FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2016
4 — THE BAKER COUNTY PRESS
Opinion
— Letters to the Editor —
Enabling acts and disposition of
public lands
Harney County situation about
heavy-handed Feds
To the Editor:
The Malheur Refuge occupation is not
focused just on the unconscionable and
malicious federal assault against ranchers
whose land is coveted by the BLM.
The Hammonds are the tipping point,
the final straw for these peaceful protes-
tors. No other known remedies remain to
stop the loss of private rights, land, jobs,
and resources for local inhabitants.
Over 100,000 signatures from across
the nation have supported a Petition for
Redress of Grievances, which has been
ignored.
Further adding to the unrest is the
unconstitutional federal plan to take two
and a half million acres from neighbor-
ing Malheur County to create a National
Canyonlands Monument.
This proposed taking will destroy the
ranching economy there, and Malheur
County ranchers are also at the Refuge
occupation.
Representative Greg Walden addressed
Congress about this incident and admitted
that the Refuge was indeed “public land”.
If the federal government owned the land
he would say so. They only manage it for
us.
The occupiers are part of the public, and
have not harmed one thing.
They have not yet been given any order
to leave the premises, so they are not
trespassing.
Court documents must be produced to
evidence that the United States Govern-
ment has actual title to the land, and I do
not believe it exists. BLM employees have
been reportedly shredding documents.
Why?
Under the terms of the Enabling Act
that brought The State of Oregon into the
union of Several states, the federal gov-
ernment contracted to dispose of public
lands. And they have done so in all the
eastern states.
But, because the western states are so
valuable in natural resources, a huge fed-
eral bureaucracy has sprung up to perma-
nently control these resources.
Thus, our local economies have suf-
fered. Mills have been shut down. Mining
is overregulated. Ranchers are bankrupted.
We can’t even enjoy the forests.
So why are federal laws that simply do
not apply within the states tolerated?
These Refuge occupiers have pledged
their lives and sacred honor to bring this
perfidious federal scheme to the national
stage.
Please seek the truth. Resist the lies.
James Iler
Baker City
To the Editor:
The big blowup in Harney County with
the BLM over public lands is not just
about the Hammonds or even the Bundy
taker over of the National Wildlife Refuge
below Burns. It is about heavy-handed
control of people on public lands that is
happening to all of the east side of Oregon
and beyond and throughout the West. The
abuse of power by Federal land managers,
taking water rights, forcing grazers off the
public lands, closing roads and stalling for
years and years mining plans of opera-
tions has become onerous at best. It is the
government’s answer to taking from the
public and giving it to the environmental-
ists. Where else but in America could the
environmentalists sue the Federal govern-
ment and make money doing it—kind of
like organized crime except legal.
In Baker and surrounding counties it’s
the sage grouse lockup on BLM and an at-
tempt for a proposed major lockup by the
Forest Service with a new Forest Plan. At
the Forest Service proposed Blue Moun-
tain Forest Revision planning meetings
people were mad at this insane lock-
down of our forests and expressed it. The
proposed expanding roadless areas, more
proposed National Monuments, more
roadless de facto wilderness and proposed
game corridors has no benefit except to
lock it up for the environmentalists. Still
the FS is going on with their plan to lock
out the public by proposing to shut down
and decommission almost 1,300 miles of
roads on the WWNF. We have used these
roads since they were built to harvest
the timber. These roads are historic and
are used by the public to gather natural
resources and recreate and fight wild fires.
The Forest Service has mismanaged the
forest so badly, you can’t walk through
them because of the undergrowth and
downfall, and now the catastrophic fires
burn hundreds of thousands of acres. Here
in Baker County two fires joined to burn
over 100,000 acres. The Forest Service
has committed to logging 500 acres of that
burn. Really guys, come on! The environ-
mentalists fight every logging sale and sue
and get paid to sue to stop logging sales
just to watch it burn a few years later. En-
vironmentalists are not Oregon’s friend.
I and most Oregonians do not support
the Bundy takeover of the Malheur Wild-
life Refuge except for the fact it brought
before America the criminal abuse by
the heavy-handed land managers with a
definite agenda to lock up the West for the
environmentalists.
Chuck Chase
Baker City
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— Guest Opinion —
Standing up
for rural
Oregon
By U.S. Rep. Greg Walden
In recent weeks, the people of Har-
ney County have become no stranger
to national headlines. On January 3, a
group of armed protesters overtook a
federal facility in the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge. And on January 5,
Dwight and Steve Hammond, father
and son ranchers from Harney County
who were convicted of arson for set-
ting a backfire that burned 139 acres of
federal land, reported to prison to serve
the remainder of a mandatory five year
sentence.
While these stories played out across
every major media outlet, it’s impor-
tant to understand what is driving this
anger and what steps we can take to
improve the situation.
The thread that ties the Hammond
family’s case together with the calls
of those who took over the Refuge is
decades of frustration, arrogance and
betrayal that has contributed to the
mistrust of the federal government.
