In the United States, FBI agents and local police are still hoping the occupation of a wildlife refuge in the state of Oregon can end peacefully.
A group of armed militia took over the government facility at the weekend to protest against the imprisonment of two local farmers.
Dwight Hammond and his son Steven were convicted of arson in 2012 for burning public land.
But they are now facing tougher sentences than what they originally served.
As Rachael Hocking reports, the stand-off is the latest skirmish over federal land management in the United States.
Chanting "Sell Out!" and holding placards outside the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the small Oregon town of Burns, the small group of militia members is not visibly armed.
Numbering about half a dozen men, they march around a building they have occupied for the last few days.
Some militia members man a watchtower, and others stand around a vehicle used to block the road leading to the building.
The group leader is Ammon Bundy, the son of a well-known ranch owner in Nevada.
In 2014, his family staged an armed protest against the Bureau of Land Management stemming from a 20-year legal dispute over cattle-grazing rights.
Mr Bundy says, this time, they are protesting against the imminent imprisonment of the father and son ranchers.
"We will not forget about how important each person is and how that person has the right to live here on this Earth and has the right to live in liberty and has the right to own property and to be able to reap the fruits of their labors."
Dwight and Steven Hammond were found guilty in 2012 of setting a series of fires to public land.
They have since served prison sentences -- the father three months and the son a year.
Prosecutors say the pair burned public land to cover up poaching, and they have now been ordered back to court to receive more severe sentences than the original ones.
But they maintain they lit the fires on federal land to protect their property from wildfires and invasive plants.
Steven Hammond, the 46-year-old son, says a resentencing -- about four years for each -- is unfair.
"Don't know what to say. That just seems like a little overreach for having burned 127 acres."
The militia backing the Hammonds calls itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and says it wants better land rights.
Many of the members argue the federal government often oversteps its authority and exercises arbitrary power over land use without sufficient accountability.
Meanwhile, the stand-off continues, seemingly without much support.
Local pastor Brian Burman says he understands the cause but the militants need to stand down.
"Did they pay the price? In my opinion and many others', yes, they did, and, for them to be given further, more severe sentences, a lot of people are, like, 'That just doesn't seem right.' However, saying, 'We're going to rise up if we don't get our way, we're going to use armed resistance,' that's just not right."
Republican senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz has echoed that sentiment.
"Every one of us has a constitutional right to protest, to speak our mind. But we don't have a constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others. And so it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably."
