Harney County stands strong amid takeover of federal wildlife refuge

Source: Oregon Department of Transportation [CC BY 2.0],

Tensions remain high as Oregon standoff enters second month 

Hundreds of protesters converged at the Harney County, Ore. courthouse on Feb. 1 as the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge passed the one-month mark.

“Patriot” groups protested the FBI’s fatal shooting of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, one of the occupiers, while locals — who county officials said were in the majority — chanted the mantra, “Stand down, leave our town.” As of Feb. 2, four of the militants had either been captured or surrendered, and four remained at the refuge.

For more than a month, security has been tight at and around the county courthouse, according to County Judge Steve Grasty. It’s a situation that should give pause to county leaders nationwide to ask themselves what they would do in a similar situation in their community, he said.

“We’ve had approaching 300 armed militia in our community at one time,” he said. “County government has been consumed by this; law enforcement is consumed by this. Our jail is empty; we transferred all of our prisoners to another place.”

In Burns, the county seat, government offices have been fortified with fencing, streets blocked by concrete barriers. “It looks like a fortress, and I was nearly in tears walking up to the courthouse thinking what this has done to our community,” Grasty said of an early encounter with the added security.

Sheriff Dave Ward said in a statement: “There are continual reports of law enforcement officers and community members being followed home; of people sitting in cars outside their homes, observing their movements and those of their families….”

Gov. Kate Brown (D) called the situation “absolutely intolerable” at a news conference in Salem, the capital, adding that the occupation was costing $100,000 per week. She and Grasty said the “feds” will get the bill.

Harney County government never used social media before this happened. Now the county judge and sheriff are using Twitter accounts to feed the media’s insatiable requests for information.

“There was no social media policy, so we just had to get all that stuff put together,” said Laura Cleland, communications director for the Association of Oregon Counties (AOC), who has been on loan to Harney County to deal with local, national and international news media inquiries. The county is holding weekly community meetings to inform residents and listen to their concerns.

In a loud, clear voice, most members of the community of 7,500 have told the militants who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2: “Go home!” Grasty included.

“I’ll get you in my pickup. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go, I don’t care if it’s Utah, I’ll take you there,” Grasty told an uninvited Ammon Bundy at the Jan. 19 community meeting. “But go home, will you?  We’ve got families; we need to move on.” (Bundy and his brother, Ryan, have since been arrested.)

That includes the families of 16 employees of the refuge, who were relocated and reassigned to other jobs during the standoff,” according to Kevin Foerster, who manages all of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s refuges in Pacific Northwest and Hawaii . “We’re aware of threats that have been made to federal employees,” he said.

An unnamed spokesperson for refuge employees wrote in an open letter to friends and supporters, “We study, watch our kids play basketball, worship, commune, and interact with our fellow Harney County citizens — not as a ‘we vs. they’ — but as an ‘us.’”

Still, Grasty said disagreements have turned friend against friend, family member against family member in some cases.

On Jan. 19, environmentalists from as far away as Portland in Multnomah County — some 300 miles away — staged demonstrations urging the militants to decamp. Grasty sent them a message of thanks but cautioned, “This group thrives on attention and the more attention they get, the longer they’ll stay.

“I look forward to working with any environmental organization that wants to find real solutions, rather than locking up large swaths of land through lawsuits or by administrative fiat,” he said. “I invite every group demonstrating today to join us at the table to work on solutions that benefit the land and the community.”

Whatever the outcome, he said it’s clear that counties and the federal government have their work cut out for them. He recently met with a “policy person” from AOC, the state association, to work through ways to “drive this issue on up to the very secretaries of Interior and Ag.”

“I want to have a sit down with them, and I want to talk about the lessons learned,” he said. “If we don’t start listening to each other — counties listening to the feds, feds listening to counties — this is going to happen again (somewhere).

The governor expressed similar sentiments to the media in Salem. “The residents of Harney County have been overlooked and underserved by federal officials’ response thus far,” she said.” I have conveyed these very grave concerns directly to our leaders at the highest levels of our government…. Federal authorities must move quickly to end the occupation and hold all of wrongdoers accountable. The spectacle of lawlessness must end, and until Harney County is free of it, I will not stop insisting that federal officials enforce the law.”