patrick.net

Yes, Ammon. There is a time to go. It's now.

Good job on the history RawStory.

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/a-simple-guide-to-why-bundy-and-his-militants-are-wrong-about-the-constitution-and-public-land/

Add to this environmental degradation the reckless hunt for bird plumage: late-19th-century fashionistas coveted the white heron’s graceful feathers to adorn their hats. With gold rush-like avarice, local hunters blazed away, and within a few years the Malheur heron population was decimated.

It was their extirpation – not the brutal mistreatment of the Paiutes – that caught the attention of the Oregon Audubon Society. The society’s activists pleaded with former rancher and conservationist-in-chief, President Theodore Roosevelt, to protect those lands still in federal ownership. On August 18 1908, he complied, signing an executive order establishing the 81,786-acre Malheur Lake Refuge, which also encompassed nearby Haney and Mud Lakes, “as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.”

Since then, the refuge has expanded by 100,000 acres. In 1935, the Swift Meatpacking Corporation sold 65,000 acres to the federal government, funding for which came from Duck Stamp sales and New Deal monies; over the years, willing sellers added the remaining acres to the refuge’s expanse. Ammon Bundy’s protestations to the contrary, no ranchers were ever evicted from the refuge.

Roots of federal authority

Bundy’s militant bluster about restoring the Constitution by tossing the federal government off the Malheur and other public lands because this land belongs to settler descendants is just as disingenuous.

Indeed, in 1911 in a pair of landmark decisions – Light v US and US v Grimaud – the Supreme Court asserted that the public lands were, in fact, public; that federal ownership of them was indisputable; and that Congress through a series of legislative acts had granted the Executive Branch, and by extension the federal land management agencies, administrative authority to manage these acres in accordance with the relevant rules and regulations.

This was an informative read.