- Mathew Foster / CC By
WHEN A SMALL GROUP of gun-toting, anti-government zealots illegally occupied a collection of buildings on an Eastern Oregon wildlife refuge on Saturday, January 2, they set a dramatic stage for their demands.
The militants, led by a Nevada ranching family that forced an armed standoff with the federal government in 2014, quickly lost their first battle: Keeping two Harney County ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, out of prison. The Hammonds turned themselves in to federal authorities to serve out years-long sentences on arson convictions on Monday.
By then, Ammon Bundy, the militant group’s apparent leader, had already announced another aim. He said his group would return the 187,757-acre Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to the hands of “the people”—opening it up to ranching, mining, and timber production, and ending its century-long stint as an important sanctuary for migratory birds.
“We’re going to go to work,” occupier LaVoy Finicum, an Arizona rancher, told reporters Monday. “We’re going to help restore these ranchers [on refuge land].”
Coming amid some fairly serious law breaking and the threat of an armed standoff with authorities, the aims were easy to dismiss as a crackpot claim. But in fact, the notion has its share of sympathizers in Oregon politics.
In 2015, conservative state legislators introduced a flurry of bills and other legislative items that aimed to do exactly what Bundy, Finicum, and their ilk are demanding: put the federal government’s Oregon land holdings into state control.
Cannot we all submit our own Reasons For Entitlement and get in on some of this action?
Indians should not apply, as they got screwed many times already.