Andrew Cohen has served as chief legal analyst and legal editor for CBS News and won a Murrow Award as one of the nation's leading legal analysts and commentators.

This is the fourth in a series of articles in the Atlantic exposing the BLM and its illegal decimating of our wild horse herds.

Please read and send to your representatives in Washington. This is an utter farce. The BLM is NOT above the law - they just think they are.

Amplify’d from www.theatlantic.com

On Wyoming's Wild Horses, the BLM Unambitiously Responds

Aug 22 2011, 3:00 PM ET

The Department of the Interior defends its ongoing roundup of herds, but its response is filled with shallow arguments and misinformation

A helicopter is used by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to gather wild horses in the Conger Mountains near Border in Utah September 7, 2010 / Reuters

Here is Wyoming's pitch-pure tourism advertisement now playing on television. It's called "Don't Fence Me In" and it features beautiful natural scenes, including a herd of horses running upon the open prairie. Before I dive briefly back into the story of what the Bureau of Land Management, state officials, and ranching industry executives are doing right now, today, to two Wyoming wild horse herds, I ask you to please spend 30 seconds watching this video. It animates the issues at hand more than I ever could with words.

I love this commercial. As a proud citizen of the West, it evokes in me the pride I feel about living in a place that still has big skies and wide, open spaces. It makes me think of the scenic drive from Missoula, Montana, to Yellowstone National Park, through some of the most gorgeous country America offers to the world. And to me, anyway, it's brilliant marketing by the Wyoming Tourism Board, whose members obviously understand the value that millions of Americans place upon the wild horse as a symbol of the nation's heritage.

This is the fourth time in the past month or so I have written about the wild horses of Wyoming. Starting yesterday, as much as 70 percent of two free-ranging herds in and around Sweetwater County, in the southwestern part of the state, are being rounded up and taken away by BLM personnel and contractors. Approximately 700 wild horses will be taken from the wild and held in pens pending adoption or sale (or worse). "Don't Fence me In" may be the state's tourism slogan. Yet these very symbols of the state, the very symbols of the West, will soon be fenced in, probably forever.

First, I wrote about a BLM roundup plan that also included castrating the stallions of these herds and then returning the geldings back to the range. Then I wrote about the BLM's decision to back away from that part of its plan under public pressure from horse advocacy groups and the public. Finally, about 10 days or so ago, I wrote about the hypocrisy inherent in Wyoming's attitude toward its horses; it is marketing the herds as tourist attractions even as it is plotting with ranchers and the BLM to undermine the horses.

It was this last piece which garnered more attention than its predecessors. In it, I suggested that the federal agency in charge of the wild horses, the Department of the Interior, through its BLM, has not often shown itself to be a neutral player when evaluating the vested interests that compete for Western public lands. The ranchers almost always win. The wild horses almost always lose. And the Interior Department is run by a rancher, Ken Salazar, whose former subordinate, Sylvia Baca, is alleged to have encouraged ranchers to sue her own department to get their way. Now comes an official response from the Bureau of Land Management. I rebut some of its main components below.

THE BLM's RESPONSE

Here is the full text of the response I received late Friday afternoon from Tom Gorey, Senior Public Affairs Specialist for the Bureau of Land Management.

Contrary to what is alleged in this latest wild horse column of Mr. Cohen for The Atlantic, the Bureau of Land Management is not waging a "war" against wild horses, nor is it "managing for extinction," as other critics have similarly charged. In fact, the current on-the-range population of wild horses and burros (approximately 38,500) is greater than the number found roaming in 1971 (about 25,300), when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

The BLM is seeking to achieve the appropriate management level of 26,600 wild horses and burros on Western public rangelands, or nearly 12,000 fewer than the current West-wide population. The ecosystems of public rangelands are simply not able to withstand the impacts resulting from overpopulated herds, and that is why the 1971 law, as amended, directs the Interior Secretary to remove wild horses and burros in circumstances where the animals exceed the range's capacity to sustain them.

As for the claim that some wild horses "may even be slaughtered for meat," this is a disingenuous assertion, as the BLM screens both adopters and buyers of wild horses and burros. It is a legal reality, of course, that once the title of ownership to a wild horse or burro passes from the Federal government to an adopter or buyer that the animal becomes private property, but the BLM makes every effort through its screening process and the terms of adoption agreements and sale contracts to prevent the slaughter of former wild horses and burros. These documents both contain a clause that adopters and purchasers agree to, declaring that they have no intent to sell the animal(s) for processing into commercial products.

