{"id":104475,"date":"2016-06-22T20:10:37","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T02:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/arizona-rep-grijalva-targets-extremism-on-public-lands\/"},"modified":"2016-06-22T20:10:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T02:10:37","slug":"arizona-rep-grijalva-targets-extremism-on-public-lands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/arizona-rep-grijalva-targets-extremism-on-public-lands\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Rep. Grijalva targets extremism on public lands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Rep.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, hosts a forum on countering extremism in public lands.<\/span>Courtesy of Dems.gov<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThere is a war simmering in this country, centered in the West,\u201d said Richard Cohen, head of the liberal advocacy group Southern Poverty Law Center, in a House Democratic forum hosted by members of the House Natural Resources and Homeland Security Committees this week. Cohen was referring to the increase in incidents of violence and intimidation targeting federal land agencies. The 41-day armed occupation of Oregon\u2019s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the Cliven Bundy standoff in Nevada in 2014 are just two of the most visible battles in this \u201cwar\u201d that High Country News has chronicled in-depth.<\/p>\n

The forum took place on June 15 and was put on by Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi. To support the congressmen\u2019s efforts to address extremism, 32 former federal employees \u2014 including former heads of the U.S. Forest Service, Fish & Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management, among others \u2014 also recently signed a letter urging Congress to act, marking what may be the first time so many high-profile former federal employees have spoken in concert against the threat to public lands and federal land employees, posed by the self-described Patriot movement.<\/p>\n

Ann Morgan, former head of Colorado and Nevada BLM offices, penned the missive. She originally intended it to be just a personal letter, but quickly got a host of other folks on board. \u201cIt seemed to strike a chord for people who had worked in the field,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a much broader overall anti-government feeling that\u2019s out there,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cA lot of it has nothing to do with natural resources.\u201d Indeed, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has shown minimal interest in public land management, even commented to Fox News on the Cliven Bundy incident when it happened in 2014: \u201cI like (Bundy), I like his spirit, his spunk and I like the people that \u2014 you know, they\u2019re so loyal\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dozens of high-profile former federal employees sign a letter urging Congress to address Sagebrush Insurgency threats<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-104475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104475"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=104475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}