In a brief press conference Monday, David Ward, the sheriff of Harney County, Oregon – where anti-extremists have taken over a federal wildlife center to protest government land polices – told the occupiers to go home to their families.
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Ammon Bundy – the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights – is among the people at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Ammon Bundy addresses the media at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon.
But the government’s tactic generally is to monitor protesters from afar but leave them be as long as they don’t show signs of violence. Bundy, the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, said his group wants the federal government to “remove its unlawful presence in this county”.
After a peaceful rally Saturday in the town of Burns, a group of demonstrators advanced on the sprawling Malheur reserve some 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the southeast, where wild horses, pronghorns (an antelope-like mammal) and other creatures roam free.
The militia group, now asking to be named “Citizens for Constitutional Freedoms”, announced their intention to protest the rights of the Hammond ranchers.
They want a response within five days. “We are here to defend the people”, Ammon Bundy said.
Reporters have seen roughly 20 people at the remote national facility.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio agreed that the federal government controls too much land in western states.
Meanwhile, the White House echoed concerns that the situation “be resolved peacefully without any violence”, but said it “ultimately is a local law enforcement matter”.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who had been briefed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in charge in Portland, said most local residents do not support the protesters. “We have better ways of expressing our displeasure than that”, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson said in an appearance on CNN. “But it’s a scary thing”.
Soper insists that he still supports Bundy’s attempt to challenge a decades-old frustration with the federal government’s regulation of land claims. I don’t condone them taking over a federal building.
“We’re here to restore order, we’re here to restore rights”, ringleader Ammon Bundy told reporters he invited to the refuge Sunday.
What little the militants had, they lost over the weekend when they tried and failed to glom onto the cause of freeing Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, two Oregonians convicted of setting fires on federal land in 2001 and 2006.
Both men were ordered back to prison for about four years each.
The two men planned to turn themselves in Monday to resume their prison terms.
The Hammonds’ attorney also says they may appeal for executive clemency from the president.
Several pickup trucks continued to block the entrance to the refuge Monday, with armed men wearing camouflage and winter gear stationed outside. Landon was a logger until the federal government declared the spotted owl a protected species in the 1980s, damaging the local logging industry.
“I believe what they’re trying to do is bring two sides together”, Soper reasons.
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“That’s not exactly what I thought should happen, but I didn’t know what to do”, he said.
