Hammond family loses grazing permit for third time

Mateusz Perkowski

Roughly a month after their grazing permit was restored, Oregon’s Hammond family has again lost access to four federal allotments totaling 26,400 acres. The U.S. Interior Department has reversed its decision to re-issue the Hammonds’ grazing permit after several environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the decision, claiming it violated administrative, environmental and land management laws. The federal government re-authorized the 10-year grazing permit on Jan. 19, the Trump administration’s final day in office, after initially announcing the proposal on Dec. 31. However, the Interior Department now says that interested parties weren’t notified of the proposed re-authorization for several days, which means they didn’t get the required 15 days to file a protest. The agency said the rescission isn’t a “final determination” in the case and has ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which regulates the allotments, to reconsider the decision. “On remand, the BLM is encouraged to initiate any additional processes and opportunities for public involvement that it may determine appropriate under applicable law following a careful and considered review of protests,” the rescission notice said.In previously re-issuing the grazing permit, the Interior Department cited the Hammond family’s historic use and proximity to the federal property... The Western Watersheds Project, Oregon Natural Desert Association, Wildearth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity filed another lawsuit seeking to rescind the grazing permit’s most recent approval. The environmental plaintiffs argued the federal government’s decision involved “rushed, opaque, and highly unusual public processes” that were “tainted by political influence and are not the product of reasoned, lawful decision-making,” the complaint said. According to the complaint, the federal government approved the grazing permit “without opportunities for public participation required by law” and wrongly determined the Hammonds were more qualified than other applicants...MORE

From the January 29, 2019 edition of  THE WESTERNER is the info you need to understand this case

Some background on the Hammond case

Some may have forgotten. Others may not be aware of the facts and significance of what happened to the Hammonds.

Here is an excerpt from a May, 2018 column by William Perry Pendley that lays out the facts of this case.

...The Hammonds’ crime? They set a legally permissible fire on their own property, which accidentally burned out of control onto neighboring federal land. Normally, that is an infraction covered by laws governing trespassing, and the guilty party is subject to paying for damages caused by the fire – if the neighboring land belongs to an ordinary citizen. But not when a vindictive federal government is involved. In the “high desert” environment of Harney County – and throughout the West – federal, state and private landowners use controlled or prescribed burns for prairie restoration, forest management and to reduce the buildup of underbrush that could fuel much bigger fires. But sometimes the controlled fires get out of control and sweep onto neighbors’ land. That is legally deemed a trespass, and the landowner who set the fire is liable for any damages. Only the federal government has the power to cite the trespasser criminally for his or her actions. That is what happened to the Hammonds. It did not happen in a vacuum. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has long coveted the Hammond Ranch for inclusion in its surrounding Malheur Wildlife Refuge. The federal agency pressured members of the Hammond family for decades to follow all of their neighbors in selling their property to the federal government. ...In 2001, after alerting the Bureau of Land Management, the Hammonds set a legal fire to eradicate noxious weeds. It spread onto 139 acres of vacant federal land. According to a government witness, the fire actually improved the federal land, as natural fires often do. In 2006, Steven Hammond started another prescribed fire in response to several blazes ignited by a lightning storm near his family’s field of winter feed. The counter-blaze burned a single acre of federal land. According to Steven Hammond’s mother, “the backfire worked perfectly, it put out the fire, saved the range and possibly our home.” The Bureau of Land Management took a different view. It filed a report with Harney County officials alleging several violations of Oregon law. However, after a review of the evidence, the Harney County district attorney dropped all charges in 2006. The Bureau of Land Management did not give up. In 2011, federal prosecutors – referencing both the 2001 and 2006 fires – charged the Hammonds with violating the ‘‘Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996,” which carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years... 

