What began as a self-described protest over the treatment of two ranchers spiraled into a showdown that has stung the local community, who believe the way it was portrayed overshadows their grievances about land management

When Butch Delange first started logging in 1971, a man could make a decent living cutting timber, and the proceeds from open-bid contracts with the US Forest Service provided ample funding for schools and public services. Then the federal agency switched to sealed bids to award tracts for harvesting, driving most loggers and sawmills out of business and leaving the older trees to fall victim to rot and wildfires.

Delange, who now works at a gas station and garage on the main drag in Burns, Oregon, says that only bold actions like those of the militiamen occupying the Malheur national wildlife refuge will draw the necessary attention to the plight of western regions living under the federal government’s thumb. But like many, he concedes that the armed action and its violent turn with the shooting death of one activist may have set back prospects for relief, and done little to engender public sympathy.

Instead, local residents say, the armed seizure of the refuge on 2 January by Ammon Bundy and about two dozen fellow militants drew national attention to the clashes between ranchers and federal land stewards, but probably painted all government critics as violence-prone extremists.

Many fear their causes have been undermined by the costly and divisive controversy, despite the spotlight it cast on their complaints.

Wayne Smith, a 46-year-old local rancher, said he felt the occupation was finally waking people up to the overreach of the federal government, but that the death of Finicum had derailed any potential efforts to increase local control of public lands.

“People were getting educated. They were starting to realize what’s happening to us and there was more support,” he said. “But the federal government just had to stop them.”

The Bundy militia action struck a chord with many in Harney County, who have chafed under remote management by officials unfamiliar with their way of life and their concerns. From agricultural micromanagement to excessive regulation of social services and private business, the sturdy folk of the high desert are increasingly giving up the battle to keep what is left of their independence.



Fran and Rich Davis have had to lease private grazing land in recent years to meet federal land management requirements for AUM, the animal-unit-per-month formula meant to prevent damage to grasslands. To feed their 100 cows, the Davises lease 1,880 acres of private grazing land, bringing their daily feed bill to $300 and forcing them to take on other seasonal businesses to make ends meet. The fourth-generation ranchers now operate a deli during the spring and summer months when tourists flock to the high desert country, as well as a women’s clothing boutique, a senior foster care home and a pickup and delivery service for the closest dry cleaners in Bend, 130 miles west.

“The DEQ is making me pay a fee in case there’s ever a chemical spill from the dry cleaning, which isn’t done anywhere near here,” an exasperated Fran Davis says of the latest tax being assessed on their side businesses by the state department of environmental quality.

The population has dropped from 12,000 in the 1970s to fewer than 7,000 today, which locals attribute to federal management of the public lands and increasingly burdensome environmental regulations cutting deeply into the local economy.

Still, the occupation’s paramilitary nature and the deadly confrontation with law enforcement that ended with the shooting death of activist Robert LaVoy Finicum shocked the generally peaceful, if critical, locals.

Fran Davis echoes the fears of many in Harney County that the armed occupation served to discredit the legitimate grievances of the broader population.

“We all look like a bunch of crazies,” she said of the image left by the militants.

Harney County ranchers initially took sides with Bundy’s militia because its action was presented as a protest of the treatment of local ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr and his son Steven. The two were charged with arson for setting small sagebrush fires that spread to federal land in 2001 and again in 2006. The elder Hammond was initially sentenced to three months in prison and his son to a year and a day. But the federal government prevailed in an appeal contending the judge had ignored mandatory minimum sentences, and the Hammonds were ordered back to prison for the mandatory five years, igniting the ranching community’s anger at federal actions they see as vindictive score-settling.

Former local rancher Dayle Robertson, who now lives in Leavenworth, Washington, had business near the refuge on Thursday.



“I’ve lived in this country for 20 years. I know these people,” he said of the south-eastern Oregon ranchers. “But no one outside understands us. For the past eight years the environmentalists have been running our business. If they don’t like something you do, they file a lawsuit and shut you down.”

Delange blames misplaced priorities in the federal bureaucracies for the rash of fires that have swept the region’s forests and grasslands in the past two decades.

“I was in the national guard back in 1990 and we got called up to fight a huge wildfire up near the fish and wildlife preserve. But they wouldn’t let us pitch our tents on the federal land, said it was an ‘artifacts area’,” he recalled with disdain. That fire, believed to have been sparked by a Bureau of Land Management truck left idling in a dry grass field, “burned 105,000 acres, more than 40 years of logging had taken”.

One tiny, bright note: the standoff has generated a short-lived boon for the purveyors of food, fuel and lodging, said the town’s community development director Randy Fulton. The local Safeway store reported its best ever monthly revenue in January, he said, because of the influx of federal agents, Oregon state patrol reinforcements and a swarm of international media to cover the dramatic occupation.

The protracted confrontation, though, cost the state millions in security response and reinforcement – bills that will only plunge the economy deeper into crisis and the relationship between government and rancher all the more confrontational.

Sam Levin contributed reporting from San Francisco.