Thread by @msbellows

The Eastern Oregon ranching family whose criminality ultimately led to the Malheur Refuge occupation may lose their right to graze cattle on federal land adjacent to their ranch. Losing federal grazing rights can destroy a working ranch. In this case, that's good.

A THREAD:

https://twitter.com/Sammy_Roth/status/1366413248849846274

2/ Here's a little (ok, actually long) history lesson about cattle ranching in the American West. When the first ranches outside Texas were formed in the mid 1800s, many ranchers' personal holdings were relatively small.

Instead, most ranchers supplemented their own lands by using federally- owned (but federally- neglected) commons: all the ranchers in an area would graze their cattle, often mixed together, on open range where buffalo used to roam.

(That's why brands were needed: to ID the owner of cattle grazing on common land. Rustling was easy, because the cattle were mixed together over huge areas no one owned. "Roundups" were when all the ranchers in an area cooperated in bringing the cattle together, ...

... castrating and branding new calves (with each rancher keeping a careful eye on the others to make sure their calves were correctly branded). Modern ranchers still consider branding to be a community endeavor, like barn-raising.

Here's me branding a calf at one (^@tadrow):

@tadrow But in 1862, Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, allowing people to gain ownership of 160 ac. by building a house, planting a garden, and staying there 5 years. After the Civil War, esp. with increased immigration, new settlers began staking claims on what had been common range.

@tadrow Barbed wire was a tool for homesteaders cordoning off what had been commons, and so became a symbol of ranchers' anti-homesteader sentiment. Homesteaders put up wire; ranchers tore it down. Houses got burned. Newcomers got shot. Local sheriffs opposed federal marshals. Etc.

@tadrow (Also, homesteaders had to certify that they had never borne arms against the U.S., and former Union soldiers could count time served in the Civil War against the five-year residency requirement. ...

@tadrow To the many big ranchers across the West who originally hailed from Confederate Texas (where U.S. cattle ranching began), this had to seem unfair, and inclined them even more against the (by law, if not always in practice, non-Southern) homesteaders.

@tadrow Plus, the federally dominant Republican Party supported Northern industrial interests, which often illegally abused the homestead law to accumulate logging and mining acreage.

Are you starting to see the roots of today's antifederalism/Lost Cause/urban-rural divide politics?)

@tadrow So to recap: a century ago, legitimate tensions arose across Western cattle country as ranchers who'd been there since the 1870s saw the open range placed off limits, jeopardizing their entire business model and livelihood. ...

@tadrow It's easy for us urban/suburban environmentalists to dismiss federal grazing allotments as "cowboy welfare"; it's a little more complicated if you think of it as "government 2,000 miles away destroying a long-standing community commons to benefit their party and wealthy donors."

@tadrow These tensions gave rise to the range wars, which are a FASCINATING microcosm of perennial issues of class, privilege, NIMBYism, fed v local governance, "self-reliance"/corporate welfare, etc. (and also provide the plots of roughly 84% of Western movies). en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_war

@tadrow THAT is the history the Hammond family likes to pretend is their heritage. Decades ago, when the Hammonds first began insisting on running their cattle on the adjacent Malheur National Wildlife Refuge during migratory bird nesting season, they appealed directly to this history:

@tadrow "Susie Hammond, Dwight's wife, said the cattle trail is a 'historic right of way' that has been in use since 1871. 'We have never had a permit,' she said. 'We have a right to use it.'" hcn.org/issues/20/582

@tadrow But here's the thing: the Johnson County range war ended in 1893. The Malheur Refuge was founded in 1908. The Taylor Grazing Act (which replaced open range with individual grazing allotments) was 1934.

BUT THE HAMMONDS DIDN'T START THEIR RANCH UNTIL THE 1970S.

@tadrow Shifting focus slightly: I'm also sympathetic with someone who sees a wildfire approaching their home and sets a responsible backfire on grass (that's gonna burn in ten minutes anyway) to save lives and property that otherwise IMMINENTLY would be destroyed.

But, again, that ain't the Hammonds.

THIS is the Hammonds:

I've asked Harney County ranchers + others about the Hammonds, and heard mixed feelings: that they definitely ought to pay their grazing fees like everyone else does, but they have some good points about federal bureaucrats, and they're generous in the community.

