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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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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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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