The armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in remote southeast Oregon followed a judge’s ruling sending Dwight Hammond and his son Steven back to prison to serve longer terms after their initial release from shorter sentences. Police shot one of the occupiers dead during the 41-day midwinter protest.

The takeover was another flare-up in a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres of public land in the western U.S. In Oregon, about half of all land is controlled by the federal government.

The leaders of the Malheur standoff, including activists Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were cleared of federal charges for their role in the protest in October 2016.

Ammon Bundy called the pardon “long overdue.”

“We went up there to prevent the atrocity from happening to begin with, and if people would have listened to us, the Hammonds wouldn’t have to have gone through this suffering,” Bundy said in a telephone interview.

Dwight Hammond, 76, and Steven, 49, were convicted in 2012 for setting a fire that spread onto public land after years of disputes with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The Hammonds said they were using standard brush-control and land-management techniques, but the government said in at least one instance they were trying to hide evidence of their slaughtering a herd of deer.

Some conservation groups were dismayed at the cattle ranchers’ pardon.

Jennifer Rokala, the executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, called the Hammonds “lawless extremists.”

“Pardoning the Hammonds sends a dangerous message to America’s park rangers, wildland firefighters, law enforcement officers, and public lands managers,” Rokala said in a statement.

The two were initially sentenced to less than the legal minimum five-year prison sentence by a judge who thought the minimum too harsh and later released, the father after three months and the son after a year.

After the government’s appeal in 2016, a different federal judge ordered the pair back to prison to serve the full five years, sparking protests and the refuge occupation.

In a statement on Tuesday, the White House said the decision was “unjust” and that the fire had burned only “a small portion” of public land.

“The evidence at trial regarding the Hammonds’ responsibility for the fire was conflicting, and the jury acquitted them on most of the charges,” the statement said.

Trump has often used his pardon power to benefit people he sees as targeted by his political opponents.

As of 2018, Dwight had served about three years in prison and Steven had served four, according to the White House.

Alan Schroeder, a lawyer for the Hammond family, said the two men could get out of prison before the day was over.

“It’s very welcome news, and the family is greatly humbled by the fact that President Trump has looked so kindly on a family in rural Burns, Oregon, of all places,” he said in a telephone interview.

Ammon Bundy and his father Cliven also orchestrated a 2014 standoff in Nevada between scores of armed ranchers and their supporters and law enforcement agents over cattle grazing rights.

— Reporting for Reuters by Gina Cherelus and Jonathan Allen in New York.

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Federal authorities said the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon would remain closed for several weeks as agents secured what is now considered a crime scene.

After their surrender on Thursday, protesters told authorities they had left behind booby traps but did not say whether the trip wires and other devices would trigger explosions, a law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

Materials to create explosives could be found on the refuge, the official said, because workers there previously performed controlled burns.

The final four protesters had enough food on hand to last them for many months, the official said.

The nearby town of Burns, which has been caught in the middle as the occupiers protested federal government control of expanses of Western land, was quiet on Friday as residents sought to resume normal life after the 41-day standoff.

The final four protesters surrendered on Thursday with David Fry, 27, repeatedly threatening suicide in a dramatic final phone call with mediators before he gave up. All 12 people arrested in connection with the standoff will face charges of conspiracy to impede federal officers, according to the FBI.

The takeover, which began on Jan. 2, was sparked by the return to prison of two Oregon ranchers convicted of setting fires that spread to federal property near the refuge. It was led by brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who were arrested in January along with nine other protesters on a snow-covered roadside while on their way to speak at a community meeting in John Day, Oregon.

A spokesman for the group, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, was shot dead in the stop.

The Bundys’ father, Cliven, was arrested on Wednesday night in Portland and charged with conspiracy and assault on a federal officer in connection with a 2014 standoff on federal land near his Nevada ranch.

The official who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity said that the Bundy brothers and others began confronting the local sheriff in November but federal authorities did not get involved until the protesters began occupying the refuge.

That low profile was intentional because “a federal face is often a trigger for these militia” groups, the official said.

