Harney County Sheriff Meets Leader of Armed Group

Ward was backed up by two other OR sheriffs.

The FBI is looking to determine the safety of people inside and whether the group poses a threat to anyone nearby before deciding on a course of action, according to Brad Garret, ABC News consultant and former FBI special agent.

Cowboy Dwane Ehmer, of Irrigon Ore., a supporter of the group occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, rides his horse to the manned watch tower at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, near Burns, Ore. A leader of the Orego…

The reservation is not far from the wildlife reserve and the tribe has been living off the arid western OR mountains since long before Europeans arrived in North America.

On Wednesday, members of an Oregon Indian tribe also took issue with Bundy and his group saying they were occupying ancestral property and “desecrating one of our sacred sites”. Bundy and other group members claim wildlife refuges are not available for federal oversight.

The militants, led by the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, have been holed up at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles from Burns, since Saturday.

Some two dozen armed protesters have occupied the headquarters of the refuge since last Saturday, marking the latest incident in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of land and resources in the U.S. West.

“The tribe once occupied a large swath of land that includes the Malheur National Wildlife refuge – archaeological evidence dates back 6,000 years – but they were forced out in the late 1870s”.

The leader of a group of armed protesters occupying the headquarters of a U.S. wildlife refuge in rural southeastern OR on Thursday rejected a sheriff’s offer of passage out of the state to end the standoff.

Several people spoke in support of Bundy and his followers at Wednesday’s meeting. “I am here today to ask those folks to go home and let us get back to our lives here in Harney County”.

“We have no sympathy for those who are trying to take the land from its rightful owners”, she said.

Locals said they sympathized with the armed group’s complaints about federal land management policies but disagreed with their tactics. “That’s what I wanted to post on Facebook, “Quit bitching on your electronic devices and come down here and see these people because they are not how they are portrayed in the media”. At that meeting it was suggested that Ward meet with Bundy.

We asked some Douglas County residents what they thought about the situation. “I don’t need an escort”.

Ward said he would call Bundy on Friday to talk more.

Meanwhile, Oregon Governor Kate Brown released a statement on Thursday decrying the activities of Bundy’s militia and ordering the group to “decamp immediately and be held accountable”.

“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 face-to-face meeting followed a community meeting Wednesday night in which most of the residents expressed opposition to the occupiers.

Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, the two ranchers who prompted the standoff and who have been sentenced to prison for setting fire to federal land, have also distanced themselves from the group.

The elder Hammond served a three-month sentence, while the younger was locked away for a year.