The group that seized a federal facility in Eastern Oregon will rip up their federal grazing contracts in a move signaling its repudiation of the federal government’s role in land management, a representative told the Associated Press.
Ammon Bundy, the group’s leader and the son of the Nevada rancher who forced a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management over federally owned land, told the AP that he’d only talk to the FBI in public conversations with the media present. No further contact materialized when the FBI refused to those terms.
{mosads}The armed militia members have occupied a wildlife refuge since the start of the year because they do not believe the federal government has the right to regulate public lands.
They’ve said they would fight back if the federal government sought to retake the refuge and will not leave until the government relinquishes the land to local residents.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown wrote a letter to the Justice Department this week asking them to “end the unlawful occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Regufe as safely and as quickly as possible.”