Oregon standoff: Bureau of Land Management’s “burn ’em out” Legacy – The Untold Story.
Submitted by IWB, on February 27th, 2016
have been doing research for some time now on the Bureau of Land Management’s land grabs, treatment of land owners, and policies.
I ran across this article, and it is mindboggling but yet true. Thinking of what the Hammond family have gone through only because they did a controlled burn, which is sometimes done to kill weeds, and hold a massive fire back from a rancher’s property.
The Hammonds performed a controlled burn upon “public lands” surrounding their property when they were threatened with a fire coming toward them.
They are now doing jailtime in what I believe to be a double jeopardy case. They were arrested by the BLM for doing this controlled burn which did get out of control, burning some public land which had been claimed unlawfully by the BLM. It burned a few acres, however, the BLM continuously do this by their “burn ’em out” policy.
I have a video on this which I will post after the article.
This is a mindboggling hypocritical policy that is destroying the lives of ranching families out West. The BLM has been granted by Obama the go ahead to do land grabs all over the Country.
The Hammonds were labeled “terrorists and arsonists” by the government and are currently doing 5 years time in prison. They will lose their land eventually to the BLM, and it is a horrendous injustice. We all should be outraged by this BLM hypocritical legacy.
How many ranchers will follow in the footsteps of the Hammonds, while the BLM does the very same thing on a massive scale to any land they desire?
This dominant media narrative is usually heavily sprinkled with quotes from environmental militants who denounce the “welfare ranchers” as parasites who are a threat to so-called endangered species, wildlife habitat, rivers and riparian ecosystems, etc. In addition, there is the frequent charge that the poor public servants at the BLM and USFS must suffer regular bullying by and threats from the big, bad ranchers. But who is really doing the bullying and threatening? Who is abusing whom? And who is really abusing the “public lands” — and the environment in general — the bureaucrats or the ranchers? (For a basic, corrective primer on the much-misunderstood “public lands” issue in the western states, click here.)The Hammonds, hardworking citizens and longtime respected members of their rural Harney County, had their names dragged through the mire, have been prosecuted as “terrorists” and “arsonists,” have been sentenced to prison for five years, and have been extorted into accepting huge fines and the likelihood that they may lose the land they have laboriously cared for to the agency (BLM) that has coveted it for a long time. And their “crime”? Accidentally burning a few acres of “public lands” while carrying out legitimate, standard practices of “controlled burning” for weed control, fuel-load reduction and back-fire burning against a wildfire threat.To those farmers and ranchers who work the land and regularly have to deal with BLM and USFS bureaucrats, this was not only an outrageous injustice, but also an exercise in hypocrisy so huge and contemptible as to be mindboggling. They know firsthand that these Fedgov agencies are a veritable Arsons-R-Us, annually burning up millions of acres of public lands and tens of thousands of acres of private property, as well as endangering lives (and sometimes taking them) and destroying homes.
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