BURNS, Ore. — A leader of the small, armed group that is occupying a remote national wildlife preserve in Oregon said Tuesday that the group will go home when a plan is in place to turn over management of federal lands to locals.
Ammon Bundy told reporters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge that ranchers, loggers and farmers should have control of federal land — a common refrain in a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.
“It is our goal to get the logger back to logging, the rancher back to ranching,” said the son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a high-profile 2014 standoff with the government over grazing rights. The younger Bundy’s anti-government group is critical of federal land stewardship, but environmentalists and others say U.S. officials should keep control for the broadest possible benefit to business, recreation and the environment. The armed activists seized the refuge’s headquarters about 300 miles from Portland on Saturday night.
