The local sheriff policing the occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon said he has received numerous death threats since armed militia took over the remote government outpost over the weekend.

Harney County sheriff David Ward told local residents on Wednesday that his wife had left town for her safety after strangers followed her home one night and someone slit her car tire. He said he had received anonymous letters with numerous misspellings that included death threats.

Worse still, the sheriff said, strangers had come to town to harass his elderly parents.



“Mom and Dad, stand up,” he said at the packed meeting. He introduced his parents, saying they were both in their 70s with heart issues and pacemakers and that they were scared. “You can’t just come into our community and intimidate our elderly,” Ward said to a round of applause.

For days Ammon Bundy and his band of armed militia have laid claim to the federal land by arguing they have the support of the nearby community.

Yet that claim received a formidable rebuke on Wednesday night when, one by one, residents of Oregon’s rural Harney County stood before a microphone at the county fairgrounds to denounce the occupation on their doorstep.

Some 500 working-class men and women who packed into the memorial hall expressed an overwhelming consensus. It’s time, they said, for Bundy and his anti-government rabble-rousers to pack up and go home.

“This county is a united family and we don’t need people to come here from someplace else and tell us how to live our lives,” Ward said to a standing ovation.



The meeting was a collective response from a community who for weeks has endured the presence of out-of-state militia members who arrived to show support for two ranchers they believe had been unjustly convicted of arson.

Then, this weekend, following a rally for two jailed local ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, two dozen militia discreetly took over a scattering of buildings at the nearby Malheur national wildlife refuge, refusing to leave until federal authorities accede to a list of demands that includes releasing the ranchers and relinquishing control of Oregon’s open country to state and local interests.

On Wednesday evening, Ward received a throaty standing ovation from residents who over-packed the meeting hall built for a capacity of 400. His voice often breaking with emotion, Ward told his friends, neighbors and constituents the twin towns of Burns and Hines, located closest to the occupied US Fish and Wildlife Service refuge, were under siege.

For an hour before the meeting started, county residents poured into the meeting hall. One man said he’d never before seen so many people there, even during the popular county fair.



One woman turned from her seat to survey the crowd: “I think the whole town is here.” The meeting began only after men removed their farm hats and Stetsons to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Another man said he estimated the standing-room-only crowd to be well over 500 people. “At least that many,” said retiree Jim Campbell. “As a guy who counts sheep, I know. You just got to clump them in groups.”

Rich Mingus and his wife Deborah were two of the first to arrive. Mingus, 66, a nomadic helicopter fueling technician for the US Forest Service, admitted that he shared some of the frustrations with an overbearing federal government voiced by the militia.

Mingus, who sat holding his wife’s hand, said he had to leave Deborah at home and travel the country to find work. He’d rather stay right here in southern Oregon, but there aren’t enough jobs – because the US government won’t let state residents log their forests or harvest the land around them, he says.

“Those Bundys had some good points, but they went about them the wrong way,” he said. “Our government hasn’t been listening to us rural people for a long time – we all know that.”

He said Harney County, the state’s biggest, should be better off. “We’re not getting any of the money,” he added.

“You need to talk to the environmentalists about that,” his wife added.

But both are afraid now – over the specter of violence that has happened in similar armed standoffs between militia types and federal law enforcement in the past.

“These Bundys have put fear in our community,” Deborah says. “All it takes is one crazy ... ” Her husband finished her sentence: “ … to light it up.”.

In a rambling speech, Ward told the audience that he wanted the outsiders to go home and let the country solve its own problems.

One gray-haired man in a white Stetson stood up.

“Sheriff, why don’t you go out there tomorrow morning and tell those people that,” he said as the crowd applauded. “If you want, I’ll go out there with ya.”

Then local resident Mitch Stegner stood before the microphone to surface an alternative view.

He said he had been out to the protest site and that the men and women there were polite. He invited others to go there as well.

The Bundys, Stegner said, had given Harney County the best gift it has ever received.

“Whether you agree with them or not, those Bundys have given us our biggest and best platform to get our message to the federal government that they have to pay attention to us.”

A murmur passed through the room as residents considered the point. Some of them seemed to agree.

Not long after, the sherif took a straw poll. “How many people want these people to leave?” he asked.

The response was almost unanimous. “Go home!” many people shouted. From the back, however, there was the voice of dissent. “Let ’em stay!”