BLM Investigated About Horses At Slaughter Auction |
Wild horses are federally protected and cannot be sold in slaughter auctions. Feral domestic horses are not covered by the same laws. The two groups can look identical. |
Animal advocates and Congress want the Bureau of Land Management to explain the criteria they use to determine which horse gets to live and which horse will die. |
BLM’s policy came under fire after 172 mustangs from the 2010 Nevada roundups were sent to a slaughter auction in July. The auction was attended by buyers from slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. Animal advocates say the horses are federally protected mustangs. |
This memo, below, from BLM Director Bob Abbey to state director Don Simpson on “Cooperator Meetings when formulating Resource Management Plans” was provided by BLM under the Freedom of Information Act. Every line in the three-page memo was blacked out.
Posted in
Wyoming on
Saturday, September 4, 2010 8:36 pm Updated: 8:53 pm.
Gotta love it, right?
Horse Advocates Pull for Underdog in Roundups |
Jim Wilson/The New York Times |
More than 1,200 wild horses have been captured during the current roundup. |
Published: September 5, 2010 |
OUTSIDE RAVENDALE, Calif. — It is horse versus helicopter here in the high desert. |
The current roundup in northeastern California and neighboring Nevada has been going on for a month. |
On one side are nearly 40,000 horses spread over 10 states, whose presence on the range is a last vestige of the Old West. On the other is a group of crusty cowboys whose chosen method of roundup involves rotors more than wrangling, using high-tech helicopters to drive galloping mustangs into low-tech traps. |
“When they get in here, they know something’s going on,” said Dave Cattoor, 68, a straight-talking roundup expert who has been herding horses since he was 12. “The chips are down.” |
Over the last month, Mr. Cattoor and his feral quarry have been doing battle under the dry, horizon-to-horizon skies of northeastern California and a neighboring Nevada county, with humans the inevitable victor. |
Jim Wilson/The New York Times |
Dave Cattoor says the current method of rounding up wild horses is “the best we can do.” |
More than 1,200 horses have been captured during the current roundup, much to the chagrin of people like Simone Netherlands, an animal rights advocate who says that the roundups — part of a nationwide push to take some 12,000 horses off public lands — are cruel, expensive and unnecessary. |
“They’re running at full speed for miles and miles for hours, with babies, little babies, and they don’t let up on them,” Ms. Netherlands said. “They’re stressing them out to the max.” |
The Bureau of Land Management, which is overseeing the roundup, disputes that, saying that the roundups are humane and that it must reduce the wild horse population to more sustainable levels, both for their health and for that of the other animals that live in this harsh terrain. |
“Some advocate groups would like us to leave the horses out there and let nature take its course,” said Bob Abbey, director of the bureau. “We don’t believe that’s a sound option.” |
The debate over roundups dates back decades, to the passage of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, a federal law that protected what was then a faltering wild horse population and made it illegal for cowboys like Mr. Cattoor to round up horses on their own for sport or profit. |
“A cowboy really wasn’t a cowboy if you didn’t rope a wild horse,” Mr. Cattoor said. “But they stopped that. They stopped the maintenance, which costs nothing, and turned it into a multimillion-dollar deal. It’s crazy.” |
Questions about the roundups have intensified in recent years as costs have mounted, both in dollars and in dead horses. Seven horses have died in the current operation, and last winter, a roundup in Nevada resulted in over 100 horse deaths, prompting more than 50 members of Congress to ask Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to look for independent analysis of the bureau’s Wild Horse and Burro Program. Late last month, the bureau did just that, asking the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a technical review of the program. |
Jim Wilson/The New York Times |
Animal advocates like Denise Constantinide think the roundups are cruel, expensive and unnecessary. |
Horses that are captured are offered for adoption, but with demand for horses low and the cost of feed high, the government often ends up quartering them on large private ranches, primarily in Kansas and Oklahoma. In 2009, about 70 percent of the entire program’s $40.6 million budget was spent holding 34,500 horses and burros, a system that the Government Accountability Office has concluded will “overwhelm the program” if not controlled. |
“They are a symbol of the American West,” said Nathaniel Messer, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Missouri and a former member of the federal Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Committee. “But do we need 35,000 symbols of the American West?” |
For critics like Deniz Bolbol, the pattern of roundup, removal and stockpiling is an example of the bureau’s catering to private interests on public lands, namely by favoring livestock ranchers — who pay the government for the right to graze and who can sell their animals — over wild horses, which cannot be sold for slaughter. |
“We remove wild horses from the public lands so private livestock can graze, and then we ship the wild horses to private ranchers in the Midwest where we stockpile them and pay private ranchers,” said Ms. Bolbol, a spokeswoman for the group In Defense of Animals, which has sued to stop the roundups. “This is what you call a racket.” |
Jim Wilson/The New York Times |
The aim of the roundups is to reduce the horse population to more sustainable levels. |
And while Mr. Cattoor calls Ms. Bolbol and other protesters “fanatics,” he does not think the government’s reliance on big, periodic roundups makes much sense either, saying the bureau needs more steady maintenance of the wild herds, which can double in size every four years. |
Perhaps the only other thing the two sides can agree on is that the horses — whose estimated populations range from about 120 in New Mexico to more than 17,000 in Nevada — are magnificent. Art DiGrazia, the operations chief for one of the bureau’s wild horse and burro offices in California, said that some of the mustangs on the range were descended from Army cavalry horses, which were bred for size, speed and strength and left here or given to ranchers. |
“They have the intelligence and endurance to work out in this country,” said Mr. DiGrazia, a bearded New Jersey native who speaks in a hoarse whisper. “They’ll know before you know that there’s something out there going on.” |
