Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge located roughly south of the city of Burns in Oregon's Harney Basin. Administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the refuge area is roughly T-shaped with the southernmost base at Frenchglen, the northeast section at Malheur Lake and the northwest section at Harney Lake.
The refuge was created in 1908 by order of President Theodore Roosevelt to protect habitat for diverse waterfowl and migratory birds, and grew to encompass of public lands. A popular site for birding, fishing, hunting and hiking, the refuge gained widespread attention in early 2016 after its headquarters complex was occupied by armed anti-government protesters.
History Archaeological research within the Harney Basin region, including near Burns, Oregon, demonstrates that it likely was home to Native Americans for about the past 16,000 to 15,000 years. The first recognizable remains of seasonal prehistoric dwellings appear later in the Harney Basin at the Dunn Site about 5,500 BP. Around Malheur and Harney lakes, the presence of identifiable remains of numerous settlements and burials of the Boulder Village Period demonstrate that these lakes were heavily utilized by Paiute tribes for hunting and fishing as part of their seasonal nomadic round of the Harney Valley from before 3,000 BP up until historic contact with and settlement of the area by non-Native peoples.Aikens, C.M., T.J. Connolly, and D.L. Jenkins (2011) Oregon Archaeology. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon. 512 pp. O'Grady, P.W. (2006) Before Winter Comes: Archaeological Investigations of Settlement and Subsistence in Harney Valley, Harney County, Oregon. unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology. University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. 541 pp. For example, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Headquarters lies within a major archaeological site that was once a settlement used by Paiute tribes seasonally for thousands of years until historic contact.Aikens, C.M., and R.L. Greenspan (1988) Ancient Lakeside Culture in the Northern Great Basin: Malheur Lake, Oregon. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. 10(1):32-61.
The arrival of settlers in the region led to restrictions on the use of the land by the Paiute people who were eventually restricted to living in the Malheur Indian Reservation.Malheur Indian Reservation., The Oregon Historical Project, January 31, 2016 After it was established, the size of the Malheur Indian Reservation continued to shrink as small areas of it were repeatedly extracted from it and transferred to local settlers for their private use. The Paiute people were also denied the local fishing and hunting rights that were promised them.Whiting, B.B. (1950) Paiute Sorcery. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology no. 15, 110 pp. New York.
The Paiute people were forced to leave their Malheur Indian Reservation after joining the Bannock people in Idaho in an uprising, the Bannock War, in 1878, and were resettled in Yakama Reservation, away in southeastern Washington. About 550 Paiute men, women, and children, of whom many had not engaged in any hostile action, traveled for nearly a month through the snow and over two mountain ranges. Even though supplies were in transit from the Malheur agency, the Paiute people were forced to leave Camp Harney under-equipped. As a result, five children, one woman, and an elderly man died along the way and were left unburied as they traveled. During the five years they spent on the Yakama Reservation, historian Sally Zanjani estimates that more than one-fifth of them died during their exile, mostly of malnourishment and disease. When they were allowed to leave the reservation in 1883, some of the Paiute people moved to either the Warm Springs Reservation or Nevada. Others returned to the Harney Basin and in 1972, acquired title to of land and created the Burns Paiute Indian Reservation.Report by W.V. Rinehart, 1879., The Oregon Historical Project, January 31, 2016
After the removal of Paiute tribes, much of the region's land became public property. The region hosted large livestock operations while the area's water resources were altered by irrigation and drainage projects.
Devastation and study of bird life
The remarkable abundance and diversity of bird life within the pre-irrigation Malheur region was first described by Charles Bendire in the middle 1870s.Brewer, W.T.. (1877) Notes on Seventy-nine Species of Birds Observed in the Neighborhood of Camp Harney, Oregon, compiled from the correspondence of Captain Charles Bendire, 1st Cavalry, U. S. A. Proceedings Boston Society of Natural History. vol. 18, pp. 153-168.Bendire, C. (1878) Notes on Some of the Birds found In Southeastern Oregon, particularly in the Vicinity of Camp Harney, from November 1874, to January 1877. Proceedings Boston Society of Natural History. vol. 19, pp. 109-149, November, 1877. Beginning in the late 1880s, the area's bird populations were devastated by the actions of plume hunters who harvested the showy feathers of Malheur's waterfowl for use as hat ornaments. In 1908, wildlife photographers William L. Finley and Herman Bohlman documented the area's unusual diversity of birds, as well as the detrimental impacts of plume hunting.Finley, W.L. (1908) Report of Wm. L. Finley [on a trip to Malheur Lake in May, 1908] Bird-Lore. vol. X, no. 6, pp. 291-295, November–December, 1908. Finley used photographs to personally lobby President Theodore Roosevelt for federal protection of the region.