The comparison of the amount of BLM-managed land used for livestock grazing (157 million acres) to the amount used by wild horses and burros (26.9 million acres) ignores the fact that the 1971 law cited above confines the management of wild horses and burros to areas inside the boundaries of where the animals were found roaming on BLM and Forest Service-managed land in 1971. That's the law -- letter and spirit.

Regarding the Wyoming-related wild horse litigation, the BLM cannot comment on pending cases, but it can be said that neither the Interior Department nor the BLM view litigation as the way to go in resolving public land issues.

The big picture is that the BLM carries out a multiple-use mission, which is principally defined by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. This job requires our agency to accommodate various uses of the public land while preserving resources -- a complex mission, to be sure, but one that Congress has set forth as our mandate in law. While this multiple-use mission cannot compete with lurid headlines like "The Quiet War Against Wyoming's Wild Horses," The Atlantic's readership deserves to know the full scope of the BLM's responsibilities, which include the humane and cost-effective management of America's wild horses and burros, both on and off the range.

REBUTTAL

As a general matter, this was a disappointing official response on many levels. Rather than respond to the specific points my article raised, the BLM simply regurgitated in much of the same bureaucratese the talking points it has offered before when this topic comes up. Here was a chance for the BLM to really engage with wild horse advocates, on a topic a lot of people seem to be talking about, and the Bureau simply bailed. You bail, I guess, when you have the power but not the argument. The BLM has the authority. The roundup now is underway. Why go into the messy details?

Here are some of those details.

1. Leaving aside for another day the Bureau's "extinction" comment, the BLM first says there are roughly 13,000 more wild horses in America today than there were in 1971, when they were formally protected by federal statute. I'm not sure this is right. First, there were evidently far more than 25,000 wild horses in 1971, as the BLM now claims. In fact, the BLM's own figures (Appendix C, Page 37) indicate that in 1974 there were at least 42,666 wild horses on the range. If you believe those figures, there are fewer wild horses today, on less public land, than there were 40 years ago. Having caused this situation, the BLM should take responsibility for it.

2. The BLM next says that the "ecosystems" of "public lands" cannot withstand more than 26,000 or so wild horses. Here we are at the heart of the matter. Even though cattle and sheep outnumber wild horses on public lands by at least a ten-to-one margin, the BLM largely blames the horses for roiling the resources of the range. By doing so, the Bureau justifies the imposition of this arbitrary 26,000-horse figure even though there are millions of acres of public land where more horses could safely roam. So long as the BLM continues to make this claim and defend it in court, wild horse advocates will have a hard time protecting the herds.

This is the single most important aspect of the fight between horse advocates and ranchers. The BLM grades the wild horses harshly for their impact on the range. But it does not appear to grade the cattle and sheep for the impact they bear upon it. It's very much like the debt and deficit battle we just witnessed in Washington. The BLM is focusing upon the two percent that is relatively easy to fix rather than upon the 98 percent which is not. The reason is not hard to fathom. The ranchers have a powerful lobby. The horses do not. And the Interior Department doesn't want to tick off one of the industries it is supposed to regulate.

Interestingly, in its response the BLM failed to rebut, or even mention, the new claims made against it by Robert Edwards, a range scientist who worked at the BLM for 30 years before becoming an independent consultant. Just recently, as part of a lawsuit over the Wyoming horses, Edwards challenged the BLM over its claim that it is the horses, and not the livestock, which are ruining the range. Anyone interested in this topic should read the Edwards Report. At a minimum, it creates a disputed issue of material fact about whether wild horses deplete as many natural resources as the BLM says they do.

3. The BLM next calls me "disingenuous" for writing that some of the wild horses that are rounded up are sold to slaughter. Now, if I had accused BLM officials of selling wild horses for slaughter perhaps I might have deserved the label. But I did not. What I implied is that some of the horses the BLM takes off the range end up in the wrong hands and on their way to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. This should be an undisputed fact. Just two weeks ago, for example, the BLM seized 64 wild horses in Utah in a sting operation against alleged smugglers.

