They took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge over the weekend and have showed no signs of leaving.
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On Jan. 3, a group of armed extremists took hold of a government facility, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters, in Oregon.
The occupation followed a demonstration in support of two local ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son Steven, who were returned to prison earlier this week for setting fires that spread to federal land.
AAMON BUNDY: There is a time to go home.
Protest leader Ammon Bundy is the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, whose ranch was the scene of an armed demonstration against federal Bureau of Land Management officials in 2014. The Hammond family is well respected in their area, and their community’s reaction is similar to how we would probably feel in the same situation. “We need to make sure that there is some teeth in these land transfers, and also that those who have committed crimes … those are exposed as well”. “And also that those who have committed crimes, those are exposed as well”. Several people used their time to offer help to the sheriff, saying they would go out to the refuge with him to ask the Bundy’s and their militia to leave.
Readers who supported the armed standoff said that while they disagreed with the tactics to occupy the refuge and threatened violence if pushed, those readers said that people had a right to stand up to the federal government.
The Hammonds are long-time local residents who have distanced themselves from the group Bundy’s group. As an American taxpayer and joint owner of that property, I don’t want the wildlife killed off and the trees chopped down.
“But that can be done without us leaving”, said Bundy. About a dozen protesters have been visible at the site.
US Representative Greg Walden, whose congressional district includes Burns and Malheur, said yesterday he had been on the phone to the county judge and local ranchers until late on Tuesday night.
“Rodrique said the tribe never ceded its rights to the land”. They have come and gone freely from the park without interference from authorities, at times making trips into town.
The remote high desert of eastern OR became the latest flashpoint for anti-government sentiment as armed protesters occupied a national wildlife refuge to object to a prison sentence for local ranchers for…
“Don’t tell me any of these ranchers came across the Bering Strait”, said the tribal chairwoman, Charlotte Rodrique, referring to the ancient Ice Age land bridge between North America and Asia that was the conduit for native migration of the Americas.
The current dispute has been compared to the Sagebrush rebellion, the push in the 1970s and 1980s to give states control of the public land in the West that is under federal jurisdiction. The federal government controls about half of all land in the West. For example, it owns 53 percent of OR, 85 percent of Nevada and 66 percent of Utah, according to the Congressional Research Service. That compared with just 4 per cent in the rest of the country, not including Alaska. They have been receptive to visits by media and locals.
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But the proposed law was found unconstitutional, he said, and a later watered-down version passed out of committee and “was left to die by Republican legislative leaders”. “It’s on all sides of the issue and as long as that fear is present you really can’t get to the conversation you need to have”.
