The small group of armed anti-government activists occupying a remote federal wildlife preserve in Oregon’s high desert gave visitors free access to the snowy site Monday, allowing some local residents and ranchers in to satisfy their curiosity or show support.
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The group of anti-government protesters – which is calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom – believes the Hammonds have been treated unfairly and exposed to double-jeopardy for having to serve multiple sentences.
Now in Oregon, a group of armed ranchers have taken over a National Wildlife Refuge building in Burns, Oregon in protest. Really what we’re talking about here is maybe a handful, maybe more – men mainly, as far as I can tell – who have taken up residence at this National Wildlife Refuge, in some of the buildings here.
Bundy is the 40-year-old son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was at the center of a previous armed standoff with government authorities in 2014, that time over grazing rights on public lands.
Ammon Bundy told The Oregonian by phone that the protesters had no intention of leaving anytime soon.
Bundy offered few specifics of the group’s plan, but LaVoy Finicum, a rancher from Arizona, said the group would examine the underlying land ownership transactions to begin to “unwind it”.
Exactly what they mean is not clear, since the Federal Bureau of Investigation will not say what it is doing to resolve the situation at the alter Wildlife Refuge, where protesters have taken over the refuge’s headquarters.
While the anti-government group is critical of federal stewardship of lands, environmentalists and others say officials should run the lands for the broadest possible benefit of business, recreation and the environment.
Ammon and one of his brothers, Ryan Bundy, are leading the occupation in OR, and have vowed to remain in the federal wildlife refuge until the Hammonds are released from prison.
The standoff in OR last Saturday between law enforcement and a group of armed ranchers was just one incident to stem from a recent surge in far-right, anti-government, militia-style movements, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that monitors hate groups and extremists.
The armed group seized the refuge’s headquarters Saturday night.
Although Bundy’s father, Cliven, told a reporter in OR that “150 militia men” had occupied the federal land, at least one person who saw them leave for the refuge said there were “maybe a dozen” people.
“I don’t quite understand how much they’re going to accomplish”, Bundy said.
On Monday, January 4, Harney County Sheriff David Ward called for the activists to pack up and leave town, as many locals denounced the group’s tactics.
Scroll down to see the top 10 states by percentage of land owned by the federal government, starting with OR, which is No. 5.
“This incident originally started when people from outside the state arrived in an attempt to prevent the Hammonds from returning to prison”, he said in an official statement.
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Bundy said his supporters will “gather here and we can unite, we can stay out of the cold”. A community meeting was scheduled for Wednesday. They were initially sentenced to 12 months in prison, below the federal minimum for arson, but a USA judge raised the sentences to five years. The agents had rounded up Bundy’s cattle after he didn’t pay grazing fees for using public lands.
