By John Enders
Associated Press

JOHN DAY, Ore. — Residents of this eastern Oregon ranch and timber region are a self-reliant lot. Hard winters and a depressed economy have forged hardscrabble attitudes toward outsiders and "the government."

Grant County voters passed two ballot measures last month reflecting the frustration of residents who feel they no longer control their lives, livelihoods or the land.

By about a 2-to-1 margin, residents approved a measure banning the United Nations in the county and another allowing people to cut trees on federal land, whether or not the U.S. Forest Service approves.

"We intend to push the limit, push the envelope on this," said Dave Traylor, a stocky, bearded jack-of-all-trades who helped write the measures.

Home to about 7,500 people, Grant County is a place where cowboy hats, hay farms and horse trailers are ubiquitous, where the high school teams are the "Prospectors," and the two radio stations play Christian or country music.

The county covers an area about the size of Connecticut. More than 60 percent of the land is managed by the federal government. The jobless rate, 13.5 percent, is the second-highest in Oregon. Many people have seen their logging livelihoods dribble away.

Backers of the two ballot measures blame federal timber policies and environmental restrictions that they say are keeping them off public lands that had given them jobs as loggers, mill workers and ranchers.

Supporters hope to push the Forest Service into allowing more logging. They say millions of board feet of timber could be salvaged by allowing people to cut the big ponderosa pines and firs that are hazards.

"If we could just address salvage on the dead, dying and blowdown, we could provide a lot of trees to the mills," said Traylor.

Dennis Reynolds, who as Grant County judge serves as its chief administrator, said the county government likely will endorse a plan to allow residents to cut dead, dying and wind-damaged trees on federal land.

"The question now is, what is the federal government going to do?" he said. "These people are lashing out in the only way they can. Now we have people willing to go to jail over this issue."

Roger Williams, deputy supervisor of the Malheur National Forest, which manages more than 1 million acres of forested land in the county, hopes to avoid conflict.

"We're looking into what we can do to relieve some of the pressure that led these people to put this measure on the ballot," said Williams.

It is the latest conflict to arise in the West with federal authorities.

June 3, 2002

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