The official told Reuters that authorities made the decision to arrest the Bundy brothers and their fellow protesters out of concern that the standoff movement could spread as the group took their message to other communities.

— Jimmy Urquhart is a contributing reporter and photographer for Reuters, based in Salt Lake City. Additional reporting for Reuters by Julia Edwards in Washington, D.C., Jonathan Allen in New York and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; writing by Dan Whitcomb.

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Authorities said the new security involves a series of checkpoints along key routes into and out of the refuge, and was made out of an “abundance of caution” to protect the public and law enforcement after the confrontation.

The month-long occupation of the wildlife reserve over federal control of large tracts of the country turned violent on Tuesday after officers stopped a car carrying protest leader Ammon Bundy and others near the refuge. Activists said Robert LaVoy Finicum, a rancher who acted as a spokesman for the occupiers, was killed.

There were no details on why shooting broke out at the traffic stop. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said authorities would hold a news conference on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. PT in Burns, a town near the refuge.

One of the remaining occupiers, Jason Patrick, told Reuters by phone they would stay until the “redress of grievances.”

“I’ve heard ‘peaceful resolution’ for weeks now and now there’s a cowboy who is my friend who is dead — so prepare for the peaceful resolution,” Patrick said.

Authorities on Wednesday said the checkpoints will allow only ranchers who own property in the area to pass and anyone coming out of the refuge will have to show identity and have their vehicle searched.

The Malheur takeover, which started Jan. 2, was a flare-up in the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, a decades-old conflict over federal control of millions of acres in the West. Protesters say they are defending the Constitution.

Federal officials said they had probable cause to arrest Finicum, who told NBC News earlier this month that he would rather die than be detained.

Patrick likened Finicum’s death to that of Tamir Rice, an unarmed 12-year-old black youth fatally shot by Cleveland police outside a recreation center in 2014. The officers were not charged.

“The government can kill who they want for whatever reason they want with impunity,” Patrick said.

He was asked how the occupiers would respond to authorities entering the refuge but did not indicate a clear plan.

“I don’t know what to tell you but if somebody saying ‘peaceful resolution’ comes in and points guns at me …” Patrick said before trailing off.

— Peter Henderson is Reuters’ U.S. West Coast enterprise editor. Reporting for Reuters by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Jonathan Allen and Ed Tobin in New York.

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Saturday’s takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside the town of Burns, Ore., marked the latest protest over federal management of public land in the West, long seen by conservatives in the region as an intrusion on individual rights.

Ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, who on Monday surrendered to serve longer prison terms for setting fires that spread to federal land, had been regulars at a town diner where residents were sympathetic and said they feared the federal government wanted to seize ranch lands for its own use.

“The BLM wants that land bad and they’ll probably end up getting it,” said Tim Slate, a butcher who said he had gone out to slaughter the Hammonds’ cattle many times over the years, using an acronym for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. “The federal government wants to take over the state of Oregon and turn it into a park.”

Diners voiced skepticism about protest leader Ammon Bundy, the son of a Nevada rancher who along with a large group of armed men successfully stared down federal agents in 2014 when the government attempted to confiscate his livestock because he refused to pay grazing fees.

“I don’t think it’s right to take over a public building,” said James Arndt, a retired painter. “I’m kind of mixed about that.”

He echoed other residents of the town of some 3,000 people about 450 km southeast of Portland, who viewed the occupation as the work of outside agitators. Lawyers from the Hammonds have sought to disassociate themselves from the occupiers, saying that the action did not represent their clients’ will.

But Bundy said some locals had been stopping by with food for the occupiers.

“A particular rancher… brought a very, very good pot of soup that was needed on a late night when we were very hungry,” he said.

Authorities have closed schools for the week in the area out of concerns of possible violence, although so far the occupation has been peaceful.

‘Not about fear’

Bundy on Tuesday said his group, which has named itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, wanted to work with residents of Harney County to help them regain unfettered access to public lands for ranching and logging.

“We’re not about fear, we’re not about force, we’re not about intimidation,” Bundy told reporters at the refuge. “If the government is bringing that fear and intimidation, it needs to be checked and balanced.”

