Sheriff, leader of OR federal land occupiers meet

Cheers erupted Wednesday evening at a packed community meeting in rural OR when a sheriff said it was time for a small, armed group occupying the national wildlife refuge to “pick up and go home”.

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.

“We wish to establish a safety perimeter of protection for the occupiers so as to prevent a Waco-style situation from unfolding during this peaceful occupation”, leaders of the group said in a statement posted on its website.

“We feel like we need to make sure the Hammonds are out of prison, or well on their way. And also that those who have committed crimes, those are exposed as well”. “It is time for you to leave our community”, he said. “If that is the only thing that is accomplished, then it will be well worth our effort”.

Protesters said they’re ready for a long wait.

The group’s leader, Ammon Bundy, is the son of an OR rancher who, in 2014, led a standoff after his cattle were seized for failure to pay grazing fees.

“If they weren’t here”, Bundy said, referring to the Idaho group, “I’d worry” about a Waco, Texas-style siege by federal officials.

In a sign of simmering tensions, a Reuters witness said there was angry shouting and that the protesters, several of whom had been eating dinner, grabbed their rifles to investigate an unexpected arrival at the site late on Wednesday.

Still, a majority of speakers said they would like the refuge occupiers to leave. They said the three men, whose identities remained unclear, left in the direction of town.

An Oregon sheriff met with the leader of a small, armed group that has been occupying a national wildlife refuge for nearly a week and asked them to leave peacefully. “I am here today to ask those folks to go home and let us get back to our lives here in Harney County”.

“I just think they’re a bunch of glory hounds”, Charlotte Rodrique, the chairwoman of the federally recognised Burns Paiute Tribe, said in an interview on Tuesday at the tribal reservation’s meeting house. Roughly 400 people showed up to the meeting and many urged the sheriff to remove protestors from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They have not been showing weapons in recent days. “And [the people in Harney County] are excited that this is taking place”.

“The protesters have no right to this land”. They reported to prison earlier this week. He also said he viewed the five-year sentence imposed on the Hammonds as excessive.

Classes in the area were canceled through Thursday due to the occupation.

Ranchers and other longtime residents said they felt their concerns, including land use issues and employment after the decline of the timber industry in OR, haven’t been talked about on a national scale until the armed men took over the federal building.

During a press conference on Friday morning, Bundy seemed to soften his position slightly, saying: “We will take that offer but not yet and we will go out of this county and out of this state as free”.

Many residents of Harney County, although in agreement with the militia group’s message, believe they should leave the refuge.