A day after Sheriff Dave Ward offered him and his fellow militants safe passage out of Harney County, Ammon Bundy gave a clear response.
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“Before this thing turns into something negative, which would ruin all of that, I think we need to find a peaceful resolution to help you guys get out of here”, Ward said.
“People of Harney County are coming here and expressing that to us over and over”, he said.
Circled by an odd grouping of sheriffs from neighboring counties and journalists armed with cameras, Harney County Sheriff David Ward and Ammon Bundy, one of the occupation leaders, chatted briefly and politely at an intersection close to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which the activists seized Saturday.
When pressed by a reporter Wednesday on when protesters would leave, Bundy said, “Enough is enough when there’s actual action that is happening”. “We survived without them before”.
Sheriff Ward reaffirmed his position that Ammon Bundy and other members of the group are acting selfishly, and not in the interests of Dwight and Steven Hammond or the residents of Harney County.
The ranchers and their allies holed up in an OR wildlife refuge largely dodged mainstream reporters’ questions at a press conference Thursday, but they allowed quizzing from a sixth-grader.
“These people are fearful to come out and support [us] because they’re being treated as though they are slaves”, Ryan Bundy replied.
Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum said he will have more information about what the militia plans to do on Friday.
Late Tuesday, Bundy said he’s been told the FBI has obtained five arrest warrants and planned to raid the property, an allegation federal or local law enforcement did not confirm. “And that is bull-[expletive], as a majority”. Her friend had heard about the protest, a rally inspired by the sentencing of two local ranchers on arson charges, and the protesters had come to eastern OR saying the government should relinquish the land to locals. “We were killed, and ran off our land”, says Jarvis Kennedy, a tribal council member.
Bundy, asked at a news conference at the refuge about the tribe’s criticisms, said he did not know much about the Paiute Indians but he thought that they were probably oppressed by the federal government as much as anybody else. “Those individuals illegally occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge need to decamp immediately and be held accountable”, she said. The cattle still graze freely on land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management.
The Bundy family is among many people in the West who contend local officials could do a better job of managing public lands than federal officials.
“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”, Clinton said in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun.
The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is about 30 miles from the small town of Burns, Oregon. The sheriff’s office said via Twitter that Ward asked Bundy to respect the wishes of local residents and leave the area. They were tried and convicted, then the sentencing judge ignored the federal minimum sentence.
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During the meeting, the Sheriff asked Bundy to please leave and respect the wishes of Harney County residents.
