Velta and Dave,
Thanks for the history. While I missed out on the Greasewood Room, I was
inspired as a young teacher by the evening lectures and field trips organized
by Denzel Ferguson during the weekend visit I made to the Field Station in 1972
or '73. I was on a bus trip sponsored by the Portland Zoo. For me it was a
great introduction to the Oregon high desert, and it led to other trips of
exploration and birding over the decades, and purchasing Denzel's book Sacred
Cows at the Public Trough in the eighties, and Welfare Ranching, edited by
George Wuerthner, in 2002. As with Dave, my wish is for a re-invigorated and
generously funded field station to inspire another generation of students,
scientists and teachers.
Darrel Whipple
Rainier, Oregon
On Feb 1, 2016, at 10:28 PM, David Irons wrote:
Velta,
This article truly tells it like it was. I'm old enough to have enjoyed a few
late nights in the "Greasewood Room" drinking cheap beer and listening to
heavily-scratched LPs (long-playing albums for you puppies in the forum)
featuring the music of the day along with some outlaw country classics like
Johnny Russell's "Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer." My memories
of those days still resonate, marking a period when my love affair with
Malheur and the Great Basin first blossomed and when I first came to
appreciate the impact that livestock makes on the high desert landscape.
I've been a guest in Denzel and Nancy's home and I still laugh any time I
think of Denzel using a bull horn to try to wake up Ron Holloway–the
maintenance man at the Malheur Field Station–after Ron passed out in the
middle of the Ferguson living room during a party. "WAKE UP RON, WAKE UP!"
That same evening, C.D. Littlefield, a long-time biologist, who studied
Sandhill Cranes on the refuge and later published "Birds of Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge (1990), crawled across the floor to where David Fix and I
were sitting and admonished us for not making more of an effort to publish
articles about what we were learning via all of our birding experiences.
Apparently we both took C.D.'s beer-fueled challenge to heart, for over the
subsequent years we have both written and co-authored a number of bird
articles and worked as authors and editors on more significant collaborative
works relating to birds.
The threats that were made towards Denzel and Nancy back then were very real
and they took them seriously. As I recall, at one point they were worried
enough that they invited a group of friends to come out and stay with them at
the station so that they wouldn't be left all alone as sitting ducks for
potential violence. Denzel was not one to mince words or mutter under his
breath about the damage he was seeing from cattle on the refuge. He spoke
loudly and often and potentially put himself in harm's way with his
locally-unpopular opinions on this topic.
Running for Congress as an anti-cattle Democrat in Oregon's 2nd Congressional
District was as much a fools errand back then as it would be today, but it
did provide Denzel with a pulpit to preach his message, at least for one
election cycle. His was a courageous stand and while a political victory was
not in the cards, his efforts coupled with those of others, seem to have
precipitated some of the improvements in federal rangeland management that we
see today. As outspoken and vehement as Denzel might have been in his
opposition to cattle on the refuge, so far as I know he never resorted to
violence, the threat of violence, vandalism of federal or private property,
or any illegal action. If a protest can be simultaneously loud and peaceful,
Denzel's was. The mere mention of his name probably still elicits some
angered responses in Harney County.
The Malheur Environmental Field Station (MEFS, as it was called then) was a
vibrant place under Denzel and Nancy Ferguson's stewardship, which spanned
most of the 1970's and into the early 1980's. It benefited from financial
support that came from many colleges and universities around the Pacific
Northwest. It also benefited from the back-to-nature culture and
environmental activism that came in response to the widespread realization
that DDT, oil spills, strip-mining, intensive logging, monoculture forestry
practices, pesticide usage, overgrazing and other environmental catastrophes
were major threats to the future of the planet and its wildlife. College
students gobbled up opportunities to study earth sciences and the station
offered a remarkable array of upper division college-credit field classes
each summer. Enthusiasm for such things waned in subsequent decades and
various budget crises gradually eroded the financial support that fueled the
glory days of MEFS. Although the money doesn't seem to be available, I have
to think that if the Malheur Field Station was again able to offer the sort
of educational experience that it once did, many today's college-age
students, who are essentially the progeny of the first generation MEFS alumni
and their peers, would jump at the unique opportunity to learn about this
landscape the same way their parents did.
