Oregon standoff has ripple effect

COEUR d'ALENE — Jay Lamkin is hoping for a peaceful end to the Oregon standoff in which protesters have seized buildings on a federal wildlife refuge.

The Coeur d'Alene landowner held a sign calling for an end to federal tyranny on one side and "Citizens for Constitutional Freedom" on the other — at the intersection of Northwest Boulevard and Ironwood on Tuesday.

"This is what I can do until there is a peaceful end to the situation in Oregon," he said as traffic passed by. "I'm not anti-government. I'm anti-overreach by the government. Pray for a peaceful outcome."

Lamkin, who also hit the streets on Monday, said he'll be on busy local street corners until there's resolution at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns.

"The protesters are peaceful and want to go home to their families," he said.

The armed group occupying the remote preserve opposes federal land policy, and has said local people should control federal lands.

"They have a Constitutional right to be there," Lamkin said. "That's public land. The land belongs to the people, not the federal government. The federal government is not the people."

Leader Ammon Bundy told reporters Tuesday that the group would leave when there was a plan in place to turn over federal lands to locals — a common refrain in a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

"I hope there's not another Ruby Ridge," Lamkin said, referring to the North Idaho site of a deadly confrontation and siege in 1992 between Randy Weaver, his family, friend Kevin Harris and federal agents. "There's so many ways to handle this besides violence."

Lamkin said most of the motorists in Coeur d'Alene who have passed by him and expressed their opinions have done so favorably with honks, quick words of praise or thumbs up.

"I got two birdies (on Monday), but the rest, hundreds, have been positive," he said.

Lamkin had been at the Coeur d'Alene intersection for four hours on Tuesday, with no desire to head home soon.

"I'll be here until I get cold, then I'll go get a coffee and head to another corner," he said.

Some of the ideas behind the standoff in Oregon have been floating around for years in Idaho, according to the Public News Service in Boise.

More than 60 percent of Idaho is comprised of federally owned land. A few years ago, the Idaho Department of Lands proposed the transfer of more than 16 million acres to state control, and the state Senate passed a similar bill in 2013.

Professor Dennis Becker, director of the University of Idaho's Policy Analysis Group, co-authored a 2014 study that looked at the economics of transferring federal lands to state control and allowing more logging.

"Folks are using an economic rationale to justify land transfer, but the facts don't support that conclusion under all but the most optimistic scenarios," he said. "The wild card in all of this is wildfire suppression costs."

Becker said last year's massive wildfires cost far more than average, and climate change means huge fires may become more common.

Chris McIntire, a spokesman for an anti-government activist group called "3% of Idaho," said frustration with the BLM, the Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency is growing.

"It's becoming a huge problem for ranchers and miners and loggers," he said, "because they are unable to navigate all the loopholes and the statutes and the regulations and the fines and the licensing fees in order to make a living."

Ron Rhodes, a spokesman for the non-partisan voting rights group Transform Idaho, said the federal government has some distance from local economic concerns and is better equipped to make decisions that take the environment and the public interest into account.

"This is kind of an age-old conflict between the people who would like less government and the notion that somehow the federal government is some medieval Darth Vader empire, rather than representing the majority of people," he said.

The Associated Press and Public News Service contributed to this report.