Roots of an ongoing Oregon land dispute stretch back decades. Behind the armed protest at a wildlife preserve lies a struggle between agencies that manage federal land and ranchers, loggers and miners who depend on it.
BURNS OR—Behind the armed protest at a national wildlife preserve in Oregon lies a decadeslong struggle between agencies that manage vast tracts of federal land in the West and the ranchers, loggers and miners who depend on access to them for their livelihoods.
The U.S. government owns roughly 640 million acres of property in the country, much of it in the West—making up the majority of land in some states such as Utah, Oregon and Nevada. Fights with the government have intensified as it has added mandates to preserve the environment and wildlife, especially in times of drought and wildfires.
For more than 70 years in north Texas, Ken Aderholt’s family has grazed cattle on lush pastureland that hugs the Red River. So Mr. Aderholt was stunned, he said, when an official with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management told him in 2013 that about 650 acres of his approximately 900-acre property was federal public land.
“This land was bought and paid for and people struggled to acquire it, so for them to just come in and swoop in and say it’s theirs is pretty devastating,” said Mr. Aderholt. He filed a lawsuit in November saying the BLM has no right to his property, to which Mr. Aderholt said his family has held a deed since 1941.
The BLM, which declined to comment on Mr. Aderholt’s suit, contends that the land in the area had long been federal property but was never actively managed by the agency.
The tensions have become a growing political issue in western states, where some communities say federal land controls hurt their economies.
“These are more localized, spontaneous protests, but the issues are all the same: dissatisfaction and anger with the federal government over what they see as unnecessarily restrictive regulations of public lands to protect environmental values,” said Gregg Cawley, a political-science professor at the University of Wyoming and federal land policy expert.
The Oregon occupation, in its fourth day Tuesday, was spurred by a dispute involving rancher Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son Steven. A jury convicted the pair of arson after they set fires that spread to federal lands; they said they set the blazes to protect their property from invasive plants and prevent wildfires. They turned themselves in Monday to serve the remainder of a five-year prison sentence.
The occupiers, led in part by Ammon Bundy—the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a similar standoff with federal officials in 2014—indicated Tuesday that they were making plans to go home after certain conditions were met and local residents could better stand up for themselves. LaVoy Finicum, a protester and rancher from northern Arizona, said the group would leave the when “the state of Oregon is safe from threat and intimidation of a central power.” But they didn’t detail their exact demands, and it remained unclear when the occupation would end.
Much of the public land was acquired by the U.S. government in the 19th century through purchases or treaties. Some parcels are part of the national park system or wildlife preserves, while others are leased to citizens or companies.
The modern-day disputes emerged during the 1970s, when Congress gave the BLM greater powers over public lands, and environmental and conservation concerns prompted tighter regulations on the mining, timber and ranching industries that utilize the properties.
Some ranchers and local officials viewed the government’s approach as an affront to rural economies and a traditional Western way of life and launched a movement known as the Sagebrush Rebellion, intended to beat back federal intervention.
The Sagebrush movement continued to rage at times, particularly during Democratic presidential administrations, which have put greater restrictions on industry use of public lands, often at the behest of environmental groups.
In recent years, the land-use issue has become a political rallying cry for Republicans. According to the Center For Western Priorities, a conservation advocacy group that opposes giving states control over federal lands, some 37 bills favoring local land seizures were introduced in 11 Western states during the 2015 legislative cycle.
Jessica Goad, advocacy director for the group, said Western militia groups increasingly had been rallying around the issue. “Right now, there is a balance in how these lands are being managed but that balance could be thrown completely out of whack, should they be turned over to the states,” she said.
Only six of the measures passed, however, and those bills largely involved simply studying the issue further, according to the group.
Similar tensions have flared at the site of the current occupation, Oregon’s Harney County, where nearly three-fourths of the land is federally owned.
County resident Joseph Fine said his parents had to sell their ranch in the 1980s because the grazing land they used on the adjoining Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, site of the current standoff, kept getting reduced by federal officials. “They just kept cutting back and cutting back on the grazing leases,” said Mr. Fine, who now ranches elsewhere in the county. “They want to turn it all over for birds instead of cattle.”
Between 1997 and 2003, the 187,000-acre refuge, established over 100 years ago, has acquired 1,200 acres in land purchases or swaps from private entities and the state, according to records.
A spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the refuge, said relations between ranchers and federal officials have mostly been positive, and the parties have been able to reach compromise on difficult issues.
“Our employees have been members of this community for over 100 years,” said Jason Holm, the spokesman. “We may not always agree, but we’ve worked directly with ranchers and landowners for mutually beneficial goals.”
Mr. Holm said the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was founded as a preserve for native birds, but grazing is allowed at the discretion of the refuge manager as a “as long as it is shown to benefit wildlife or habitat.”
The refuge manager works with ranchers “to develop a grazing approach that benefits both ranchers as well as the refuge,” Mr. Holm said. Managers have also allowed ranchers to graze livestock in emergencies, including during 2012 when wildfires destroyed grazing lands.
A BLM spokesman in Oregon said there have been no significant changes to its approach to the management of grazing, but that in the last few years, wildfires destroyed some land, making it off limits to ranchers while the land recovers.
Harney County ranchers are likely to face new grazing cutbacks as the BLM this year begins implementing a land management plan across the West to protect the sage grouse, said Tom Sharp, a local rancher and treasurer of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.
Yet he and other local ranchers said they didn’t condone the takeover of the refuge by Mr. Bundy and his armed group. Mr. Sharp said Harney County ranchers have often collaborated with the BLM and other federal agencies on management issues such as the sage grouse.
Utah, where the federal government owns nearly 65% of the land, is trying both a political and legal approach. State lawmakers approved legislation in 2012 that demanded the federal government turn over 30 million acres of public land to the state by the end of 2014.
After that deadline passed, Utah’s commission for the stewardship of public lands voted in December to urge the governor and attorney general to consider suing the federal government, arguing it has no right to permanently retain the majority of a state’s land. Utah’s attorney general, Sean Reyes, said this week that he is still weighing whether to proceed with the lawsuit.
Ken Ivory, a Utah state representative, has pushed for the return of federal land to local control through a group he helped lead, the American Lands Council. While Mr. Ivory said he didn’t support the actions by the Oregon protestors, he said there was a “fundamental unfairness” in the land management system.
“Until we allow people on the land to protect their lives and their livelihood, there is going to continue to be frustration,” he said.
Robert Abbey, who was director of the BLM from 2009 to 2012, said that despite the current disputes the agency had largely been able to balance the concerns of competing interests through a more collaborative process.
Mr. Abbey said he didn’t believe those occupying the federal building in Oregon represented the vast majority of ranchers.
“During my career, I have found that well over 90 percent of ranchers that are operating under BLM permits are good stewards of public lands and work together with local offices to manage their lands,” he said.
—Tamara Audi contributed to this article.
Photo: A protester stands guard on Tuesday at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns OR. Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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| Themes |
| • Access to natural resources • Dispossession • Land rights • Livelihoods • National • Norms and standards • Pastoralists • Property rights • Security of tenure |
