The standoff in eastern Oregon is the result of more than a century of increasingly politicized management of federal lands that cover half the West. These lands belong to everyone, but Congress has used them to give favors to the most powerful interest groups.
At one time, ranchers had that power, but those days are long past. As a result, Dwight and Steven Hammond are going to prison for four more years for actions that, a few years ago, would have been considered completely normal and in fact sound ecological practice.
Though the Hammonds’ punishment seems unjust, they’ve partly brought it on themselves by being unfriendly with the Bureau of Land Management managers who oversee the lands the Hammonds’ cattle depend on for summer forage. Among other things, they’ve fought over water rights, fencing, and prescribed fires, and even if the Hammonds were legally or morally right in these disputes, their hostile behavior unnecessarily made too many enemies.
Acrimony increased when environmental activists persuaded Congress to pass a 2000 law that ended up closing nearly 100,000 acres of land near the Hammond’s ranch to livestock grazing. Local ranchers were given an opportunity to exchange their land for land elsewhere, and every rancher in the area except the Hammonds accepted the deal.
In 2001, without notifying the BLM, they lit a prescribed fire on their ranch that ended up burning 139 acres of federal land. The fire probably increased the long-term productivity of the land and cost taxpayers nothing as the Hammonds themselves put it out. While the BLM itself relies on similar prescribed fires, the agency was miffed by the lack of notification which may itself have stemmed from acrimony between the parties.
Then, in 2006, a wildfire on nearby BLM land led the Hammonds to light a “backfire” to protect their land. Again, such fires are standard practice among firefighters, but again, the Hammonds failed to notify the BLM. The fire burned just one acre of federal land and the federal government estimates that it cost $15,000 for firefighters to contain it.
Despite the negligible cost to taxpayers, the Hammonds were fined $400,000. Despite the fact that many private prescribed fires and backburns have lapped over onto federal lands in the past, the federal government demanded that the Hammonds be jailed for five years. It seems likely that the Hammonds are really being punished for being cantankerous and not going along with the land exchange under the 2000 law.
The Bundys and their friends who occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge office, meanwhile, are making things worse with their armed takeover and destruction of federal property. While they can make a case that federal land management is inefficient and polarizing, their claim that federal land ownership is unconstitutional—a claim not supported by the Supreme Court—is getting them nowhere.
The real problem is that federal lands are managed as political spoils, leading all users to want more than their fair share of the resources on those lands. While the Oregon standoff may end without violence, other disputes will continue until Congress reforms the public land agencies.
The best such reform would fund those agencies out of user fees, not tax dollars. A second important reform would be to turn federal lands into fiduciary trusts, the same as many state lands. These two reforms would give users and agency managers incentives to work together rather than polarize, prevent Congress from micromanaging the lands, and might actually make the lands profitable for taxpayers.
