Town watches warily as armed protesters take over refuge

Bundy said on Sunday night that the group had deployed “security details for protection … looking out for any threat” around the campuslike area of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon’s Harney County, where they say they are hunkered down indefinitely.

The case that brought self-described armed patriots from across the country to OR involves a pair of OR ranchers convicted of burning federal land.

For days now, a group of men, including the sons of standoff veteran Cliven Bundy, have been hunkered down in an empty building on the federally protected swath of snow-covered tundra.

Widely outnumbered by journalists covering their would-be insurrection, the self-styled militiamen occupying a structure at the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., have gotten the attention they crave. No one has been hurt. And because the refuge is a bleak and forbidding stretch of wilderness about 300 miles from Portland, and it’s the middle of winter, the standoff is causing few if any disruptions. Bundy didn’t say what the group would do if they didn’t get a response.

Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher whose family staged a 2014 armed protest against federal land management officials that ended with authorities backing down, citing safety concerns.

The Hammonds are to report Monday to a federal prison in California to serve the balance of their five-year terms, local station KTVZ reported.

A spokesman for the armed group says it wants authorities to look into claims that local ranchers have been intimidated by the federal government.

Although there was no police presence at the site, authorities have warned people to stay away and the county has canceled school until next week as a precaution.

Other militia leaders declined to question Bundy’s motives but said he stood little chance of getting the federal government to back down. “And that for them, this is a civil peaceful protest”. Malheur was established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt to provide nesting grounds for water birds that were endangered by hat makers who used their feathers.

It sits in a wide snow-covered valley rimmed by distant mountains and contains lakes and marshland.

Both men were ordered back to prison for four years each. He wouldn’t give his name because he said he feared being caught between the federal government and the militia.

The refuge contains about 10 small buildings, some of which had been entered by the occupying group.

Michael Barkun, an emeritus professor at Syracuse University who has studied extremist groups, agreed that not confronting the OR group could embolden others. The footprint of the original refuge has grown, including ranch land bought by and deeded to the government.

Rubio blasted the group’s “lawless” tactics on Iowa radio station KBUR.

“The FBI is monitoring the situation and offering support to the local law enforcement officials as they try to deal with that”, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday afternoon.

The Hammonds had been convicted of arson after lighting what they said was a controlled fire on their property that spread to government land. “The people have it right now”.

Conservative Republican presidential candidate Sen.

Leading the effort is Ammon Bundy. The group, which included a couple of women and some boys and girls Monday, did not release a copy of its demands. “The federal government has no business in OR”. Supporters of that idea want to open more land available for cattle grazing, mining and timber harvesting. The Hammonds say the fire was set on their own land.

He said they planned on staying at the refuge as long as it takes.

“It’s hard to discredit what they’re trying to do out there”, he said. “I want to die a free man”. “But we don’t have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence against others”.