Creation and expansion of the refuge
Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was created on August 18, 1908 by a proclamation from President Roosevelt, under a law which allowed the president to declare game preserves on federal public land. The refuge began as a parcel surrounding Malheur Lake, Harney Lake and Mud Lake, and was originally named the Malheur Lake Refuge. In the years that followed, the refuge grew to its current size of through federal purchases and acquisitions of surrounding lands. Of its current acreage, were acquired by purchase from various willing sellers; were acquired by condemnation; were acquired by purchase from a willing seller as part of the Blitzen Valley Project in 1935; were acquired in exchange for of refuge land; were acquired by direct donation; and were already existing public domain land. The creation and expansion of this refuge involved litigation, of which two lawsuits ended in favorable Supreme Court decisions, that provide the legal foundation for its ownership and management by federal agencies.U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2013) Chapter 1 Introduction and Background., in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Final Comprehensive Conservation Plan and Environmental Impact Statement Harney County, Oregon. U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington DC.
Roads and other infrastructure were built by workers with the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. While cattle grazing was permitted on some portions of the property after 1935, the prioritization of the needs of the refuge's wildlife led to reductions in the number of cattle allowed on the property starting in the 1970s. The number of cattle allowed to graze within the refuge remained at a steady level throughout the 1990s and 2000s. As the need for a comprehensive management plan for the refuge was realized, ranch operators became concerned about the possibility of further reductions in grazing allotments.
Recent history Drafting of a new management plan began in 2008, and was a collaborative process involving varied stakeholders in the refuge's future, including ranch operators. The final plan, completed in 2013 and intended to inform refuge operations for the following 15 years, was accepted by environmentalists, refuge managers, cattle owners and the Paiute tribe as an agreeable compromise between potentially opposing interests in the land. Grazing was allowed to continue under the innovative plan, and is seen as a valuable tool in some areas to combat invasive plants that threaten the refuge's habitat quality; however, the extent of grazing may be reduced in specific areas if it is scientifically shown to be detrimental to the refuge's wildlife.
2016 occupation
From January 2 to February 11, 2016, the refuge's headquarters was seized by armed protesters related to the 2014 Bundy standoff. For most of the occupation, law enforcement allowed the occupiers to come and go at will. At the conclusion, most of the leaders were arrested, and one was killed while traveling away from the refuge when the group he was leading attempted to evade a police road block. The remaining occupiers either departed or surrendered peacefully.
With respect to the refuge, they demanded that the federal government relinquish control so that, according to the occupiers, "the people can have their resources".
Various stakeholders interested in the protection of the refuge, including the Portland Audubon Society and the Burns Paiute Tribe, voiced unease about potential impacts of an extended occupation. Among their concerns were the delayed implementation of work to improve conditions for the annual spring migration of birds, halting of efforts to control invasive common carp, and protection of archaeological sites within the refuge. Concerns were also raised regarding the occupiers' handling of Burns Paiute artifacts stored at the refuge's headquarters, as well as direct impacts to the refuge and damage to an important archaeological site caused by road construction, destruction of fencing, and damage to a research field station.
Geography
The Donner und Blitzen River flows northward through the middle of the refuge, and is irrigated out to create a large artificial wetland, where once a natural wetland stood. The Donner und Blitzen River flows into Malheur Lake, which flows into Harney Lake forming a large salt lake. This open water brings thousands of migrating birds through the wildlife refuge every year as has happened for thousands of years before in the past.
Including the extensive marshland, the total size of the refuge is . Exceptionally hot in the summer, and cold in the winter, the late spring and early fall are popular times to visit. Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is home to one of the most extensive freshwater marsh ecosystems in the western United States. These marshes lie in the desiccated lake bed of a Pleistocene age pluvial lake.U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2013) Chapter 3 Physical Environment., in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Final Comprehensive Conservation Plan and Environmental Impact Statement Harney County, Oregon. U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington DC.
Located along the southeast side of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is the Diamond Craters volcanic field. It lies about southeast of the city of Burns. This monogenetic volcanic field consists of a area of basaltic lava flows, cinder cones, and maars. A reexamination of old radiocarbon dates and interpretation of paleomagnetic data and new radiocarbon dates limits the eruption of volcanic vents in this volcanic field to the time period between 7320 and 7790 calendar years B.P.Sherrod, D.R., D.E. Champion, and J.P. McGeehin (2012) Age and duration of volcanic activity at Diamond Craters, southeastern Oregon. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. 247–248:108–114