The BLM defends the status quo on slaughter by arguing that it does the best it can when it sells or allows out for adoption wild horses. It's a neat argument on paper but it doesn't wash in the real world. In this grim video, for example, the pro-slaughter crowd earlier this year in plain view discussed how easy it is, in practice, for once-wild American horses to be slaughtered in Canada or Mexico. The BLM shouldn't pretend otherwise by claiming it is making "every effort" to stop this practice. If it were, federal inspectors would be performing brand inspections all across the borders to prevent wild horses from being rendered abroad.

Don't just blame the BLM for these sins of omission. Blame Congress and the White House, too. In 2004, for example, then Montana senator Conrad Burns, a Republican who once called ranchers "the best stewards of public lands," snuck into federal legislation what's known as the Burns Amendment. Signed into law by that great ersatz scion of the West, George W. Bush, the law effectively gutted protections for wild horses by allowing the BLM to private sell older and unadoptable mustangs to private buyers.

Like Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead, and Wyoming's lone delegate to the House of Representatives Cynthia Loomis, Conrad Burns has ties to the ranching industry. Seven years after his amendment, and nearly three years after the Obama Administration came into power promising to restore the balance of power over the nation's land, air and water, no one in Washington has stepped up to restore protection for the wild horses of the American West. Not the White House. Not Congress. And not the courts.

The current slaughterhouse rule has created a dynamic problem that is only going to get worse as the BLM rounds up more wild horses it cannot afford to keep in captivity. Since the Bureau rounds up far more horses each year than can be adopted out or legitimately sold to honest buyers, and since the cost of housing the wild horses in "holding facilities" is high (tens of millions of dollars), the economics favor the slaughterhouse operators and their agents. Having created the supply-and-demand problem in the first place, the BLM should own up to its responsibilities to ensure the wild horses don't soon find their way to rendering plants.

4. The BLM next takes issue with my assertion that it is not allocating enough public land for the benefit of wild horses. Here again, the BLM has forcefully countered a point no one is trying to make. No one, including me, is asking the Bureau the BLM to open up all of its land to wild horses. But the fact is that the BLM and ranchers have pushed out wild horse herds even from those relatively small areas of public land that was specifically designated for the horses back in 1971. Citing these statistics and maps, wild horse advocates claim that the herds have been removed (zeroed-out) from perhaps as much as half of the area initially granted to the horses by statute. Tens of millions of acres of former wild-horse country now are off limits to horses -- but still open to livestock, these advocates say.

5. Unsurprisingly, the BLM didn't want to comment directly on the points I made about the way in which Wyoming is using its wild horses as marketing tools even as it conspires to get rid of them. I don't blame the Bureau for that. The fact is that the BLM is often sued by both sides in the battle -- by the wild horse groups who seek more protection for the animals and by ranchers who seek more decisive action by the government to get rid of the animals. In this respect, the BLM is not unlike any other government agency seeking to balance out competing interests. The point of my last piece was to suggest that there isn't really a great deal of balance between those interests. One wins. The other loses.

6. Finally, the BLM reminds readers that its function in life is not just to protect wild horses but also to properly manage the federal lands over which it has jurisdiction. Fair enough. Here's what Suzanne Roy, of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, says about that:

Multiple use does not require livestock grazing. Again, Congress deemed wild horses to be worthy of protection as national symbols of freedom whose presence on Western public lands is an important part of our history and heritage. The Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act designated the lands where wild horses were found in 1971 as habitat to be managed principally but not exclusively for wild horses. The BLM has turned this mandate on it head by allocating the majority of resources in federally designated wild horse areas to private livestock and not wild horses. The multiple use mandate does not require livestock grazing and it certainly does not require the imbalance of resource allocation that exists today.

If the BLM wants to live up to its mandate to protect and preserve America's wild horses then it will begin to address the inequities of resource allocation on the small amount of BLM lands on which wild horses reside. It will also shift resources away from the current costly and cruel roundup, remove and stockpile strategy toward on-the-range management of wild horses, utilizing cost-effective and humane fertility control strategies where necessary.

As I have written before, it's not just what the BLM is doing to these wild horses that disturbs a great many people. It is the way in which the deed is being done. Consistently backing ranching interests over horse advocacy groups, annually squeezing the horses out of more and more public land, the BLM nonetheless wants to maintain the public pretense that it is an honest broker when it comes to the fate of the horses -- that its officials are doing what they can, within the narrow confines of federal law, to protect and manage the herds. But this is a false pretense. Literally and figuratively these days, America's wild horses are on the run; suitable for marketing but otherwise harassed by their human stewards.

