This statement shows how delusional these people are.
Malheur means 'misfortune' - which applied to both the Paiute who were dispossessed of their land and to the land itself:
The complicated history of who really ‘owns’ the occupied land in Oregon
Before the Bundys seized it from the feds, the feds seized it from the Paiute.
By Char Miller, January 7, 2016
<SNIP>
The land suffered, too. As Langston points out, it is no coincidence that dispossessing the Paiute allowed large livestock operations to take over, resulting in the rapid deterioration of grazing lands in the upper reaches of the Silvies and Blitzen rivers that flow into Malheur Lake.
Further diminishing the lake’s capacity to sustain migratory and local bird populations were the irrigation and drainage projects that the Bureau of Reclamation, founded in 1902 to manage water to boost economic development in the arid West, built upstream.
Add to this environmental degradation the reckless hunt for bird plumage: late-19th-century fashionistas coveted the white heron’s graceful feathers to adorn their hats. With gold rush-like avarice, local hunters blazed away, and within a few years, the Malheur heron population was decimated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/07/the-complicated-history-of-who-really-owns-the-occupied-land-in-oregon
The myth that the area was a paradise until the Federal Government acquired the refuge land is just that - a myth. Their delusion goes back to the Sagebrush Rebellion - and the results of those standoffs generated in that confrontation were court cases that settled the exact issues that the Bundys and their followers are still fighting today:
Indeed, in 1911 in a pair of landmark decisions –
Light vs. U.S. and
U.S. vs. Grimaud – the Supreme Court asserted that the public lands were, in fact, public; that federal ownership of them was indisputable; and that Congress through a series of legislative acts had granted the Executive Branch, and by extension the federal land management agencies, administrative authority to manage these acres in accordance with the relevant rules and regulations.
(from above WP article)
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