Upon examination of the government’s trail of paperwork spanning a
period of nearly two decades , between the Hammonds and the US Fish and
Wildlife Service (FWS) at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR),
it is apparent that they were being persecuted by the federal government
for simply insisting upon exercising their historical right to trail
cattle. This began long before the controlled burn in 2002 and the
backfire in 2006 that resulted in them being sentenced to five years in
federal prison.
What is plainly “a long train of abuses” has been well documented by
the documents obtained by those who made copies of public records (not
classified) that were found at the headquarters of the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge. Though there were many more incidents, this review of
the paper trail of correspondence between the Hammonds and the FWS , as
well as other intergovernmental records, clearly demonstrates that
abuse. This provides us a bit of transparency to the federal
government’s treatment of those who had every right to their historical
usage of those public lands.
On October 26, Dwight Hammond notified Fish and Wildlife Services
(FWS) at MNWR, some 30 miles south of Burns, Oregon, and explained that
historically, he did not have to notify anyone to “trail” his cattle
(for you city folk, this means herding cattle along a route from one
point to another).
FWS attempted to impose a requirement that they be
notified as to the number of cattle, the route, the time, and the date
of such movements. The new policy also disallowed grazing off of the
trail while the cattle were being moved, held Dwight to a schedule by
FWS, and demanded that he obtain a permit from them for each move.
The Hill
