BISMARCK, N.D. -- The scores of people who set up a new camp of tents and tepees on private land in North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access oil pipeline won't immediately be removed, the county's sheriff's office said Monday.
The Morton County sheriff's office doesn't currently "have the manpower" to remove the more than 100 protesters from the property along the pipeline route, spokesman Donnell Preskey said.
"We can't right now," she said.
Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said later at a news conference that authorities put out a call for help earlier this month and that Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Indiana and Nebraska are sending officers.
Kirchmeier would not say whether the goal was to remove the protesters. Safety remains the No. 1 priority, he said, and authorities are attempting to negotiate with camp leaders.
Preskey said the land is owned by pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners, which bought it last month from a rancher for an undisclosed price. The Texas-based company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Monday.
The protesters, many of whom are American Indians who have been demonstrating against the four-state pipeline for months, said in a statement Sunday that the land is theirs by an 1851 treaty and they won't leave until the pipeline is stopped.
"We never ceded this land," Joye Braun, a protest organizer, said in a statement.
The $3.8 billion pipeline, most of which has been completed, crosses through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. Opponents worry about potential effects on drinking water on the Standing Rock Sioux's reservation and farther downstream on the Missouri River, as well as the destruction of cultural artifacts.
The ranch purchased by the company last month is more than a century old and was the first to be inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. It is within a half-mile of a larger encampment on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' land where the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and hundreds of others have gathered in protest.
Protesters do not have a federal permit to be on the Corps' land, but the agency said it wouldn't evict them as a show of respect to their right to free speech. Authorities have criticized that decision, saying the site has been a jumping-off point for protests at construction sites in the area.
In September, protesters and private security clashed after construction crews removed topsoil across an area about 150 feet wide stretching for 2 miles on the ranch. The skirmish came a day after the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed court papers saying it found several sites of "significant cultural and historic value" along the pipeline's path.
North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem has asked the company to explain its purchase of the ranch and how it complies with the state's Depression-era anti-corporate farming law.
North Dakota law generally bars corporations from owning agricultural land unless the property is controlled by a farm family, though there are some exceptions.
The company said in a letter delivered to Stenehjem's office Monday that it purchased the land "in an effort to enhance safety of its workers." The company said it would transfer ownership of the land or use it "for some other use" that complies with state law after the pipeline is built.
Information for this article was contributed by Blake Nicholson of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/25/2016