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NPR is reporting on this tale of direct action:
A self-styled militia in eastern Oregon grabbed national headlines Saturday when they broke into the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. There the armed group remains Sunday, occupying the federal building in protest of what it sees as government overreach on rangelands throughout the western United States.
"We stand in defense," Ammon Bundy, the group's apparent leader and spokesperson, told Oregon Public Broadcasting. "And when the time is right we will begin to defend the people of Harney County, [Ore.,] in using the land and the resources."
Ammon's brother, Ryan, has reportedly used harsher rhetoric, saying members of the militia are willing to kill or be killed.
Their last name may ring a bell. Ammon and Ryan Bundy are sons of rancher Cliven Bundy, who notably took part in an armed standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, in Nevada in 2014.
Ammon Bundy now is part of a group of 15 to 150 people — depending on which source you believe — who are protesting the arson convictions of two Oregon ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven.
Also at Oregon Live, NYT, and the Associated Press.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Covalent on Monday January 04 2016, @05:19PM
Because it was owned by the federal government and no one bought it!
When the western states became states, they were virtually 100% owned by the government. Slowly the land was purchased (railroads, cities, etc.) and that became privately held land. But the western states are enormous, and most of the land is not particularly useful for anything that takes a lot of land (i.e. farming, ranching, etc.) That's why most of Nevada is owned by the feds...no one wants it!
So if you want to "poach" deer legally, or do whatever you want really, you have to BUY the land. Then it's not poaching, it's hunting, because you own the land (and hunting on your own property is generally legal if you have a license).
tl;dr: Buy the land or shut up. Ain't nothin' for free.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 1) by legont on Monday January 04 2016, @05:49PM
Yes; and ones the land is bought, they have to provide water and roads to it. I assume they are fine without electricity. Let's see if they could collect enough taxes for that.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @06:01PM
That is not how poaching, or hunting rights in general, work at all. A person is perfectly entitled to hunt on federal lands if they are licensed and the activity is listed as permitted, or in some areas, not explicitly denied. In fact, most hunting is done on land the hunter does not own. That is how it works in the same way that most hikes happen on land the hiker does not own.
Really, cubicle warriors have no place making up facts about hunting, guns, ranching, farming, or just about anything else that cant be done from an office chair yet 90% of the posts here are precisely those sorts of detached, ignorant people reinforcing their own misinformed echo chamber.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday January 04 2016, @06:02PM
Congress stopped the BLM from selling land in the 70s. The have only done marginal stuff since then (like if one type of land is surrounded by the other type, the'll be a buyout to make it contiguous, etc)
BLM is truly bizarre. Like people don't believe it when they're told about it.
From the business side, its basically communism. From each according to their ability to pay for licenses/rights, and to each according to their needs for raw materials or grazing land or recreational use. Communism has kind of a bad name outside the coasts and colleges, but it is literally true. In the details its gets weirder in that the BLM costs about a billion bucks to run per year, but generates like ten billion bucks in leases.
If you're not involved on the business side, BLM is a bottom tier national park. You can camp or hunt or fish or WTF completely for free. There is staggering butthurt when someone east coaster wants to empire build and create some new sinecures for his cronies so he changes some words on a map and suddenly completely free BLM land requires a national park sticker and permits to camp and all that BS yet nothing improves on the ground. Its a pretty screwed up situation.
There is also a lot of butt hurt out west about roads on BLM land. Who gets to use them and why.
It costs about a buck per month per animal to graze BLM land, so it not worth cheating, if you sell a grown cow for a kilobuck. The real expense is in the completely unregulated and arguably corrupt as hell lease requirements. Say the correct political things, kiss the right butts, or else your arbitrarily written graze lease will suddenly only permit like 2 cows for a month or whatever other corruption in order to punish you. The finance side isn't crooked, its the lease writing side that's basically racketeering.
Essentially the BLM is an abusive nosy landlord who rents below market rates to his friends and refuses to sell out despite market pressure.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Non Sequor on Monday January 04 2016, @06:53PM
Well it may be more complex than that. In the 19th century, basically the Federal government encouraged western development by granting land to private interests. It seems slightly curious to me that the Federal government was always treated as the originator of all land titles rather than making that a State role. I'm guessing that the model for new state founding during the westward expansion was that the territory came under Federal control first and statehood was recognized for settlements within those territories with the Federal government retaining title on undeveloped land.
Around the late 19th and early 20th century, the focus of policy shifted to give public interests other than economic development consideration in use of Federal land. The establishment of national parks is one of the early examples. This was starting to happen at the same time as the states with high percentages of Federal land entered the union. In some cases, lack of land viable for agriculture may have also been a factor. Urbanization may have reduced the emphasis on developing large tracts of land.
Basically the model for Federal land use changed between the settlement of the eastern states and the settlement of the western states with the effect that land use disputes may have a different character between the two. In the east, most land is held by private individuals or state and municipal governments and basically any disagreements are going to be settled at the local and state level. In the west, Federal land holdings are significant and land use based on Federal policy may be in conflict with the views of private individuals and local and state governments.
It's kind of interesting that any policy at the Federal level to earmark land for particular purposes is going to disproportionately affect the Western states. This is actually a clear example of the basis for giving every state two senators rather than representation proportional to population. The states themselves have distinct issues tied to their geography and history.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.