Oregon protest rooted in long fight over land
burns, ore.» B.J. Soper has seen frustration building for years in this rural corner of Oregon.
The federal government owns more than half the land in the state, as it does across much of the West. It used to be routine for ranchers to get permits to graze cattle or cut timber or work mines — a way to make a living from the land.
Then came increasing environmental regulations, and the federal land became more for owls and sage grouse than for local people trying to feed their families, said Soper, 39, who lives 100 miles up the road in Bend.
“What people in Western states are dealing with is the destruction of their way of life,” Soper said. “When frustration builds up, people lash out.”
Anger at the federal government boiled over this past weekend when a small group of people took over a remote federal wildlife refuge east of here. Their specific aim was to support two local ranchers sentenced to prison over arson charges. But the larger issue is a decades-long struggle over federal land rights in the West.
“These are tough issues to resolve because they are about people’s values,” said John Freemuth, a professor of public policy at Boise State University in Idaho, about 220 miles east of Burns.
Freemuth said that in recent decades, the federal government has placed increasing emphasis on the environment, which has led to more restrictions on ranching, grazing and mining and other traditional uses of the land.
That has led to frustration among many rural Westerners, who feel a disconnect with a federal government run in urban centers.
“They have a concern that they are being left behind, that their values and their concerns are really irrelevant to the urban folks around the country,” Freemuth said.
Late Sunday, the FBI took charge of the law enforcement response to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, saying that it will work with local and state authorities to seek “a peaceful resolution.”
“Due to safety considerations for both those inside the refuge as well as the law enforcement officers involved, we will not be releasing any specifics with regard to the law enforcement response,” the FBI said in a statement.
The armed activists, led by rancher Ammon Bundy, said they plan to stay indefinitely.
Bundy’s father, Cliven, is a Nevada rancher who has sparred with the government for years and who in 2014 had an armed standoff with federal agents trying to prevent him from illegally grazing his cattle on federal land.
After federal authorities backed down, experts said the showdown “invigorated” anti-government groups in the United States.
On Monday, Ammon Bundy said his group of occupiers had taken on a name: Citizens for Constitutional Freedom. He also said the group wanted to help people in the county “in claiming their rights, using their rights as a free people.”
Freemuth said that while most people in the rural West feel “tension” with the federal government, specifically the Bureau of Land Management, few agree with an armed takeover of federal property.
Len Vohs, who was mayor of Burns from 2008 to 2010, said he, as many locals do, shares the frustration with the federal government that drove Bundy and others to occupy the wildlife refuge. But he said few support their tactics, and most wish they would just go home.
“It’s anarchy,” Vohs said. “What we have here is oldstyle thinking, that might is right.”
Local people held a peaceful march and rally Saturday to support two ranchers, Dwight Hammond and son Steven, who were convicted of arson on public land. The Hammonds had served time for the arson conviction, but then a federal judge ruled that they had not served enough.
On Monday, they surrendered without incident to federal custody in California, said Harney County Sheriff David Ward. Afterward, Ward used an afternoon news conference to address the occupiers.
“To the people at the wildlife refuge: You said you were here to help the citizens of Harney County. That help ended when a peaceful protest became an armed occupation,” he said. “The Hammonds have turned themselves in. It’s time for you to leave our community, go home to your families and end this peacefully.”
The armed occupiers at the wildlife refuge attended the rally for the Hammonds, and they said their situation illustrates the larger issue of excessive federal government control over citizens’ lives.