Read more at www.theatlantic.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/qRp8LX

Related articles

• Is the BLM Perpetrating Wild Horse Fraud? (rtfitch.wordpress.com)
• Alleged Inhumane Treatment Prompts Wild Horse Lawsuit (rtfitch.wordpress.com)

SOMEONE PLEASE HELP! STOP THE BLM! STOP THE ROUNDUPS!

This is your tax money at work!

Antelope Complex - Day 5       January 27, 2011

The BLM had to search for the few horses left on this HMA. But, they finally found them - population obviously out of control with serious overpopulation on these thousands of acres. If they manage to find any horses at all, they are over the population limit - as set by the BLM - and must be removed at all costs!

In this video, a band of eight horses enters the chute after being chased for a long distance. They run for a distance before an older mare collapses in the snow, her legs buckling beneath her, utterly exhausted from the long, terrifying run. She lays there helplessly as the helicopter hovers over her. She is too exhausted to move. Two wranglers run toward her waving whips with plastic bags tied to the ends, forcing her to struggle to her feet. Incredibly, the helicopter continues the chase. The spent mare tries to escape, breathing hard, puffs of steam billowing from her nostrils. The helicopter comes within feet of her as she summons her last strength to trot and then run to escape it. To those of us watching, the chase of seems to go on forever; we are shocked that BLM allows it to continue. Finally, the helicopter gives up and the mare is left dazed, her sides heaving. She stops for a moment, then walks off, away from the trap where her family is confined, and out onto the range. Alone.
This mare’s ordeal exemplifies the inhumanity of the roundups, which indiscriminately stampede the elderly, the infirm, the crippled and the very young along with the able-bodied, subjecting them to extreme, and sometimes fatal, terror, trauma and exertion. Even a local, pro-BLM rancher observing the roundup remarked on the chase of the elder mare, “that shouldn’t have happened to that old sister.”

NO, it sure as HELL shouldn't have happened to any horse, let alone an older one. But the BLM contractors get paid by the head - dead or alive, preferably dead. Even a person completely unfamiliar with horses would be able to tell this mare is in serious trouble. How could anyone be so chillingly callus as to do something like this to an innocent old horse?

Please share this video with your Senators and Representatives! Not only is this unconscionable cruelty, WE are paying over a MILLION DOLLARS for this roundup alone. Let's stop the BLM before they do this to even one other horse.

Related articles

• The Bureau of Land Management and the Case of the Missing Mustangs (animals.change.org)
• Wild Horses Routinely Treated with Chemicals Prohibited For Humans (goldendays-suzanne.blogspot.com)
• Public "Observation" at Callaghan Complex Wild Horse Roundup (goldendays-suzanne.blogspot.com)

The Silence Is Deafening

This time they brought the issue to Washington. President Obama, you saw them in Reno, but made no response. You weren't in Washington while they were there, but how could you be unaware that they were there and what they wanted?



This brief statement by Paul Killington says it all. Did you hear him, Mr. President?

Did you see this on CNN, Mr. President? This is what's happening to our wild horses. We've been trying to tell you, but you don't seem to have heard us. The horses don't have much time left, Mr. President.

Here are some of the people who have been frantically writing to you, begging for help. Now they have come to Washington to plead the case for the horses. So what happened when they got to the Department of the Interior - these American Citizens exercising their right to peaceful assembly, paperwork all in order and nary a firearm in the entire group? They were met by armed guards - unfriendly armed guards - outside the door of the DOI. Then the Mounted Park Patrol joined the group, followed by Homeland Security and a motorcycle policeman. This for peaceful citizens carrying nothing but signs and information?

As they stood in front of the Mounted Patrol, facing the DOI, they could see people at the windows, but no brave soul ventured out amongst these horse hugging terrorists. Finally, someone did come down to get the packet of information from them, and probably ran all the way back up the stairs. It all made me so proud, Mr. President, of the Advocates. As for my country and its leadership - I don't believe I have ever been so sad and disappointed. Although, I suppose we should thank the DOI for providing those wonderful horses to help make the point.

On the other side of the Pond, our soul mates in London made their own demonstration in front of the US Embassy. We can never thank you enough, dear friends, for helping our precious wild horses. They obviously mean more to you than they do to their own government. The horses know. They always do.

