Bundy’s demands are a continuation of long-running arguments that federal policies for management of public lands in the West are harming ranchers and other locals.
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Bundy says the group called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom is standing up against government overreach.
Locals said they sympathized with the armed group’s complaints about federal land management policies but disagreed with their tactics.
The FBI in Portland referred calls to the Harney County Joint Information Center, which said in a statement it had no information on arrests or arrest warrants and that authorities were “still working on a peaceful resolution”.
Ammon and his group took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after they participated in a peaceful rally over the prison sentences of local ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond. The success of the 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch likely emboldened the refuge occupiers, commentators said. “It belongs to the native people who live here”, Charlotte Rodrique told reporters at the tribe’s cultural center. Michael Stettler, 49, said he took time off from work at a hardware store in Lake View, California, to drive up with his dog and visit for a few days because he was curious about whether he was getting the full story from the media.
The gun toters holed up at Malheur haven’t issued a political manifesto, but their rhetoric echoes that of movements such as the 1970s Sagebrush Rebellion, in which disaffected Westerners argued that states or counties are the rightful owners of millions of acres of federal land, despite decades of court battles that say otherwise. “We manage it the best we can for its owners, the people, and whether it’s for recreating, for grazing, for energy and mineral development”. “Those individuals illegally occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge need to decamp immediately and be held accountable”.
All occupants at the refuge headquarters are members of the group and no one is in imminent danger. Stettler said, describing well-heated buildings and amenities including a gym.
“I’m here today to ask those folks to go home and let us get back to our lives”, Ward said.
Honestly, I don’t care about the Bundy brothers, and I don’t think that they are going to get what they want. “Everybody in the United States owns that land….”
For example, it owns 53 percent of OR, 85 percent of Nevada and 66 percent of Utah, according to the Congressional Research Service. A community meeting was scheduled for later Wednesday.
Ammon Bundy met briefly with Harney County Sheriff David Ward on Thursday but rejected the lawman’s offer of safe passage out of the state to end the standoff.
It was not clear how many protesters were involved in the occupation and federal law enforcement officials have kept their distance, following guidelines instituted to prevent a repeat of deadly standoffs such as those in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and later in Waco, Texas, in the early 1990s. But the county sheriff has told the group to go home, and many locals don’t want them around, fearing they may bring trouble.
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The Hammonds were convicted of arson three years ago and served no more than a year.
