1 year after refuge takeover, quieter land battle unfolds

On a recent wintry evening, members of the Grant County Public Forest Commission walked into the warmth of a rustic diner and took seats at their customary table for their bimonthly meeting. They voiced anger and frustration. At this meeting, they were officially a non-entity. A judge this fall dissolved the commission at the behest of a former county supervisor who worried it was becoming a risk, citing the takeover of a federal wildlife refuge in a neighboring county. While the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge grabbed the world's attention, a quieter struggle over federal lands is being waged by those trying to use elections and the levers of government. Their grandparents and great-grandparents wrested a living from the West's rugged landscape. But now, the forest commissioners say, the government is tightening access to the same natural resources by closing roads and curtailing logging and other industries that allowed previous generations to be self-sufficient. The commissioners feel they lost, by the stroke of a judge's pen, a tool voters gave them to fight back. Created by voters in a ballot measure 14 years ago, the forest commission was tasked with determining the fate of public lands, which comprise 66 percent of the county's 4,529 square miles...more