If there is a silver lining to this occupation, I hope it comes in the form
of renewed support and appreciation for the refuge and the unique educational
opportunities that a well-funded Malheur Field Station might provide. I never
took a summer class at the station and it remains one of very few things in
my life that I truly regret.
Dave Irons
Portland, OR
From: velta@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [boo] Some history - Nancy and Denzel Ferguson at Malheur
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2016 20:48:52 -0800
To: boo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Copied from comments to Oregonian report -
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/02/ammon_bundy_to_appeal_to_anoth.html#incart_maj-story-1
Velta Mack
In 1980, bird-watching visitors to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
complained that the cows were destroying critical wildlife habitat. So Nancy
and Denzel Ferguson, the husband-and-wife naturalist team who lived just down
the road from the sanctuary headquarters, started a letter-writing campaign
to draw attention to grazing abuses.
They got some cattle off the refuge, but ranchers were furious. The Fergusons
received telephone death threats on many nights. A group of ranchers threw
them out of a local dance in the early '80s.
That night, a caller told Nancy that "a bunch of us guys are coming over to
get you." She politely asked who was calling. "Dwight Hamm—" she recalls the
caller stammered, before being drowned out by other voices in the background.
Dwight Hammond Jr., the same rancher whose prison sentence for arson sparked
the militants' recent takeover of the refuge's headquarters, had been one of
the people whom Nancy says pushed the Fergusons out of the dance. (Hammond
and his son Steven Hammond are in federal prison. Larry Matasar, the
Hammonds' attorney, declined to comment.)
The claims of the armed men now occupying the federal building in Harney
County would be all too familiar to Denzel Ferguson. After earning a Ph.D.
from Oregon State University in zoology, he spent a quarter-century fighting
to protect public lands from ranchers who thought they had a right to use
them however they pleased.
For an aging group of Western natural history buffs, Malheur will be forever
linked to Denzel and Nancy Ferguson. For most of the 1970s, the Fergusons ran
the Malheur Field Station, an environmental education outpost housed in a
former Job Corps center at the edge of the sanctuary.
Twenty-two colleges and universities funded the station, which offered summer
classes for budding biologists, botanists and birders. Nancy and Denzel lived
at the station as resident faculty, while visiting students bunked in nearby
dormitories. The beer-soaked parties held in the drab, tin-sided building
called the Greasewood Room were legendary among baby boom-era college kids.
But the Fergusons were serious about protecting the southeastern corner of
Oregon they called home. Their time at Malheur exposed them to the
environmental degradation caused by a century of unrestricted cattle grazing.
Much of the refuge land was devoted to either grazing or growing hay, and the
wildlife supposedly protected in this special place was often killed by farm
machinery or displaced by cattle. More than 400 miles of barbed-wire fence
snaked across the refuge, and the Fergusons often found the desiccated
remains of deer and other animals caught in the jagged strands.
The Fergusons' outspoken criticism of what they called "hooved locusts" on
the refuge and other sensitive public lands took a toll. After a decade of
running the field station, they left in 1982 and moved to rural Grant County.
Nancy and Denzel wrote Sacred Cows at the Public Trough, the first book to
challenge the myth of the Western rancher and seriously question a century of
unrestrained grazing on public land.
Denzel Ferguson ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1992 but lost to incumbent
U.S. Rep. Bob Smith (R-Ore.) in the mostly Republican 2nd District. Ferguson
called Smith "a tax-supported beef lobbyist" for his efforts to keep grazing
fees down, and quipped, "I hold no grazing permits on public land, so you
will only have to pay me once."
The Fergusons' book details how "welfare ranchers" profit from federal
subsidies and public spending. The current standoff is about money, too;
federal officials say the Bundy family owes $1 million in unpaid grazing
fees, and the Hammonds have a history of running cattle on public land
illegally.
Denzel died in 1998, to the very end ranting about the cows tearing up the
landscape he loved. Nancy still lives in Eastern Oregon. She says Denzel
wouldn't be surprised by the militants now holding the refuge hostage: "It's
just like what he'd seen before."
And for the protesters' claims about returning the land to the original
owners? "He'd laugh at them," she says, "and he'd say, 'Let's give it back to
the Paiutes.'
