up the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The land — purchased by the federal government from private owners — that the protesters think should be given to state and local governments.

There are a couple of other things the protesters seem to be oblivious to:

▪ Though the land is designated a federal refuge, it has continued to be managed as productive agricultural land. The series of canals and ditches originally developed by Pete French are still used to distribute water throughout the refuge, where the huge expanses of natural hay that originally attracted French continue to grow and are cut and bailed by local ranchers to feed their cattle during the winter.

▪ There are also ranchers who have taken advantage of the flow of tourists visiting the refuge each year. The Jenkins family runs the Round Barn visitors center, which has an expansive inventory of books, western wear and other consumer items. They also operate a commercial tour service.

The Thompson family owns and operates the historic Diamond Hotel in the center of the refuge. It is an important supplement to their ranching income and a major attraction for tourists visiting the refuge. And there are other ranching families who have also become part of the area’s tourism economy.

But, perhaps most importantly, most residents of Harney County aren’t appreciative of outsiders coming in and trying to run their lives. That applies not only to external governmental forces, but also to out-of-area private citizens, whether they are well- intentioned environmentalists or armed protesters occupying federal property.

I’ve spent some memorable evenings sitting with my friend Dan Nichols out at his ranch enjoying a finger or two of single malt Scotch. Nichols is a longtime Harney County commissioner and through him I have had the opportunity to obtain a fairly good understanding of the sensitivities of the ranchers in the county.

In the Monday story in The New York Times, Nichols was quoted: “This county isn’t supportive of what’s being done here at all. Once again, it’s a bunch of those who live without the county telling us what we need to do, how we need to be doing it, and the repercussions if we don’t.”

My guess is that if the national media would pack up and go back to the East Coast, this group of renegades would quickly dissipate and go back to doing more productive things. And they will. Just wait until they have spent part of a winter in the high desert country of Harney County, Ore.

Boise’s Martin Peterson is a longtime observer of Idaho politics and a member of the Statesman editorial board. He is retired.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/readers- opinion/article53181515.html#storylink=cpy