oregon standoff Rancher renounces grazing contract at event

Associated Press

BURNS, Ore.

A rancher from New Mexico renounced his U.S. Forest Service grazing contract at an event conducted by an armed group occupying a national wildlife refuge in Oregon to protest federal land-use policies.

Adrian Sewell of Grant County, N.M., took the action at the event attended by about 120 people at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. A group led by Ammon Bundy began occupying the area in eastern Oregon’s high desert Jan. 2.

Bundy has said the federal government has no authority to enforce federal grazing contracts with ranchers.

Sewell said he didn’t mind being the only rancher to renounce his federal contract at Saturday’s gathering.

“I don’t mind standing out and standing alone,” he said.

Bundy, who previously had met with local ranchers urging them to tear up their federal contracts, also said he wasn’t disappointed that Sewell was the only one to take him up on his idea.

Critics of Bundy’s group also attended Saturday’s event, which took place a few hours after a small counter-protest nearby.

Kieran Suckling with the Center for Biological Diversity said the leaders of the armed group want to “stage another occupancy like this and to terrorize those towns the same way they have terrorized Burns. There’s no town in the west that wants to be the next Burns.”

Katie Fite from Boise, Idaho, called the occupiers bullies and said their action could give rise to other hate-filled efforts to take over public lands.

Federal authorities are trying to resolve the 3-week- old standoff but so far have made no moves against Bundy’s group.