Sheriff asks protesters to leave in face-to-face meeting

But leaders of various Paiute Indian tribes, who are native to the region and have lived there for thousands of years, angrily dismissed the militia’s assertion and accused them of desecrating their sacred ancestral lands.

On Wednesday night, residents attended a community meeting to air their views about the two dozen or so armed men hold up at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge south of Burns.

The group took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after a protest against the incarceration of two local ranchers.

The remote high desert of eastern OR became the latest flashpoint for anti-government sentiment as armed protesters occupied a national wildlife refuge to object to a prison sentence for local ranchers for… He said they “hijacked” the protest over the ranchers. With no sign of the standoff ending, federal authorities and local law enforcement are not taking immediate action to remove the protestors. Early in the meeting, Harney County Sheriff David Ward asked for a straw poll of who would like the militants to peacefully return to their homes. “We don’t want it and we’re asking you to leave”, Bundy said through MacFarlane.

JIM URQUHART/REUTERS Brandon Rapolla, leader of the Pacific Patriots Network, met with Ammon Bundy Friday to offer his militia group’s services as peace keepers.

“I didn’t come to argue”, Ward said.

“I’m not afraid to go out of the state”, Bundy told reporters after the meeting. On Friday Bundy said that at some point he will accept Sheriff Ward’s offer of an escort out of the refuge to assure safe passage, but not yet.

“In spite of grave injustices levied against the Hammond ranching family, the potentially unsafe standoff that is shaping up in OR is not likely to resolve conflicts caused by the federal government’s mismanagement of public lands”, said the American Lands Council, a nonprofit group whose goal is to transfer publicly owned lands from the federal government to the states. The sheriff, who marked his first anniversary on the job the day the occupation began, said he understood the frustrations of people in the community with the federal government. She called the occupation a part of “tactics we Oregonians don’t agree with”. 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”. Lee said he believed that the occupation had spread an important message about the overreach of the federal government but that if it lasted much longer, he feared it could get ugly.

“Let’s just knock this crap off and go back to being friends and neighbors”, said lifelong resident Jesse Svejcar. The Hammond family has publicly stated they do not want help from the Bundy’s.

Those two ranchers, -Dwight Hammond, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, -reported to prison Monday, Reuters reported. The situation is particularly concerning for the Audubon Society, Mr. Sallinger said, because it fought to have the area protected more than 100 years ago. A judge later ruled that the terms fell short of minmum sentences requiring them to serve about four more years.