The final chapter of the Hammonds’ public lands story seems to have closed; The family’s public lands grazing must be restored by a secretarial order.
On the afternoon of Monday, Jan. 28, one of the last official acts of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke came to light. His Jan. 2 decision, remanding the BLM to renew the Hammonds’ grazing permit through 2024. The BLM denied the Hammond family’s 2014 renewal application due to the 2012 arson conviction against father Dwight and son Steven Hammond.
WLJ spoke with Steven on Thursday morning, Jan. 31. When asking about the family’s plans moving forward, he chuckled and said, “Turning cows out, that’s my plan. Eating grass and utilizing our natural resources and all those things.”
“This certainly concludes the permit matter,” Alan Schroeder, the Hammond’s lawyer, told the Oregonian, which broke the story. “It is significant. This gives them continued use of private and public land for grazing. It’s another very good day, though July 10th was the best. I’m pleased with Secretary Zinke’s statements in his reasoned decision. I’m pleased the agency found reason to appropriately and positively move forward.’’
When asked about how the family dealt with over four years of being denied their public grazing allotment, Steven told WLJ, “I would say we’ve been surviving. We have great neighbors and a God-blessed support system that has been amazing.”
He added later, “The family is great and God has been good to us.”
A brief history
The Hammonds’ saga dates back decades. According to court documents, in both 2001 and 2006, the father-son pair conducted controlled burns on their private property that spread out onto their adjoining public lands grazing allotments.
In total, about 140 acres of federal rangeland was burned between the two instances. These damages were later found during the resulting trials to have cost the government less than $1,000 in direct damage in both cases. After the burned areas had regrown, court documents show the burns had ecologically improved the areas.
In 2010, the pair were indicted by the government on 19 counts including arson and conspiracy involving fires started by the Hammonds dating back to 1982. In 2012, the government amended its indictment, reducing the charges to nine—though still including arson and conspiracy—and focusing on the two instances described above under an antiterrorism statute.
The jury trial that followed shortly after found the two men guilty one count of damaging government property involved with the 2001 fire and found Steven additionally guilty of one count of the same charge related to the 2006 fire. They were acquitted of the other charges.
The statute under which the Hammonds were charged—the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996—required a minimum 5-year prison term. The presiding judge, District Judge Michael Hogan, used his judicial discretion to reduce the prison terms, saying that the mandatory minimum violated the Eight Amendment and would “shock the conscience.”
Dwight was sentenced to three months in prison and Steven to a year and a day. It was after they had served this reduced sentence that the family applied to the BLM for the renewal of their grazing permit and were refused.
Following a civil settlement in 2014 over the claimed damages resulting from the fire, the Hammonds paid $400,000 to the government.
The government appealed Judge Hogan’s reduced sentence and, in 2015 under a different judge, the Hammonds were resentenced to serve the remaining time of the 5-year mandatory minimum. Both returned to prison at the beginning of 2016.
On July 10, 2018, largely due to the efforts of ranching non-profit group Protect the Harvest, President Donald Trump pardoned Dwight and Steven Hammond.
Grazing pardon
In his Jan. 2 reinstatement decision, Zinke acknowledged that Trump’s pardons of the Hammonds “does not blot out guilt.” However, he said that “I find that the pardons constitute unique and important changed circumstances since the BLM made its decision,” referring to the agency’s 2014 refusal to renew the Hammonds grazing permit.
According to Zinke’s decision, the Hammonds’ grazing permit would be reinstated until 2024.
Zinke announced he was stepping down from the position of Secretary of the Interior on Dec. 15, 2018 amid mounting and ongoing federal investigations into allegations of misuse of government resources, conflicts of interest, and other possible ethics violations. In his announcement, he put Jan. 2, 2019 as his final day in the position, making the decision on the Hammond grazing permit one of the final acts in the position.
The decision specifically directed the BLM to renew the permit under the same terms and conditions within 30 days of its issuance. Since the decision did not get out until very end of that window as a result of the government shutdown, that left little time for action.
Schroeder, speaking to WLJ on Wednesday, Jan 30, said that all is not done yet, but he expected it would be soon.
“I communicated and talked with the Hammonds and, as of today anyway, we have not received any communication from the Burns district as to offering the permit. I will say that the Secretary directed that they respond within 30 days, which would be February 2nd if I got my days counted correctly.
“So, I expect we will hear something soon, whether it will be on or before February 1st, that certainly was the directive of the secretary, but there was also about an interim 25-days of government shutdown too, so if we don’t hear from them in a day or two, I certainly won’t be getting excited about it.”
By Thursday morning, Steven reported to WLJ that they had heard from the Burns district. When asked if he had any concerns for 2024 when the term of the reinstated permit ended, he had a refreshingly positive outlook considering all that has happened.
“We’ll see when that time comes. I’m having a hard enough time dealing with today, so I’m not looking down the road that far.”
Reactions and the future
Others within the ranching community also had optimistic responses to the news.
Public Lands Council (PLC) President Bob Skinner and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) President Kevin Kester both praised the news in a joint statement.
“In light of a full and unconditional presidential pardon, the reissuance of the Hammond Ranches’ grazing permits is the final step in righting the egregious injustices the Hammonds faced,” the pair said.
“This is the culmination of years of effort on behalf of this industry to restore a family’s livelihood. We speak on behalf of the livestock producers nationwide in saying thank you to Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and his team who worked to correct the hardships this family faced.”
Others were not so happy about the decision. The Western Values Project—a non-profit organization that positions itself as a public lands advocacy group, yet adamantly opposes resource usage on public lands in its communications—blasted the move as “setting a dangerous precedent by conceding to known anti-public land factions that may endanger public lands.”
“By allowing these lawbreaking extremists back on public lands, the Trump administration is sending the message that politics will always trump our American birthright,” said Chris Saeger, the group’s executive director, in a statement. He also asserted that the U.S. taxpayers were “stuck with the bill” for the damages to public land without reference to the low estimation of actual damages caused by the fires, nor the $400,000 the Hammonds paid in the civil settlement to the government for the damages.
While it is possible the decision could face legal challenges in the future, any such effort would face numerous, difficult legal hurdles according to background information provided by Schroeder. — Kerry Halladay, WLJ editor