Too many people often don’t under-
stand the culture and the lifestyle of the
great American West– and how much
the ranchers and farmers who live in
this vast, beautiful, harsh landscape
care about the environment, their
children’s futures, and about America
and the Constitution. Nor do they
realize how hard they work to produce
the food we eat. We’re seeing now
the extent they will go to in order to
defend all that.
While I understand their passion,
I cannot condone the actions of the
armed protesters, led largely by people
who are not from our state. They’ve
made their point loud and clear, and lo-
cal community leaders, including many
ranchers, have asked them to leave.
They should do so.
The day after the Hammonds went to
prison, I went to the U.S. House floor
intending to give a five minute speech
on what was unfolding in Harney
County. But when decades of my own
pent up frustration with the federal
government’s treatment of rural Or-
egonians came to the surface, I spoke
before my colleagues for nearly half an
hour. (You can watch my full speech at
www.walden.house.gov/speech).
In my years representing the people
of Oregon’s Second District, I have
worked with local ranchers and the
citizens of eastern Oregon to resolve
disputes, to find solutions and to create
a more cooperative spirit and partner-
ship with the federal agencies. After
all, more than half the 2nd District is
under Federal management, or lack
thereof.
The Steens Mountain Cooperative
Management and Protection Act is a
prime example of those cumulative
efforts. But after it was signed into law
in 2000, little by little, the agencies
decided to reinterpret it and follow it
at their own convenience, or ignore
the law altogether. At the suggestion
of local ranchers, the law created the
first cow-free wilderness in the United
States, but the tradeoff was a legal
requirement for the federal government
to provide the fencing.
And yet bureaucrats within the
Bureau of Land Management wouldn’t
listen and wouldn’t follow the law.
They told ranchers they had to build
the fence.
When I pointed out their error, they
basically told me to stuff it. When I
provided them with the documentation
from more than a decade before that
proved the intent of Congress, they
doubled down. And finally, when I got
Congress to pass a restatement of the
original intent, they said they’d review
it.
I don’t get angry very often, but this
arrogance really got to me. And while
there are very good federal workers in
our communities who do follow the
law, and do work cooperatively to find
solutions, it only takes a few of the
Submitted Photo
Rep. Greg Walden is the U.S.
Representative for Oregon’s 2nd
congressional district, serving since
1999.
others to cause us to lose faith.
A similar experience is taking place
across the West through the so called
travel management plans. Originally
intended to minimize damage from
off road vehicles, it quickly became a
powerful tool to close roads and shut
people out of their forests.
What happened in the Wallowa-
Whitman National Forest is a classic
case in point. After years of commu-
nity meetings, public workshops and
incredible efforts to update the govern-
ment’s faulty maps, a forest supervisor
decided she knew better. Her choice of
a management plan was such an affront
that more than 900 people packed a
meeting in La Grande in protest. I, too,
was incensed and called upon the For-
est Service to withdraw the plan, and
they did. But the damage was done.
How can people be expected to have
faith in a public process when they see
outcomes like these?
Meanwhile, other threats loom on
these same people. From the onerous
“waters of the United States” rules, to
threats of more national monuments,
the federal government is aggressively
trying to get cattle off the range and
people off their public lands.
Right now, it’s strongly rumored that
the Obama Administration will declare
more national monuments, including
one in Malheur County, next to Harney
County. It could be up to 2.5 million
acres—bigger than Yellowstone Na-
tional Park.
Ranchers and community leaders are
being told either agree to a big wilder-
ness area or plan on getting a monu-
ment shoved down your throat. Is it
any wonder we feel our way of life is
threatened by our own government?
If the President wants to help reduce
the tension, and try to restore a bit of
trust, he would publicly back off this
proposal.
The Hammonds made a mistake and
went to prison for five years for light-
ing a backfire that burned 139 acres of
federal land. We all know fire is a tool
on the range to deal with invasive spe-
cies and to stop other fires. In 2012,
more than a million acres burned in
Harney County, alone.
All too often, I’ve met with ranchers
who were burned out by backfires they
say should never have been set by the
agencies. And while I have the great-
est respect for the power of a fire, and
the courage and talent of firefighters,
they make mistakes, too.
The Hammonds were tried and
convicted under a law written after the
Oklahoma City bombing. The presid-
ing judge in the case made clear that
it’s penalties when applied to a fire
on the high desert of eastern Oregon
didn’t make sense. But a court found
he lacked the authority to invoke a
lesser sentence.
We need to revisit the 1996 law that
landed the Hammonds with a punish-
ment disproportionate to the severity
of the crime. I’m working with my
colleagues to do just that.
We need to have the President under-
stand that more monuments may bring
cheers from certain companies and
communities, but in reality they leave
behind more mistrust and mismanage-
ment.
And those not familiar with the high
desert of the West, need to understand
what we face before they quickly con-
demn the frustration and anger that is
so evident.