The method of capture is simple: horses are located from helicopters, which have been used in roundups since the mid-1970s, and pushed toward the trap site, essentially a funnel shaped by two netted walls that lead into a temporary corral. Once the herd runs into the funnel, Mr. Cattoor lets loose a so-called Judas horse, which is trained to lead the rest into the trap, where — uncombed, unshod and often stomping and biting — they slowly settle into their new lives as kept animals. |
All of which is more humane than the old days, said Mr. Cattoor, who recalls cowboys using rope and brawn to bring in a herd, often injuring horses and horsemen alike. |
“You have to really put the pound on them,” he said. “You’d have to get them sore footed and tired, and there’s a lot of problems with getting them really tired. Today, at this point, this is the best we can do.” |
One recent morning, Mr. Cattoor and his team conducted several successful runs — 10 horses in one, a handful in another — before a small herd of four horses, their black manes and wild tails flying, came running full-tilt across the desert. The helicopter was close on their heels, whipping up curlicues of dust in the horses’ wake. |
They were headed straight for the trap, when suddenly the herd broke, with three horses escaping across a field, while a single stallion — the leader — galloped in another direction. The pilot, perhaps 50 feet up, chose to follow the larger group, but horse sense had its way; the three headed into a patch of trees, where helicopters cannot pursue. The stallion, meanwhile, disappeared up a ridge and back into the wild. |
Mr. Cattoor watched it all, standing near his Judas horse with a resigned smile, as roundup opponents watched happily from a public viewing station several hundred feet away. |
“These wild horse advocates love it when the horse beats the helicopter,” Mr. Cattoor said. “And they do sometimes win.” |
Chief Investigative Reporter George Knapp and Chief Photojournalist Matt Adams |
I-Team: More Roundups Planned Despite Pleas from Congress |
|
3:36 | |
LAS VEGAS -- Government contractors have fired up their helicopters for yet another roundup of Nevada wild horses. The latest gather targets a remote area north of Ely, Nevada. |
Four more roundup operations are on the schedule in our state this year. They will not only thin the herds, but wipe them out altogether. |
2010 already ranks as one of the most aggressive in the history of Bureau of Land Management horse roundups, with a lot more to come. Operations which proved deadly for the herds have already scooped up thousands of mustangs from public ranges, but with no commensurate reduction in the number of private cattle allowed to stay. |
The next round seems are designed to wipe out the horses altogether. |
Now the BLM is asking for an "independent study" on their management practices by the National Academy of Science, supposedly to start on January 1, 2011. Well, why not. After the BLM finishes their blitz on the horses this year, there won't be enough horses left in the wild to worry about.
Even if the NAS were to tell the BLM to cease and desist rounding up these horses, suggest an on-the-range-management plan, and the BLM actually implements such a plan-which I'll believe when I see it-are enough herds left that are genetically viable enough to secure these horses' future? Not if the BLM can possibly prevent it, no there will not be enough left with large enough gene pools to survive long term. This was the whole idea after all. If it weren't, the BLM would STOP the roundups until the study was completed. Instead, they are moving at an ever increasing pace to eradicate the horses before someone steps up and stops them.
The NAS can criticize the BLM's management practices for the last 40 years to their hearts' content, and it won't bother the BLM at all. If the horses are gone, they're gone, and not all the hindsight in the world will bring them back.
So, I have a question. The report below has been around for quite a while, and I want to know why it seems to have been completely ignored by the BLM, and everyone else for that matter. Why wasn't this enough to at least consider stepping back-just temporarily!-to look at the other options that have always been at the BLM's discretion.
Shall I answer my own question or is there any need?
This area of "Wild Horses" is reserved for posting research papers or reference materials that have been approved by the administrators. Please add any comments about this information to Wild Horses' "Wall" rather than this "Notes" section. Thank you!
----------------------------------
Wild Horses -- National Academy of Science field studies do not support the majority of claims that wild horses damage the environment. Responsible advocates understand that areas suffering from verified overpopulation are a different matter. Alberta's wild horses endure a relatively low survival rate among foals. The climate is challenging and predators are abundant.
Cows have no upper front teeth, only a thick pad: they graze by wrapping their long tongues around grass and pulling on it. If the ground is wet, they will pull out the grass by the roots, preventing it from growing back. Horses have both upper and lower incisors and graze by "clipping the grass," similar to a lawn mower, allowing the grass to easily grow back.
In addition, the horse’s digestive system does not thoroughly degrade the vegetation it eats. As a result, it tends to “replant” its own forage with the diverse seeds that pass through its system undegraded. This unique digestive system greatly aids in the building up of the absorptive, nutrient-rich humus component of soils. This, in turn, helps the soil absorb and retain water upon which many diverse plants and animals depend. In this way, the wild horse is also of great value in reducing dry inflammable vegetation in fire-prone areas. Back in the 1950s, it was primarily out of concern over brush fires that Storey County, Nevada, passed the first wild horse protection law in the United States.
Footnotes:
Rangeland Management: Improvements Needed in Federal Wild Horse Program RCED-90-110 August 20, 1990
Public Land Management: Observations on Management of Federal Wild Horse Program T-RCED-91-71 June 20, 1991
Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros: Final Report. Committee on Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros, Board on Agriculture and Renewable Resources, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington D.C., 1982
HSUS veterinarian expresses concerns over BLM's anesthesia protocols during wild horse castrations |
Newly gelded young horses being exercised by BLM wranglers at Fallon, Nevada facility in April |
"From my earliest memories, I have loved horses with a longing beyond words." ~ Robert Vavra
