Social conflict disguised as conflict over wolves heats up in NE Oregon

By Ralph Maughan On December 7, 2011

Flare up over bed n’ breakfast gives insight to repression that is usually more subtle-

Recently we did a story on a controversy over license for a tiny bed n’ breakfast in Wallowa County near Joseph, OR, “NE Oregon . . . get friendly with wolf watchers and lose your property rights.”

Since then matters have not cooled down. Two more cows might have been killed by the Imnaha wolf pack and the application to have a couple person bed n’ breakfast in the county run by people who are thought to have the “wrong beliefs” about wolves came before the county commission. The commission was probably intimidated by the hostile testimony toward the applicants applying for the tiny B and B. Instead of making a decision the county commissioners extended the comment time by 10 days. They will announce their decision on Dec. 19.

A CD of the testimony is available from the county. According the the applicants, “About 20 anti wolf ranchers, some wearing Zero Tolerance or some other anti wolf T shirts blamed [them] for everything from closing the logging mills to being responsible for over 50% of the local school kids getting free lunches! and, of course, for all the dead cows, and introduced a lot of ‘what ifs’ that happen when people ‘like us’ stay in a BnB in ‘cow country’ [boldface ours]. One of the applicants had testied in favor of wolves at a hearing at the state capitol in Salem.  Diane Hunter told me that her testimony was “read, re-read and dissected as the reasons our BnB will ruin . . . livelihoods because . . . well they weren’t quite sure of, because . . .”  Hunter vowed that they would not be run out of town like the last people “who went through this.” She said these folks got a swastika put on their lawn.

Today we heard of similar stories from other property and business owners in, or formerly in the area.
It has been our view that local governments dominated by those sympathetic to the Western cattle industry are run like semi-feudal fiefdoms and have pre-capitalistic economic and political systems serving to maintain traditional economic occupations from competition or political questions.  This hegemony is enforced by the manipulation of public opinion through subtle threat, or sometimes something more overt as the present case may be. The tendency toward feudalism extends beyond the county level in places such as Idaho and Wyoming to the state level where one party government helps enforce obedience to the perceived interests of the livestock industry.

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