Early in the occupation Bundy said that many of his supporters were armed, although members of the occupation have not been showing weapons in recent days.

Harney County Sheriff David Ward, in a statement on behalf of himself and County Judge Steven Grasty on Monday, asked group members to go home. He called a Tuesday afternoon meeting for county residents to discuss their concerns about the situation.

Neither protesters nor authorities have said how many people are involved in the occupation. About a dozen occupiers have been visible at the site.

The FBI said it was working with state and local law enforcement for a peaceful resolution and federal law enforcement officials have kept their distance from the wildlife refuge, which is closed to visitors. They are following U.S. policy guidelines instituted to prevent such standoffs from turning deadly as they did in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas in the early 1990s.

“It’s not exactly clear what the motives or intentions are of the individuals who are involved in this particular situation. The speculation by some is that it’s politically motivated,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Tuesday. “I certainly wouldn’t want to say something from here that could be construed as inflaming that situation.”

The success of the 2014 standoff at the Bundy ranch, likely emboldened the occupiers of the refuge, observers said.

“They forced the federal government at gunpoint to stand down. They won,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups.

“The group that’s holed up there in Burns seems to think they’re going to take that same idea to another level: You solve your issues over land usage or grazing fees or whatever by refusing to pay up and then using weapons to run cops off the land.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Jonathan Allen and Jim Urquhart in Oregon; additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Andy Sullivan and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; writing by Scott Malone.

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As armed anti-government activists occupied a snowy wildlife refuge for a third day to call attention to a land-use dispute, militia leaders from similar groups across the country criticized the seizure of federal land and a building.

The protesters have said they aim “to restore and defend the Constitution” to protect the rights of ranchers and ignite a national debate about states’ rights and federal land-use policy they hope could ultimately force the federal government to release tracts of Western land.

Their occupation of the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge comes as the number of paramilitary groups is on the rise in the U.S., according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that tracks their numbers.

But the latest call to arms appears to have failed to resonate with like-minded groups whose support would be crucial for creating a coalition of armed militia members substantial enough to thwart a law enforcement operation.

“There’s a better way to go about things,” said Brandon Curtiss, president of Three Percent of Idaho, a militia group that has been involved in the dispute. “If you want to make a change like that, you need to get the county citizens behind you to go through the proper channels.”

The protesters have rallied behind Oregon ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who were found guilty of arson on public land near their property. They were initially sentenced to 12 months in prison, below the federal minimum for arson, but a U.S. judge raised the sentences to five years.

The Hammonds, who turned themselves in as planned on Monday at a federal prison in California, have said they do not support the protesters or their leader, Ammon Bundy, whose father, Cliven Bundy, was at the centre of a 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights in Nevada that ended with federal agents backing down in the face of about 1,000 armed militiamen, many on horseback.

The Pacific Patriot Network, an umbrella group for militias in the region, said it did not support seizing federal property even if it understood the underlying frustration with the federal government. “This land use issue is decades old and it’s boiling up in frustration. That’s what you’re seeing,” spokesman Joseph Rice said.

The Oath Keepers, another paramilitary group that participated in the 2014 Bundy ranch dispute in Nevada, also distanced itself from the latest standoff.

‘Wish to hell he hadn’t done this’

Some militia leaders said Bundy was using the dispute to provoke the federal government with little regard for the local community.

“Here you have a guy who believes he’s on a mission from God. What the Hammonds want and what the community wants is immaterial,” said Mike Vanderboegh, a founder of the III Percent Movement, which draws its name from the notion that only three per cent of Americans actively participated in the Revolutionary War.

Vanderboegh and other leaders said they worried Bundy would provoke a violent response from the U.S. government similar to the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, that ended in the deaths of 76 people.

Three Obama administration officials said federal authorities had been told to avoid a violent confrontation, in line with official U.S. policy after the deadly clashes at Waco and in 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Armed U.S. paramilitary groups, which had been on the wane since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have seen their ranks swell in recent years, driven by fears among the far right that President Barack Obama will threaten gun ownership and erode local rights.

