Why the war on America's wild horses? |
BLM says the 178,000-acre Montezuma Peak & Paymaster HMAs can only support 3 horses |
It seems that hardly a day goes by without the BLM announcing that it intends to round up most of the members of yet another wild herd and put them behind bars forever. After weeks and months of this, we have to ask: why the rush to sweep America's free-roaming mustangs from their designated homelands?
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The BLM's language belies their true intent. They no longer talk about "gathers," but are now bluntly describing their missions with a word that reveals how they really view what they're doing to wild horses: "removals." As if these horses are a form of vermin that must be eradicated because they pose a threat, or don't belong.
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BLM has gotten pretty good at smooth-talking the rationales behind the forced removals of the wild horses, never admitting that cattle interests, or mineral interests, or gas interests, or industrial interests are the true forces behind the dizzying efforts to create vast wild horse-free zones where herds have roamed for decades, if not for centuries. Instead, they talk about the lack of suitable habitat, water sources, and forage, making it seem that they are doing the wild horses a favor by wrenching them from their families and from the only homes they have ever known.
Read more at www.examiner.com |
“A Dream Come True!” The BLM Agrees to Support Madeleine Pickens’ Wild Horse Eco-Sanctuary |
We are SO excited to FINALLY announce the best news we have had to share with you in over 2 1/2 years! |
OUR MUSTANGS ARE GETTING THEIR SANCTUARY AND HAVE THE BLM’S SUPPORT!!! |
Over the past three days, I have been to meetings in Sacramento and again in Washington, DC. I’ve met with BLM Director, Bob Abbey, Deputy Director, Mike Pool, along with the Wild Horse and Burro team. The BLM has officially agreed to support going forward with the development of the wild horse Eco- sanctuary for the horses in holding! Also in DC, I met with Congressman, Jim Moran, who had already given his blessing, but is submitting legislation to members of Congress on behalf of these wild mustangs. We are so thankful to him and his staff for their efforts on the wild horse and burro issue. All the meetings were fabulous and we could not be happier about the news! |
This final acceptance by the BLM this week was the hurdle we had yet to get over. We are so thankful for the opportunity to start our Pilot Program with 1,000 horses, and we aim to get all 36,000+ horses in holding soon after. This action by the BLM shows great leadership on the part of Bob Abbey and Mike Pool for taking a stand for our beautiful mustangs and accepting the solution we have offered. Saving America’s Mustangs gives our sincerest thanks for the monumental cooperation on the part of the BLM for an alternative to the holding pens. |
This is a truly a dream come true and I’m thrilled to share this news with all of you!! Let the rejoicing begin!! |
Madeleine Pickens and the (*cheering) Mustangs |
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 |
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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. |
"From my earliest memories, I have loved horses with a longing beyond words." ~ Robert Vavra
