by Thomas Mitchell
The absurdity of it all would be comical if the consequences were not so extraordinarily dire.
One
man is dead, shot to death by officers at a roadblock. Father and son
ranchers are in prison serving mandatory five-year terms under an
antiterrorism law. Nearly two dozen others are in jail facing charges of
conspiracy, impeding officers, intimidation, assault, obstruction of
justice, extortion, aiding and abetting — all of which could lead to
lengthy prison terms.
The root cause of all this?
Two minor
grass fires that burned 140 acres of federal public land and some
bureaucrat’s silly assumption that cattle might be harmful to desert
tortoises. All occurring years ago, but simmering and stewing until they
have reached the point of boiling over.
Somehow the situation has
escalated from the trivial to the tragic because of base bullheadedness
and naked intransigence on both sides.
In Oregon it ensnared the Hammond family ranchers. In Nevada it involves the Bundy family ranchers.
In
2001 the Hammonds started a fire on their own property to burn off
juniper and sagebrush. The fire escaped their property and burned 139
acres of Bureau of Land Management land. The fire probably improved the
land.
In 2006, lightning started several fires and the Hammonds
set a back-burn fire to try to prevent the fire from spreading to their
crops and buildings. That fire burned an acre of public land.
Dwight
Hammond and his son Steven were charged and convicted under the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which carries a
minimum sentence of five years in prison, but a federal judge declared
that was ludicrous and sentenced them to lesser terms, which they
served.
But bullheaded BLM managers appealed and got a federal
court to send the pair to prison for the full five years for
accidentally burning 140 acres.
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