Ranchers who inspired Oregon occupation report to prison

BURNS, Ore. (AP) — Father-and-son ranchers convicted of setting fire to federal grazing land reported to prison Monday as the armed anti-government activists who have taken up their cause maintained the occupation of a remote Oregon wildlife preserve.

Federal authorities made no immediate attempt to retake the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the remote high desert of eastern Oregon, which about two dozen activists seized over the weekend as part of a decades-long fight over public lands in the West.

There appeared to be no urgent reason for federal officials to move in. No one has been hurt. No one is being held hostage. And because the refuge is a bleak and forbidding stretch of wilderness about 300 miles from Portland, and it's the middle of winter, the standoff is causing few if any disruptions.

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