Rancher says warrants issued in Oregon standoff

The Republican congressman whose district includes the occupied wildlife refuge protesters declared on Capitol Hill today that it’s time for the group to pack up and go home.

Ammon Bundy spoke outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, where he and others have been holed up since the weekend.

The Harney County Joint Information Center said it had no information on arrest warrants and that it was still working for a peaceful resolution to the occupation.

LaVoy Finicum, an Arizona rancher and father of 11 children, talked to reporters Tuesday night while sitting outside the compound in a rocking chair with a rifle in his hands. The two ranchers – Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven – turned themselves in, to report to federal prison.

Ammon Bundy and a group of armed militia took over the federal building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on January 2, 2016.

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 leader of an American Indian tribe that regards an OR nature preserve as sacred issued a rebuke Wednesday to the armed men who are occupying the property, saying they are not welcome at the bird sanctuary and must leave.

Tensions have long simmered over the fact that the federal government owns 28% of all US land-especially in the West, where federal agencies often own far more than that.

Right at the entrance to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, there’s a small RV park and store called the Narrows, which is run by Ron Gainer and his wife, Linda.

The Burns Paiute Tribe’s ancestral territory includes the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Almost 53 percent of the land in OR is owned by the USA government, and that has led to tensions with local communities over mining, ranching, grazing and logging rights. Authorities had not yet moved to remove the group of roughly 20 people. “It just really rubs me the wrong way that we have a bunch of misinformed people in here – they’re not the original owners”.

“There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them”, he said.

OR congressman, Greg Walden seconds that.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward speaks to the media on Monday, Jan. 4, 2016, in Burns, Ore.

Finicum initially became involved in the occupation to support the Hammonds, who he believes have been “very unjustly imprisoned” after being convicted of arson on federally-owned land in 2001 and 2006. “They’re now serving five years mandatory minimum of a sentence that the federal judge who sentenced them said would be unconscionable to levy”, the congressman continued.

In the 1970s, Nevada and other states pushed for local control in what was known as the Sagebrush Rebellion. The agents had rounded up Bundy’s cattle after he didn’t pay grazing fees for using public lands.