[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 6 (Monday, January 11, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H225-H226]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MALHEUR WILDLIFE REFUGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, today is the ninth day of armed 
occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon--lawless, 
reckless behavior. As the Audubon Society points out: putting one of 
America's most important wildlife refuges at risk and threatening 
Federal employees.
  David Jenkins, president of Conservatives for Responsible 
Stewardship, points out they are trampling on the rights of every 
American, they are the opposite of conservatives, and they will 
continue to bully, threaten, and test the limits of civil society until 
they are stopped. Jenkins urged the Obama administration to follow 
Teddy Roosevelt's advice that the law must be enforced with resolute 
firmness.
  I fully understand policy differences, that compromises must be made 
and that there will be mistakes. I have worked with my Republican 
colleague Greg Walden, whose neighboring district goes all the way to 
the Idaho border, as we struggled to make broad Federal policy work 
better for everyone as we spent several years developing a vision for 
Mount Hood that included protections for wilderness and

[[Page H226]]

practices for infrastructure and management. It is an ongoing effort. 
But with 323 million Americans, diverse landscapes, and philosophies 
that are buried, there are going to be struggles and differences that 
continue.
  The answer is to keep working to find common ground, like we did with 
our staff and families on a 3-day hike around that magnificent 
mountain. For that moment, Mount Hood wasn't the dividing line between 
our districts; it was a point around which we could come together to 
agree and work to make things better. It brought us together. That is 
exactly what needs to happen now.
  There are tremendous challenges in our State of Oregon. We have a 
wildlife refuge in the Klamath Basin with a historic opportunity to 
remove unnecessary dams that even the private owner doesn't feel it 
could maintain, to help restore damage to salmon runs, to be able to 
deal with a parched wildlife basin in the middle of a desert.
  The Federal Government has promised far more in that basin to the 
stakeholders than it can deliver. There is a huge responsibility for 
all of us in the Federal Government to help unwind this unsustainable 
situation.
  Native Americans, particularly in the Northwest, despite solemn 
treaty rights promised to them by the Federal Government and ratified 
by Congress, have long been abused and ignored. They deserve to be 
taken seriously and their rights respected.
  There are opportunities, like dam removal, that signal a winning 
opportunity to keep faith with our environmental responsibilities and 
treaty obligations to Native Americans, to wildlife, and to the 
surrounding area.
  Far from being a threat to the region's economy, the removal, in an 
environmentally responsible way, of the four dams which generate little 
energy will provide hundreds of family wage jobs for years that will 
inject badly needed money into the region in the deconstruction phase, 
to say nothing of the long-term benefits for tourism, recreation, and 
enhanced environment.
  Let's seize the opportunity in the Klamath. Let's take the 
opportunity to implement the long-term vision and water restoration for 
the Malheur Basin. These are items where hundreds and hundreds of 
people have labored in good faith for tens of thousands of hours. They 
don't need armed outsiders to come to Oregon, threatening public safety 
and the precious resources for their own political gains.
  We ought to be able, in our region, to snatch victory from the jaws 
of defeat, discord, and the specter of dissension, anger, and a 
continued sense of victimhood and loss. We don't have to do that. Let's 
build on the progress that we have established and work together to 
make these people and ourselves winners.

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