BLM Staffer Confronted By Armed Men On Utah Highway

Ammon Bundy, son of rancher Cliven Bundy, talks to the media outside Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, Friday, May 2, 2014 in Las Vegas. Bundy was in town to file a criminal complaint against the Bureau o... Ammon Bundy, son of rancher Cliven Bundy, talks to the media outside Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, Friday, May 2, 2014 in Las Vegas. Bundy was in town to file a criminal complaint against the Bureau of Land Management. Last month, federal agents launched a cattle roundup on the Bundy ranch after they refused a court order to remove their cattle from public land and pay a grazing fee. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jason Bean) MORE LESS
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After two armed men threatened a Bureau of Land Management wrangler on Tuesday in western Utah, workers are removing BLM logos from their vehicles to help avoid additional incidents, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on Thursday.

The wrangler was driving on a highway near Mills, Utah when two people in a pick-up truck pulled up along side the vehicle. The occupants “told him he was No. 1 with that certain gesture,” Eric Reid, the wrangler’s supervisor at the BLM Fillmore Field Office, told the Tribune.

The men then reappeared in the pick-up truck a few minutes later wearing hoods and holding up a sign that read, “You need to die.” One of the men pointed a Glock handgun at the wrangler.

The Utah Highway Patrol is investigating the incident, but has not yet found the pickup truck, according to the Tribune.

Reid said that the BLM does not believe the incident was directly linked to the standoff at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch, but authorities believe that the two men noticed the BLM vehicle and sought to harass a government employee.

“It’s one of those things now we’re going to be dealing with,” Reid told the Tribune. “A lot of [people] have taken that attitude toward the government.”

According to Reid, the two men put duct tape over their license plate so that the truck could not be identified, a strategy used by Bundy supporters in Nevada.

Federal workers will remove BLM logos from their vehicles as a “precaution,” according to Reid.

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