People living, dumping on Oregon's public lands 'overwhelming' Bureau of Land Management

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Hover over the Redmond Municipal Airport on Google Maps and scroll north of the Ochoco Highway. From a distance, the parcels of public land look like undisturbed patches of Oregon’s high desert: Western juniper trees scattered between brown and green tufts of bunchgrass and sagebrush set in the rain shadow of the High Cascades.

But zoom in on the desert plains east of Redmond and satellite images reveal hundreds of acres of trash and dozens of makeshift neighborhoods of trailers, motorhomes and junked cars.