Law enforcement with armored vehicles and bulldozers entered a North Dakota campsite on Thursday, clearing out dozens of people who had refused to vacate an oil pipeline protest.

State officials said they had arrested 46 people and officially cleared the camp of demonstrators by mid-afternoon, making way for a cleanup operation.

"Many protesters exited the camp voluntarily throughout the day," the North Dakota Joint Information Center said in a statement.

"A veterans group occupying a tent refused to leave voluntarily, saying they would not be violent, but they would only go with passive resistance therefore law enforcement had to carry them out," the agency said.

Native Americans and supporters camped out for nearly a year near the Dakota Access pipeline route, physically blocking construction. Many of those who had stayed through the winter left peacefully on Wednesday, facing an afternoon evacuation deadline set by the state authorities.

But some campers who refused to leave had remained overnight, officials said.

Law enforcement entered the camp heavily armed, with bulldozers clearing paths Thursday morning. In an operation that took a little more than three hours, officers could be seen checking white teepees for holdouts, and then spray-painting an X on those that were clear.

During warmer months, the camp had sometimes swelled to thousands of demonstrators, bringing the opposition campaign international attention.

State officials and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe -- which says the pipeline threatens the Missouri River and the Lake Oahe reservoir, a key drinking water source -- had asked campers to leave in order to clean up the site before snow melts.

Otherwise, man-made pollutants from the campsite could contaminate the river, they say, since it was located on a flood plain and warming spring temperatures could cause runoff.

- 'Beautiful North Dakota prairie' -

"This was beautiful North Dakota prairie in a sensitive watershed area," North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum said.

The Republican said that driving and ruts, as well as accumulated garbage, have substantially damaged the soil. Batteries from hundreds of abandoned cars that may have frozen over the winter could be leaking, posing an additional contamination threat, he said.

The US Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the federal land on which the protesters camped, said it will spend between $800,000 and $1.2 million to clean up the area.

"We are asking for cooperation from the protesters," Republican North Dakota Senator John Hoeven said Wednesday. "We've got a limited amount of time."

The camp first sprang up in April when Native Americans and their supporters began rallying against the Dakota Access pipeline, which has an underground route that intersects the Missouri River.

Late last year, then-president Barack Obama's administration halted the project and called for a full environmental impact review. But President Donald Trump signed an executive order to revive the pipeline, and a final permit was issued earlier this month.

Construction resumed almost immediately and the pipeline is expected to become operational in a matter of months.

Its operator, Energy Transfer Partners, insists the route is safe, with high-tech systems in place to prevent environmental catastrophe.

But the Standing Rock Sioux say a more comprehensive environmental review should have been conducted before the federal government issued permits, and the tribe should have been consulted more thoroughly about the potential destruction of nearby sacred lands.

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