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 Speaking exclusively to Reuters, Susan Hammond, who did not
participate in the standoff, said that she hoped the attention
brought by the occupation would galvanize Americans to pursue legal
avenues for weakening federal government control of millions of
acres of land.
"I don't think it's over. I think it's just beginning," she said in
a telephone interview. "We have hopes that possibly this will be the
beginning of a change in the overreach of federal government, but
it's only the beginning."
The takeover at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Jan. 2 was
sparked by the return to prison of Hammond's husband and son, two
Oregon ranchers convicted of setting fires that spread to federal
property in the vicinity of the refuge.
 Dwight Hammond Jr., 74, and his son, Steve Hammond, 47, are serving
the remainder of their sentences in federal prison.
The occupation of the Oregon wildlife refuge was led by Ammon and
Ryan Bundy as a protest against federal control over public land in
the West. The men are the sons of Cliven Bundy, who staged an armed
protest over a federal land dispute in Nevada in 2014.
Both Bundy sons were arrested in late January and Cliven Bundy, who
counseled his sons by phone, was arrested at the Portland airport on
Wednesday.
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Members of the Hammond family hold differing views on the Bundy’s
methods, Susan Hammond said.
Hammond said she did not know the Bundy family well, but had met
Ammon Bundy on more than one occasion. She suggested that the Bundys
were being targeted by the government and expressed her support in
the wake of Cliven Bundy’s arrest.
"I cannot imagine why they would pick up an old man at the airport
and charge him with something like that,” Hammond said. "It's just
piling on of government bureaucracy onto the Bundy family.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by
Shelby Sebens in Portland, Oregon; Editing by Sara Catania, Dan
Whitcomb and Lisa Shumaker)
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