A sign referencing Ammon Bundy and his brother, who are the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, hangs on a tree in front of a home Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, in Burns, Ore.
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“I understand that the occupiers of the federal land have said that they will leave if the local community doesn’t want them, and from what I’m seeing in the news, the local community doesn’t want them”, she added.
The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is about 30 miles from the small town of Burns, Oregon.
The leader of a group of armed protesters occupying the headquarters of a federal wildlife refuge in southeastern OR met briefly with a local sheriff on Thursday but rejected the lawman’s offer of safe passage out of the state to end the standoff. Several people spoke in support of Bundy and his followers at Wednesdays meeting.They are waking people up, said 80-year-old Merlin Rupp, a long-time local resident.
Since then, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has popped up only to say it will let the Harney County Sheriff’s Office sort it out.
Authorities have not yet moved to remove the group of roughly 2 dozen people, some from as far away as Arizona and MI. He also said his demands that federal land in Harney County be turned over to local residents to manage are being ignored. “It is our goal to get the logger back to logging, the rancher back to ranching”, said Bundy, son of a Nevada rancher involved in a well-publicized standoff with the government over grazing rights.in 2014.
Bundy said they won’t leave until there is a plan in place to return federal land to locals.
“Dwight and Steven Hammond are being forced to report to prison today for a crime they did not commit”, Ammon Bundy, one of the leaders of the occupation, said Monday during a press conference.
“They have rights as well”, Bundy said.
“I do have respect for him”, Bundy said. “He’s being pushed from above by those who want to suppress us”.
Feelings were mixed on whether to support the militants, who took over the refuge following a peaceful Saturday protest about the Hammonds’ case in Burns.
Since the group arrived, Ward said some of his deputies had been followed home by unknown individuals, while other law enforcement families left town as a precaution – including his wife.
“We feel like we need to make sure that the Hammonds are out of prison, or well on their way”, he told reporters.
“You’re not invited to come here and bother with our citizens”, Sheriff Ward said.
The situation was more calm on Thursday when a series of area ranchers visited for chats with the Bundys, who discussed their beliefs that the federal government had overreached its authority, often pausing to read from a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution. A judge later ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.
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Ranchers and other longtime residents said they felt their concerns, including land use issues and employment after the decline of the timber industry in OR, haven’t been talked about on a national scale until the armed men took over the federal building.
