Recorded On: September 13, 2019
Air Date: September 16, 2019
From the City Club of Eugene:
In January of 2016, armed occupiers from outside Oregon took over the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve in Harney County, making national news for weeks. In the end, the collaborations processes in place in Harney County allowed the community to rally and resist the call of the occupiers to confront. How did that happen? What lessons can be learned to help other communities solve problems.
On September 13, we began a two-part program, our first joint effort with City Club of Central Oregon: “How Collaboration Defeated Confrontation in Malheur.” The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was national news for weeks. Professor Peter Walker of the UO went to Burns and lived through the occupation and aftermath, talking to all sides and observing how the collaborative processes already in place in Harney County kept the community together and defeated the occupiers. Professor Walker’s book, Sagebrush Collaboration, is available free from the Ford Family Foundation, www.tfff.org. Program Part 1 features Professor Walker, Judge Steve Grasty, Sheriff Dave Ward, and Pauline Brayman, former newspaper editor and Oregonian reporter. This program was live streamed on the City Club if Eugene Facebook page to make it available to our colleagues in Bend.
On September 27, we will hear Part 2 of the Malheur program, featuring some of the people who founded and guided the collaborative process in Harney County long before the occupation. They include Chad Karges of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Gary Marshall, a rancher an, who were founders of the High Desert Partnership, of which Brenda Smith is the Executive Director. Dan Nichols is a rancher and has been a Harney County Commissioner. The program will take place at noon in Room 190 of the Science Building at Central Oregon Community College in Bend and be live streamed on the City Club of Central Oregon’s Facebook page back to usual Eugene Friday Forum meeting.
Coordinator: Joel Korin
Copyright KLCC, 2019