(@LesZaitz wrote about the Hammonds' seeming generosity: oregonlive.com/pacific-northw….)

But guess what? Al Capone gave money to orphanages. Like Capone, the key Hammonds (Dwight + Steve) are, put simply, both criminals and jerks. (I've heard that other Hammonds in the area are good folks.)

Back in 1994, the bad Hammonds kept violating their permit by moving cattle onto the Refuge's wetlands at the wrong times, then blocked the refuge's attempt to build a boundary fence, resulting in their arrests by federal agents.

Then, at a public meeting, their allies distributed refuge employees' phone numbers. There were death threats against employees and their families (including by the Hammonds themselves). hcn.org/issues/20/582

One caller threatened to wrap the refuge manager's 12-year-old boy in barbed wire and stuff him down a well; his wife + four children, one in a wheelchair, had to leave town. But the feds reduced the charges and the Hammonds were allowed to continue grazing on federal land.

In 1999, the Hammonds set an illegal fire that spread to BLM land, and received a warning.

Two years later, in a weird 2001 incident, the Hammonds set another fire – to conceal evidence that they had illegally slaughtered a deer herd. (Not a deer: a HERD.)

A young Hammond family member admitted that his uncle had told him to burn everything down, and that he almost got trapped in the flames.

Then in 2006, they set several illegal backburns – yes, to prevent a lightning-caused wildfire from reaching their winter feed (which I'm sympathetic with) – but they did it AT NIGHT, without warning firefighters they knew were camped on a butte in the backfire's burn path.

(And two days later, Steven Hammond threatened to frame a BLM employee for arson if he didn't terminate the resulting investigation.)

(I'm a former federal wildland firefighter. This stuff REALLY pisses me off.)

So THAT'S what the Hammonds went to jail for: not some noble "way of the cowboy" principle, but arson. After a previous arson. Which followed a previous fire, the ignoring of environmental laws, and grazing permit violations. And a lot of abuse of their wildlife refuge neighbors.

And then there's the crap like the Hammonds pushing a well-respected environmentalist/scientist couple WHO LIVED IN THE COMMUNITY out of a community dance: wweek.com/news/2016/01/1….

That's not neighborly. That's not conservative. It's just being assholes.

Oh, and let's not forget the child abuse (taking coarse sandpaper to a 16-year-old):
thedailybeast.com/oregon-rancher…

Look, as you may have gathered,I'm fascinated by ranching history + practice, respectful of many ranchers' work and wisdom, sympathetic with many of ranchers' woes, ...

... and (to my wildlife biologist friend @oreothlypis' dismay) an advocate for retaining (with environmental safeguards) ranching on Western federal lands. (I'm glad to talk more about why, if asked.)

@oreothlypis But the ranchers I respect are the ones like @tadrow's parents, whose family has respectfully and sustainably used the same range literally for a century without degrading it; who work constructively with federal range managers to pilot sage grouse protection methods; ...

@oreothlypis @tadrow ... and who generally are good people, good citizens, and good neighbors. I truly LIKE and admire Tad + his folks + people like them.

The Hammonds, by contrast, are rich, entitled, relative-newcomer assholes who've surrendered any right to benefit from lands we collectively own.

@oreothlypis @tadrow Again: losing federal grazing rights can destroy a working ranch (or, in the Hammonds' case where the permit loss probably will be personal, force the owners to sell).

I hope that's the case here.

Because "cowboy" hasn't meant "outlaw" since the Earps took out the Clantons.*

@oreothlypis @tadrow (*Yes, "cowboy" used to be a derogatory term back in the range war days.

And yes, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (which actually took place in an alley next to a photographer's studio) was between the Earps + Doc Holliday and The Cowboys.)

(But that's another thread.)
//

@oreothlypis @tadrow P.S.: The Hammonds have the nicest friends!

@oreothlypis @tadrow Good thread by an expert in high desert range biology and management. Everything's connected. @tadrow?

https://twitter.com/oreothlypis/status/1368742136439476230

@oreothlypis @tadrow P.P.S.: The Wall Street Journal editorial board is a lost cause (and doesn't know sh*t about rural Oregon): wsj.com/articles/haras…