The ball in in your court, President Obama. Do you remember your campaign promises that you were squarely for protecting our wild herds? But once elected, your ongoing silence has become a deafening roar as concerns and pleas for intervention continue to be meet with absolutely nothing.

The vast majority of us voted for you because of these campaign promises. You promised to protect our wild horses. Since you made that promise, so many horses have been removed from the ranges - or killed in merciless roundups - that there is real doubt as to how many are actually left in the wild.

We are waiting for you to keep your promise, Mr. President. The horses are waiting for your promised protection, Mr. President. They don't have much time.

Obama Administration Assault On Wild Horses - Update

Obama Administration Assault On Wild Horses

Calico Complex Roundup, Dec. 28 thru Feb 2010
Secret BLM Roundup Continues
Calico Wild Horse Victims: 1,195+ (as per BLM on 1/21/2010)

  
BLM DENIES FULL PUBLIC ACCESS TO ROUNDUP &
SPOON FEEDS GLIMPSES OF DEATHS/SUFFERING
 
Jan 21, 2010 UPDATE:
COLT KILLED AFTER RUN SO HARD HOOVES DESTROYED;
DOWNED MARE DIES AFTER 4 HOUR RIDE TO HOLDING FACILITY  

It's hard to know what is really happening at the Calico roundup because the BLM refuses to allow public observation of all roundup operations. Despite repeated requests for complete observation access, the BLM continues to severely restrict observation to a couple of hours on three days a week. Based on the highly limited information that the BLM is providing ... we now know two more horses were killed yesterday at the Indian Lakes Road Fallon holding facility. 

After being run long and hard, the BLM reports that a colt's hooves were destroyed (hoof sloughing) during the roundup and he was killed on Jan 21. Based on the limited information provided by the government, it is likely this colt was shot to death as the BLM calls using a riffle to shot horses "euthanasia." The BLM claims this colt had been treated for two weeks yet, this colt's condition and treatment was never reported before his death yesterday.  

BLM states that yet another mare died at the Fallon facility after being downed in the trailer probably for hours. Upon arrival she was found down and subsequently died. She was likely trampled as the horses are packed tightly into transport trucks.

No members of the public were allowed to observe the Jan 21 roundup and public observation at the Fallon facility is severely restricted to specific hours on specific days. No one is allowed to go to Fallon Facility until Tuesday, Jan. 26th. Calls were placed to both Assistant Director of Renewable Resources & Planning Ed Roberson and BLM Director Abbey by the Cloud Foundation in regards to the situation at the new Fallon facility. Calls were not returned.

NOTE-BLM Spoon Feeds Select Information:

 On 1/21/2010 BLM posted: "One mare that was down on the transport truck arrived at the facility aliv, but subsequently died. One colt with multiple hoof sloughs from the capture was euthanized at the facility."

On 1/22/2010 BLM re-posted information: "One colt with multiple hoof sloughs from the capture was euthanized at the facility.  The colt was from the Black Rock East HMA and has been at the facility more than two weeks. When the colt arrived at the facility it was put in with the general population. A day or two later, the colt started showing acute lameness and was moved to a sick pen. The facility veterinarian noted the colt's two hind hoof soles were bruised, but there was no visible abscess or  infection. The colt was given antibiotic and anti-inflammatory medicine, was kept segregated and contined to be checked by the veterinarian. The colt's hind feet abscessed and the outer hoof wall did separate. The colt was euthanized by the facility veterinarian."

Jan 16, 2010: Today the BLM allowed public viewing of the roundup operation for a whole 1 hr 40 mins - this out of a 10-hour-day operation which, I'm told, starts at sunrise and ends at dusk weather permitting. We will post video of the roundup in the next day or so. Sue Cattoor indicated by day's end 122 horses had been captured.
 
For a BLM update of the Calico victims click here.

TAKE ACTION: STOP OBAMA/SALAZAR PLAN CLICK HERE.
 
Jan 13, 2010 UPDATE: ANOTHER DEATH REPORTED
BLM reports another death has resulted from the Calico roundup. This time a mare (age unknown) was found dead over this past weekend at the Fallon "Indian Lakes" holding facility. The only information provided by the BLM on this latest death follows: "The veterinarian diagnosis is the mare died as the result of dietary feed change." BLM states that bad weather stopped roundup actions on Thu (1/7), Sat-Mon (1/9-1/11).  Sadly, on Tue BLM took 99 horses from their homes on the range and separated them forever from their families. Latest victims include 43 stallions, 34 mares & 21 "weanlings/foals."

