Our Mission: To Change BLM Managment Tactics

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“It is incredible that one should have to furnish any argument to bring about any laws to save the Mustang, but if there must be an argument let it be this: that of all the things that have played a part in the development of this country, except for man, the horse has played the most important and beneficial role. He portrays the West as all people like to think of it. He is the symbol of wild freedom to us all.”

-Velma B. Johnston, a.k.a. Wild Horse Annie (1959)



There is a battle going on in the United States of America that many people are unaware of. Perhaps they think it’s unimportant, that it doesn’t affect them. The battle to save America’s wild Mustangs isn’t just between soft-hearted horse-lovers and hard-working ranchers. It’s much more complex than that. And in the end… we could all lose.

First of all, I do not support the idea of ceasing all BLM management of wild Mustang herds because since ranching and urbanization has taken over the ranges, and since humans hunt Mustangs' natural predators, the Mustangs would eventually overpopulate, cause habitat degradation, and starve. I must say that in some places the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) helps to care for the wild Mustangs by rounding up herds in places where there's very little food and/or water, and by rounding up Mustangs that wander onto private land (land owned by people). Some people in the BLM sincerely want to protect the Mustangs. Many roundups go without incident; the Mustangs are herded off the range into the holding pens, vaccinated, freeze-branded, and then adopted by loving owners. The BLM has many different facilities, and many are perfectly fine and do help the Mustangs. In some places the BLM is a good thing.

But in most other areas, the BLM uses its authority to take advantage of the animals and the land in its care. Over the past nine years, 40% of the Mustang population has been removed by the BLM for no other reason than rancher and government greed. Alternative methods for managing Mustang populations are available (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…), and yet the BLM does not use them to any significant extent. Roundup teams are paid roughly $350 for each horse they bring in (dead or alive), so the pilots often go to drastic measures to capture as many horses as possible during each gather. Entire herds of Mustangs (including newborn foals) are driven at breakneck speeds over land deemed too rough for vehicles. Mustangs and burros (wild donkeys) are injured during the roundups and many beyond recovery and must be euthanized. (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.… , savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…)

The BLM openly admits to holding approximately 50,000 Mustangs in captivity (roughly double than there are in the wild), and their finances are running out. It costs roughly $3,000 tax dollars to process a single wild horse for adoption, and hundreds are removed in a typical roundup. It costs around $100,000 every single day to feed the captive Mustangs. Many Mustangs in BLM corrals are in poorer condition than they were and would be in the wild, and some are starving. Almost no BLM facilities provide shelter for the horses held captive. The panicked herd stallions often fight each other in the small spaces, desperately trying to keep their mares together, therefore hurting themselves and others.
"I'm assured repeatedly [by BLM veterinarians] that these horses are cared for," said wild horse advocate Elyse Gardner. "So why does it seem that it is the public observers that continually need to bring so many overlooked injuries, illness or orphaned foals to the attention of the BLM?" Again, alternative methods for managing Mustang populations on the range (so that they need not be removed and held in captivity) are available (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…), but the BLM does not use them to any significant extent. This shows extreme shortsightedness on the BLM's account. They are wasting enormous amounts of money and causing animals to suffer when less expensive, more humane methods are available.

While many Mustangs do find good homes with kind people, many are sold to irresponsible owners who want to "break a wild bronco". Such owners don’t know how to handle wild horses, and are often injured. If the Mustangs are not adopted or sold, they are rarely ever returned to the wild. The BLM holds unadopted/unsold Mustangs in taxpayer-funded corrals until they either die of old age, they are euthanized, or the BLM gains the right to slaughter them. I repeat: alternative methods for managing Mustang populations on the range (so that they need not be removed and held in captivity) are available (savethemustanghorses.blogspot.…), but the BLM does not use them to any significant extent. The BLM would rather these animals suffered a slow death rather than use alternative methods to manage them.

Recent discoveries made by the National Academy of Sciences (www8.nationalacademies.org/onp… , www.nap.edu/catalog/13511/usin…) has found that by removing so many wild horses in roundups, the BLM is actually causing population growth instead of reducing it. By lowering the population to such an unnaturally small number, the herds become smaller than the carrying limit of the lands (the limit of how many animals can graze on the land before food begins to run out).With so much extra space, the species springs back as it would after a natural disaster or plague. NAS studies show that Mustang populations have been increasing by around 10% to 15% each year. For the BLM to continue their current operation, they will have to remove more and more Mustangs each year, therefore causing increasing population growth, and so on. The answer is clearly not to step up roundups yet again, but to find alternative means by which to control the population and to prevent Mustangs from becoming problems on privately-owned land.

Studies show that nearly 85% of the Mustangs are below genetic viability, meaning that they are inbreeding. By removing Mustangs and their genetic information from the wild, the BLM is forcing the Mustangs to inbreed even more.

Even with the rapid population growth (and therefore rising cost of roundups) if things continue in this manner, in about 50 years there will be no free-roaming Mustangs left. Wildlife biologists estimate that the Mustang will be extinct in the wild before the end of the century. Time is running out for the American Mustang. Will we let them become like the Quagga and the Tarpan, pale ghosts of memory? Your air won’t be any cleaner, your water won’t be any clearer, and your food won’t be any more abundant with Mustangs extinct.

