Summary: How Conflict Shaped The Malheur National Wildlife Refugee

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How Conflict Shaped the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Wherever there is land there will be conflict over who the rightful owners of the land are. Over past two hundred years the ownership of the Malheur basin has been debated by the people who hoped to claim it as their own and use it as their home and livelihood. Of the different groups, it can be difficult to determine who truly deserves to call the Malheur basin their home. In Where Land and Water Meet, Nancy Langston talks about how cattle baron Peter French made the journey from California to the Southeastern corner of Oregon, displacing the native Paiute tribe, and the conflicts that he found with the homesteaders. Langston also argues how the Malheur could also belong to nature, …show more content…

Upon reaching the Malheur, French had found the perfect place for creating an empire of cattle. “The basis of this paradise was the natural wealth offered by the wetlands and riparian areas of the northern Great Basin, a geography of basin and range where the rivers flowed not into the sea but into briny lakes.” (Langston, pgs. 17-18) Here French had found the perfect landscape for his empire, a land full of opportunity, and as he thought, no one to fight for it. The Homesteaders and the cattle barons got on quite well together, sharing both interests and work ethic, but most of all a hatred for the native Paiute tribe. “To lay claim to the basin for themselves, they believed they had to deny the Paiute’s claim to a home and physically expel them.” (Langston, pg. 28) The rancher and the settlers decided they needed to rid the Malheur of the Paiutes, leading to the Paiute rebellion of 1878. “The uprising was brief, yet the retaliation against the Paiute was brutal and swift.” (Langston, pg. 33) Any remaining Paiute were forced to make the journey to the Yakima …show more content…

Malheur lake was part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which sought to protect birds and wildlife in their natural habitat. Conflict took place when settlers began to notice how much space the Malheur lake was taking up, they saw this as space that could have been used as land for farming, instead of being wasted on the birds. With the threats to drain the Malheur, preservationists looked for answers to protect them from the homesteaders who so desperately wanted the land that the Malheur covered. Court battles took place for decades, trying to determine who rightfully owned the land in the Blitzen River Valley. In 1934 the Federal Emergency Relief Program agreed to terms with Swift corporation, who were the current land owners, to purchase sixty-five thousand acres of the Blitzen River Valley. All of this land became a part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. This purchase ended disputes over who owned rights to the land surrounding Malheur

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