Jan 10, 2010 UPDATE:
Sue Cattoor, owner of the roundup company, has notified us that the mare who was killed by BLM on Jan 28, 2010 was not related to the orphaned foal shown below. This does not negate the tragedy that the BLM has inflicted on these two individuals. There is no way to verify any of this information due to the lack of transparency of the BLM . This confusion is the direct result of the BLM's refusal to allow daily public observation of all aspects of the gov't roundup operation.

Jan 8, 2010 UPDATE:
Yesterday the BLM killed another mare claiming "poor body condition." It is unknown if this mare's condition was documented with video and/or photos.  Despite the controversy surrounding the Calico roundup, the BLM did not photo-document the foal or mare who were killed last week.

For updated number of BLM victims click here.

  

UPDATE ON ORPHANED FOAL (Jan. 7, 2010):
 
First the BLM traumatizes this foal by chasing him with helicopters to remove him from his home on the range. Then after the BLM kills his mother by shooting her, they leave this baby by himself overnight at the capture trap site. The next day he is trucked for hours, with other captured horses, to a holding facility where he is put in a pen with two mare/foal pairs. After he bonded with one of the mares - standing near her for comfort and security - the BLM then pulls him away from this mare and puts him by himself in a pen. Once again the BLM claims to be doing this for the "benefit" of the horses. What a sad and tragic story.
  
Photos and text below from www.aowha.org

1/2/10 on-site observation of the new contract horse holding facility in Fallon, NV:  Our horse observations started at the mare and foal pen. Two of the youngsters were still nursing and were in with their dams. The orphan foal appeared to have socially bonded with one of the nursing mares and her foal. The first two photos show the orphan foal on the left and the third shows interesting markings on one of the nursing foals.

www.aowha.org; W./S. Lamm, Jan. 2, 2010

Update from Willis Lamm, January 7, 2010:
 
John Neill promised to provide an update on the "Calico orphan."   I received the following report this morning.
 
Willis, just a quick update on the orphan.  He has been gaining strength each day.  We did relocate him to an adjacent holding pen next to the pairs in order to provide him more nutrition than he would consume through oat hay.  He presently has both oat hay and alfalfa along with BLM formulated pellets for foals. Dr. Sanford and I continue to monitor the health of the animals each day.

TAKE ACTION: STOP OBAMA/SALAZAR PLAN CLICK HERE.

For updated number of BLM victims click here.

APHIS necropsy of foal run to death on Jan. 1, 2010 available click here. On New Year's Day, the BLM rounded up 10 wild horses but only captured 9 because a 6-month old foal died en route. APHIS vet at the scene, Dr. Al Kane, reported that after being chased by the helicopter for "1/2 mile" the little foal was behaving strangely, falling down periodically. It is reported that the pilot radioed Dr. Kane that this foal was having problems; Dr. Kane went out to see the foal who was found dead. Dr. Kane said that he did a necropsy in the field (available below) and indicated he thought the colt has a congenital heart defect.  They left the body in the field and refused to allow the public observers to witness the body. This foal lived his last moments in utter terror, forced to run, falling repeatedly and his family being stampeded away by government-contracted helicopters.

Jan. 5, 2010 UPDATE: The BLM reports that as of yesterday they rounded up 299 wild horses in Calico Complex, Nevada. BLM claims there were two mortalities to date - the 20+ year old mare who was shot to death due to "poor body condition" and the 6-month-old foal who was run to death (see details below). Photos and/or video of the animals killed have been requested; to date the BLM has indicated it is unknown whether any photogenic documentation was taken.

BLM has moved the capture operation from private land in Paiute Meadows Ranch to private land in Soldier Meadows where they will remain for the next two weeks. Daily access for public observation of the roundup activities is being denied and the BLM has selected 3 days each week (for the next 3 weeks) to allow orchestrated public observation. BLM claims staffing constraints as the reason to limiting public observation of this multi-million-dollar government operation.

Related articles by Zemanta

• BLM postpones wild horse roundup in remote Utah (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Foal Killed, Stallion "Freedom" Injured in Dramatic Escape from BLM Cruelty (goldendays-suzanne.blogspot.com)