And here is an excerpt from a January 2018 article by Carrie Stadheim that gives more of the background of what had been happening to the ranchers in this area:

Dwight Hammond and Steve Hammond are in the midst of their five year prison sentences under the "Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996," for burning – and subsequently putting out – about 140 acres of Bureau of Land Management-administered land in their area. But there is so much more to the story. The family has been denied the ability to use their grazing allotment for nearly four years. Many in the community including Erin Maupin and Travis Williams wonder "why?" No fences or other property were damaged in the fires and a range conservationist testified under oath that the larger fire improved the condition of the rangeland... Hammond Ranch, Incorporated (HRI)- incidentally the only ranching family that continues to maintain a large tract of private land and graze BLM-administered land on the top of the Steens Mountain – was denied a renewal of their grazing permit in 2014, prior to a judge imposing the full five year prison sentence on Dwight and Steven. According to Erin Maupin, former BLM watershed specialist and neighboring rancher, the other ranchers who had previously grazed BLM land in that area, traded allotments and large private inholdings to the government through the creation of the Steens Mountain Act. Much of the grazing allotments that were handed over were then declared a Wilderness Area of around 180,000 acres. Almost 100,000 acres were named "cow-free" wilderness due to pressure from environmental groups and from the Clinton administration, she recalls...The BLM denied them the renewal of their grazing permit in 2014, before the second sentencing, saying they have an "unacceptable record of performance."

Stadheim goes on to write of the significance of this case:

Because the Hammonds can't use their grazing allotment, they are also unable to use their private land which is not fenced, and nearly impossible to fence due to the rough terrain. "They own a significant amount (around 10,000 acres) of private land intermingled with their BLM allotment (around 60,000 acres total) that they are unable to use because there are no fences to separate the two," said Maupin. "Another thing people maybe don't understand – they've paid for their BLM allotment with the purchase of the land and grazing rights. It has real value," said Maupin. "This is why this case is so important. The government is taking real property without due process. If this stands and they can do this to the Hammonds, they can take any of our property whether it is a BLM administered allotment or a house or anything. That's the problem – there was no due process. They just said 'you're done. We're not renewing your permit. We're taking what amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars without just compensation." 

And here is an excerpt from a column I wrote in November of 2015 that shows the BLM was so vindictive they went so far as to use false names to attack the Hammonds in social media:

Ranchers as Terrorists
After a two-week trial in July of 2012, Oregon rancher Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son Steven Hammond, 46, were found guilty of setting fires that caused damage to federal property. One fire burned 139 acres of federal land, the other only 1 acre. The Hammonds claimed the fires were for range management purposes, the federal prosecutors said they were set for more nefarious reasons. Now-retired U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan sentenced Steven Hammond to one year and a day in prison for setting intentional fires in 2001 and 2006, and ordered Dwight Hammond to spend three months behind bars for his involvement in the 2001 blaze. That should have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t. The feds appealed claiming the ranchers should have received mandatory sentences of five years. They had charged the ranchers with violation of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. That’s right, the feds were using a law aimed at terrorists to prosecute the ranchers and that law required the mandatory sentences. Judge Hogan had ruled that 5-year sentences would “shock the conscience”, would be grossly disproportionate to the offenses committed and violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the feds, however, and returned the case for sentencing. On October 7 of this year, both Hammonds received the mandatory minimum sentence of five years for deliberately setting fires that spread from their property onto federal land. For comparison, other federal laws that carry five-year minimum sentences are for treason, child pornography, using a gun while committing a violent crime or importing drugs. That should have been the end of this sad story. But it wasn’t. Capital Press posted an online article about the five year sentences and a person who identified himself as Greg Allum posted three comments on the article, calling the ranchers “clowns” who endangered firefighters and other people in the area while burning valuable rangeland. The real Greg Allum, a retired BLM heavy equipment operator, called Capital Press and complained he hadn’t posted those comments. “They’re not terrorists. There’s this hatred in the BLM for them, and I don’t get it,” Allum said. The publication undertook a search of the Internet Protocol address associated with the comments and discovered the computer was owned by one of BLM’s offices in Denver, Colo. Treat ranchers as terrorists and then use a government computer to publicly disparage them. One is an injustice and the other is an abuse of federal equipment to ridicule private citizens. 

What a sordid performance by the feds. Is there any wonder that Trump gave each a FULL pardon? And yet, it took BLM 7 months after the pardon to reissue their grazing permits.