Greetings All,
Shortly after the 2 January 2016 armed takeover of Malheur NWR headquarters,
the moderators made it clear that this forum was not to be used for any
discussion of this occupation as such discussion might become contentious and
too political. Malheur NWR is not merely a square in someone else's real life
Monopoly gameboard and I'm not about to reduce it to that level. There are
positive things that we can do and I recommend doing them in an effort to bring
this occupation to a hasty end. Let your voice be heard.
My ex-wife first took my kids to Malheur when they were barely school-aged.
After that we continued making somewhat regular trips there throughout their
childhood. This is where my kids learned
about the high desert and all the wildlife that the average person
thinks isn't there. They also learned how the entire Malheur NWR wetland system
is
fed by snowmelt from the Steens and Strawberry Mountains and that once
the water drains into the closed Harney/Malheur basin, it evaporates throughout
the dry months, then it's gone until the next round of snow melt. They even
learned a bit about cattle-ranching, the history of cattle barons in the
region, Pete French, and his murder. They learned about and continue to make
annual visits to the crazy round barn out in the
middle of nowhere that French designed so that horses could be exercised
when it was too cold for man or beast to venture outside. Most importantly,
they learned that
Malheur isn't immune to human problems or conflicts about how the land
is best used. They learned about the various interests whose needs must
be factored into refuge management policies.
Malheur is where they saw their first
American White Pelicans, Burrowing Owls and Yellow-headed Blackbirds. As a
teenager my oldest daughter Lucy invited her best friend to join us for a long
Memorial Day Weekend. Meli had no notion of what she was getting herself
into. For Lucy it was a bit of litmus test, which Meli passed with flying
colors. From then on, my kids and Meli and other friends they drug along began
to forge their own brand of love affair with Malheur. Once they gained access
to their own wheels, they were no longer stuck birding with dad anymore,
although they never miss the chance to 'let' me to buy them milkshakes in
Fields. Otherwise, they organize their own trips now. Malheur
has become a place where they go geocaching. It's where they still watch
with child-like joy as the Belding's Ground-Squirrels pop in and out of
holes in the lawn at headquarters. They go camping and sit by a fire
and cook their own meals at Page Springs. They poke around Diamond
Craters and then make the pilgrimage to Fields for burgers and shakes. While
there, they still go into the woodlot
each Memorial Day Weekend to see the fuzzy juvenile Great Horned Owls.
Then they drive north to go walking out onto the dry alkali-white Alvord Lake
bed and take pictures so beautiful that they bring
tears to this dad's eyes.
Malheur is where the two surviving "desert sisters" (Lucy and Meli)
had their last great outing with the third desert sister in May 2014.
Three months later my younger daughter Lilly would be gone. Over Memorial Day
Weekend 2015 we gathered with family and long-time friends to scatter some of
Lilly's ashes atop South Coyote Butte on the south side of the Malheur
Field Station, just a few miles west of the currently-occupied headquarters.
Four months after that we placed a memorial bench honoring Lilly on those same
occupied headquarters grounds. This evening, Lilly's bench is one of the few
tangible
connections to anyone associated with this forum that is currently able
to be on those grounds. No friendly faces to come by, take a seat, and
warm it up. No one I know is there to stop by and make sure Lilly's bench is
still intact and in
the spot where we placed it last September.
Perhaps this summary
is TOO POLITICAL for some of you, or crosses the arbitrary boundary of "too
political" in the eyes of the moderators. All I can say is, you need to spend a
little more time at Malheur and then maybe you'll get it. The alternate forum
for discussion of this occupation (Birders of Oregon) is perhaps appropriately
represented as "boo" in the posting URL. BOO! Perhaps we are afraid of what
might happen if someone's emotions come across a little too raw in this forum,
or a poster gets a bit too strident in their call for action. Can we really be
too strident in this case?
As for me,
this isn't about politics, who you vote for in the next election, whether
cattle should or shouldn't be grazing on the refuge, the harshness of the
Hammonds' sentences, or
what you think should happen to the Bundys when this all comes to an
end. I'm not using this space to opine about any of that. What this is about is
Malheur and Harney County, which has been, is, and always will be a part
of our birding lives and part of the fabric that binds this community. For my
family and certainly many others, the bond with this place and this landscape
goes far
beyond the birds that we might see there. Being able to spawn in my
children a love for Malheur and the Oregon high desert that rivals my
own may be the single most important gift that I've given them as a
parent. If that's too political for this forum, perhaps I need to find a forum
that welcomes this sort of connection to nature and the land. If you love
Malheur, The Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Big Bend,
Denali, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Crater Lake or some other
spectacular public place in America, please let your elected officials hear
your voice. It's long past time that we all start drowning out the noise
coming from the decided minority who think they know better than us how these
lands ought to
be used. They are just about perfect exactly as they are thank you.
Until the current occupation of Malheur headquarters ends, I will be absent
from this forum. I've got important work to do trying to protect access for my
family and your family to a place that we hold dear. I hope to be back very
soon.
Dave Irons
Portland, Oregon
