Protesters occupy Oregon wildlife refuge as dispute over Western range flares

A group of self-styled militiamen occupied the headquarters of a U.S. wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon to protest the imminent jailing of two ranchers, officials said on Jan. 3, in the latest skirmish over federal land management in the West.

The occupation, which began on Jan. 2, followed a march in Burns, a small city about 50 miles (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 Jan. 3 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 305 miles (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...