In 1900, over a million Mustangs ran free (lipizzaner-kgirl.deviantart.co…, www.horse-breeds.net/mustangs.… , academickids.com/encyclopedia/… , www.masterliness.com/a/Mustang…).) Now, less than 25,000 of them are left, and that number is steadily falling. Turning our backs is not the answer. We cannot leave Mustangs to their own devices, but we also cannot ignore the damage that the BLM is doing.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Zero Herd Policy: Obama’s War On Wild Horses – Gone In 20 Years

Copied from: http://thelibertydigest.com/2013/12/13/zero-herd-policy-obamas-war-on-wild-horses-gone-in-20-years/


Zero Herd Policy: Obama’s War On Wild Horses – Gone In 20 Years


Wyoming Horse roundup




This story seems like something from the 1800s. Since the 1970s, the federal government has balanced the rights of ranchers and railroads with those who enjoy the wild horse herds in the West.  While there have been disputes on herd size and management, this story isn't about that. The Obama Administration’s  policy is one that we find incredulous:  U.S. policy is now aimed at zeroing out wild horse herd. It is one thing to manage them, but quite another to zero them out. While the focus of this article is on the Salt Wells group and the mistreatment that is currently underway, the White Mountain herd and the Great Divide Basin herd are also scheduled to be eliminated.

This is a planned extinction event.This is something your grandchildren will not see.
The wild herds will be no more. Your grandchildren will never see them, only read about them. The man who claimed to heal the oceans has waged war on wild horses in America’s West.
It is bad enough that the herds are being zeroed out. The treatment of the animals in the Spring Hills facility is just another sad chapter to this ongoing tale of how these iconic animals of the west were lost.


Backdrop

Sandy Jewel, Secretary of the Interior, has decided to continue Ken Salazar’s  policy to zero out these  herds. The plan to do this is through capture, mass sterilization, and adopting out the “excess number.”  Apparently, the whole herd is an excess number.
This policy is direct violation of Federal law. The 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act mandates,
“The  Secretary shall manage wild free-roaming horses and burros in a manner that is designed to achieve and maintain a thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands.”
I am not a lawyer, but I think zero is not the number intended by this act. “Thriving” implies a number greater than zero. Nevertheless, the Federal Court ruled that the BLM has the right to zero out these herds. Lloyd Eisenhauer, a former BLM manager in the Rock Springs was shocked by the court’s ruling in April of this year. He stated,
“The BLM has no biological or ecological basis for zeroing out a herd of wild horses in an HMA that existed at the time the wild horse statute was passed in 1971 . . . [B]ecause the wild horses have a statutory right to be there, whereas livestock only have a privilege that can be revoked at any time by BLM, there also is no authority or precedent, to my knowledge, for the agency to zero out these two longstanding wild horse herds simply to appease private livestock grazers.”
The court ruling stunned even those who were not opposed to herd reduction. Reducing the herd is one thing, but the court ruling has allowed the federal government to move forward with the zero herd policy. According to the BLM plan, the mares of the White Mountain herd were given fertility control treatment. The Salt Wells group was to be  rounded up and shipped off. This effectively means that within 20 years, there will be no more wild horses.
It might be different if the people in the region were complaining about the horse. However, the only people really complaining is the Railroad and commercial scale operators were the motivation behind eliminating the herd. A reduction in wild herds is one thing to balance the interests of rangers and those with an interest in eco-tourism. That is vastly different from a zero out policy.  The town of Adobe thrives on eco-tourism. People come to the small town of Adobe to see the horses. Sadly, the herd will no longer be there for future generations.

The Round-Up

Over Thanksgiving, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) engaged in an aggressive mission to  roundup  Wyoming’s Salt Wells wild horses. The horses were rounded up by using helicopters to drive the horses in traps. Stallions were shipped 300 miles away to the Gunnison Prison Wild Horse program in central Utah. Rachel Reeves put together an extensive photo essay on that roundup.

Rachel Reeves has an entire photo essay on the Thanksgiving roundup by the BLM.

Current Mistreatment

But the mares and foals were sent to the BLM’s Rock Springs corral.  The facility does not have any wind break or shelter for the 668 captive horses. Eye witnesses in Rock Springs report the animals suffering in bitter cold and battering winds. In nature, they would have found shelter somewhere. In captivity, they are exposed to the elements and have no option to escape the brutal winds needed to survive. They are suppose to be available for adoption, but first they have to survive until someone steps up to the plate and adopts them.
Photographer Carol Walker described the conditions:
“Mares and foals seemed frozen in place, resigned, unmoving.  There is no shelter for these horses in Short Term Holding Facilities and although they have heavy winter coats, these horses have nowhere to get out of the biting, stinging wind.  In their natural setting, they would be out of sight in low areas, gullies, next to cliffs, sheltered from the wind.”
You’d think someone would zip tie some concrete blankets along the corral to block the wind. In the wild, these horses would be in forested areas where the trees or in rocky enclaves to break the wind. They would not be out in the open. Sadly, in a corral, the don’t have much of a choice.  Horse owners will quickly notice the lack of hay and water available in the corral.
A requirement for adopting a horse is for the prospective owner to show they have a 3 sided shelter. Yet it appears from Walker’s photos that the BLM does not provide such a shelter for the horses in their custody.





Finally, some hay.



The group has a Facebook page if anyone wants to stay up to date on the status of the horses. Those interested in adopting a horse can find additional details on the BLM website.
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