The movement has also been energized by confrontations between ranchers, miners and federal regulators in the western U.S., where the government owns vast stretches of land.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are 276 active militia groups today, one-third more than before last year’s standoff.

The latest incident began after militia groups from Oregon and Idaho staged a peaceful march in the nearby city of Burns on Saturday to protest what they see as heavy-handed management by bureaucrats with little interest in local concerns.

Other militia leaders declined to question Bundy’s motives but said he stood little chance of getting the federal government to back down.

“If you want me to demonize this guy, I won’t do it,” said Bob Wright, a commander of the New Mexico Militia.

“But I wish to hell he hadn’t done this,” he said.

— Andy Sullivan is a U.S. domestic policy correspondent for Reuters in Washington, D.C.

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The occupation, which began on Saturday, followed a march in Burns, a small city about 80 km north of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, in support of Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven Hammond.

Hammond and his son, convicted in 2012 of setting fires that spread to public land, traveled to Los Angeles on Sunday evening to turn themselves in to federal authorities, according to their lawyer W. Alan Schroeder. They were to be sent to back to prison after federal prosecutors won an appeal that resulted in their resentencing to longer terms.

Their ranch borders on the southern edge of the refuge, a bird sanctuary in the arid high desert in the eastern part of the state, about 490 km southeast of Portland.

The protest was being led by Ammon Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, owner of a ranch in Nevada where his family staged an armed protest against the Bureau of Land Management in April 2014. The agency sought to seize Bundy’s cattle after he refused to pay grazing fees. Federal agents finally backed down, citing safety concerns, and returned hundreds of cattle to Bundy.

Federal and state authorities have not said how they planned to respond to the occupation of the refuge’s headquarters in Princeton, Oregon.

It involved an unknown number of people, Jason Holm, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management, said in a statement. No employees were in the building.

Holm described the occupation as a break-in, although federal justice and Interior Department officials contacted later declined to say whether any crimes were committed in the occupation.

Wildlife refuge buildings were closed over the holiday weekend. As of Sunday night, the FWS website for Malheur said the refuge is closed until further notice, citing the occupation at the facility.

In an interview posted on Facebook, Bundy said the occupation was in reaction to the government intrusion into the rights of private-property owners.

“It is the people’s facility, owned by the people,” Bundy said. “It has been provided for us to be able to come together and unite and make a hard stand against this overreach — this taking of the people’s land and resources.”

Bundy told CNN some of the occupiers were armed.

The Hammonds distanced themselves last month from the Bundys, according to a letter Schroeder, wrote to the county sheriff on Dec. 11.

“I write to clarify that neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone with his group/organization speak for the Hammond family, Dwight Hammond or Steven Hammond,” Schroeder wrote in the letter, which was seen by Reuters.

The incident is part of a decades-old conflict between ranchers and the federal government over Washington’s management of hundreds of thousands of rangeland. Critics of the federal government say it often oversteps its authority and exercises arbitrary power over land use without sufficient accountability.

‘Alternative motives’

Bundy told a news conference on Sunday he had yet to communicate with any law enforcement officials. He said occupiers planned no violence unless that was justified by actions taken against the occupants. He would not say how many people were inside the headquarters.

He encouraged anyone opposed to overreach by the government in the management of federal lands to join the occupation at the refuge.

“For those that understand what is going on, and those who want to and feel a need to stand, we’re asking them to come,” he said. “We have a facility that we can house them in.”

“We will continue to monitor the situation for additional developments,” Holm said in the statement. He did not immediately return a phone call seeking further details. No one answered a call to the phone number of the refuge.

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward was critical of the protesters and their motives, and advised local residents to stay away from the refuge.

“These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, encompassing 292 square miles, was established in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt as a breeding ground for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds. The headquarters compound includes a visitor centre, a museum and the refuge office.

— Jim Urquhart is a Reuters reporter and photographer. Reporting for Reuters by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City; additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Mark Hosenball in Washington. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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