BURNS - Crews from a national cleaning company bustle from building to building at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, ravens watching from perches in the towering cottonwoods outside.

Big steel boxes serve as giant garbage drops. Truck-mounted vacuums whine with industrial strength. Workers come and go from big cargo trailers, drawing supplies to clean carpets, wash walls and remove stains.

The compound is under one giant spring cleaning. The workers are scrubbing away traces left by armed militants.

Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, stood outside the closed visitor center Wednesday, vowing that the refuge would be better than ever after the crews are done.

The 41-day occupation of the refuge will give way to "something more" than before - the reserve will become a symbol to the rest of the country that collaboration, not confrontation, endures, Ashe said.

He trekked to the Oregon desert to meet with community leaders two days after Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited.

Ashe and Fish & Wildlife employees who briefed reporters read from the same script as Jewell had earlier in the week: The refuge is a national model for getting along with your neighbors.

Ammon E. Bundy, 40, of Emmett, Idaho, said the opposite when he led a group of anti-government protesters in taking over the refuge headquarters on Jan. 2. The siege resulted in one death and the federal indictment so far of 27 people, including Bundy.

Federal officials shared photos of what they found at the compound after the FBI had scoured it for explosives and evidence. The photos captured scenes of messy living - clothes strewn around one room, an office ransacked with chairs knocked askew and equipment on the floor, a Jim Beam whiskey bottle tucked among couch cushions.

Removing the debris and repairing the damage is likely to take until early summer. Until then, the headquarters remains closed but the public is free to roam the rest of the 187,700-acre bird sanctuary.

Ashe said the occupation will cost his agency roughly $6 million. About $2 million of that came during the takeover and included paying to move the refuge's 17 employees out of town for safety to live at government expense in hotels for weeks.

The rest, Ashe said, is going for repairs and upgrades to make the refuge the bright star in the national constellation of refuges.

Still, the takeover has changed the government mindset about such remote installations. The agency remains worried, Ashe said, that an occupation could happen again here or elsewhere. Those who work on the Malheur must remain vigilant against a repeat of January's takeover, he said.

The refuge, 30 miles southeast of Burns, is known nationally for collaboration among government, environmentalists and ranchers, he said: "a great example of good government, good community, good intentions."

At a bluff on Wright's Ridge, on the refuge's northern shoulder, local leaders echoed that.

Gary Marshall, a longtime local rancher and chairman of the High Desert Partnership, said years of work by diverse groups arrived at a plan for the refuge that accounts for all needs, from environmental to economic.

With the water-logged refuge landscape stretching out behind him, Marshall noted that none of the occupiers talked to him or others to learn what had gone on. Bundy repeatedly said at news conferences that the refuge and other federal lands had been mismanaged in ways that oppressed local ranchers.

"They were misinformed or they didn't care," Marshall said.

Dan Nichols, another local rancher, said he decided recently not to retire after 20 years on the Harney County commission but will seek re-election because he wants to be part of refuge's future.

Back at the refuge compound, fish biologist Linda Beck said she's glad to be back to work, but faces a daunting task. The occupation disrupted plans to remove invasive carp by commercial fishing earlier this year. The prolific carp consume habitat sorely needed by birds.

"We lost the opportunity to fish for these fish in a really condensed setting," Beck said. Malheur Lake covered about 3,000 acres at the beginning of the year. Now, it stands at about 20,000 acres. Still, the refuge and its partners will try netting fish starting in May.

But Beck estimated the disrupted work will cost about three years of carp control because the fish are such efficient breeders.

By day's end, Beck and her colleagues were ready for their next appointment.

They were heading for a barbecue set up to welcome them back to duty - and back to the community. Their hosts were the 20 or so ranchers who graze cattle in partnership with the refuge.

-- Les Zaitz