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Loading...Wild Horse Death Toll Rises, BLM Plans More Roundups
While the Bureau of Land Management has a temporary hold on roundups for foaling season, they’re going to be back at it soon with roundups in California and Wyoming.
As the BLM tells it, with no scientific proof, western rangelands can’t support the current number of horses and burros. They’d like us to believe they’re doing them a favor by running them down with helicopters, destroying herd dynamics and stockpiling the ones that don’t die during the roundup or transport into holding pens where they wait for death or what will most likely be a horrific end at a slaughterhouse.
Despite public outcry, they continued with the last roundup at the Calico Complex in Nevada, which ended in February and brought in 1,922 horses, killed at least 86 of them and caused 40 mares to abort their foals. Foals born in holding facilities aren’t even counted.
The BLM called the Calico roundup a success, but wild horse advocates beg to differ. The Wild Horse Preservation Campaign pointed out that:
• 43 percent of deaths due to diet and metabolic failure, a condition related to the physiological changes induced by stress and trauma.
• 22 percent of deaths due solely to “poor condition,” with a majority involving 20+ year old horses, raising humanitarian concerns about the ethics of stampeding elderly and ailing horses up to ten miles with helicopters before capture, separation from family and confinement.
• 19 percent of the deaths due to traumatic injury either at the capture site or in the holding pens, including broken necks, spinal and pelvis injuries, fatal hoof and leg damage sustained in the helicopter stampede.
In addition to the inherent cruelty of the roundups themselves, advocates were also already suspicious of the BLM’s projected numbers and rationale behind saying half a million acres aren’t enough to support 2,000 horses when BLM memos turned up stating that the horses weren’t actually having that big of an impact on the land.
Documents supporting the Ruby Pipeline project also turned up, which showed that pipeline backers plan on working with the BLM and have consulted the BLM’s horse experts “to minimize wild horses and burros along the pipeline right of way.”
Interesting, no?
The BLM also doesn’t like to mention that the federal government spends at least $144 million each year managing private livestock grazing on federal public lands, while collecting only $21 million in grazing fees, according to a 2005 report from the Government Accountability Office. That’s a net loss of about $123 million per year. Others estimate the cost to be as much as $500 million or more.
All this for cattle that make up an estimated 3 percent of the nation’s beef supply.
The BLM is on a mission to rid the west of wild horses and burros. They’ve made a mockery of the public comment process and will continue to mismanage our public lands while wasting millions of our dollars doing it.
They’re about to get back to it with roundups planned for the White Mountain and Little Colorado Herd Management Areas in Wyoming and the Massacre Lakes Herd Management Area in California.
Wild horse advocates are calling for a congressional investigation, public hearings and a moratorium on all roundups until a management plan that’s genetically, ethically and fiscally responsible, and works in conjunction with current laws, can be executed.
Send letters opposing the latest plans to round up wild horses in California and Wyoming.
Contact your representatives and senators asking them to support a moratorium on roundups pending a Congressional decision on a sustainable management plan.
Sign the American Wild horse preservation Campaign’s petition on Care2.
Visit the Wild Horse Preservation Campaign for more information.
Read more: animal welfare, blm, bureau of land management, calico complex, california, horses, ida, wild horses, wyoming
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190 comments
+ add your ownDespite OVERWHELMING public support these atrocities continue! Soulless bastards! What a legacy of EVIL, HATRED and CRUELTY they leave for their progeny. Probably don't care about them either. GREED has taken over. They are power junkies who will NEVER be satisfied!
You Voted this SCUM in now VOTE them out
It's a sad time in this day and age when we as Americans who want to STOP this can not step-up and protect the American icon- wild horses. Why? The greedier Americans of this so-called heirarchy that have deep pockets and sit back in their offices all-the-while counting their scheckels could not give a horses tail whether the lives of these magnificent creatures are spared, because they are filling their greedy hands with blood money! Pathetic criminals.
Criminals.
Obama and his BLM have very little interest in other living creatures unless they get to .VOTE,and if he should get re-elected G-D help America.
Roundups are terrible.
Why can't those beautiful animals be left alone to live freely?
The BLM and the ranchers along w/ Ken Salazar do not want the Wild Horses on the western ranges. Tens of millions of tax dollars are spent every year to house in holding pens the illegal rounded up horses and burros. The western wild mustangs eat the tops only of grasses which will then regenerate, and their waste produced is beneficial to the environment. To further infuriate an educated public, cattle rip out grasses by the roots, and defecate into the water streams....
As long as killing licenses fund state agencies and our federal Pittman Robertson laws further enable hunter/trapper and killing power (gun and ammo taxes that actually come 60% from home protection and gun collectors - NOT hunters - but the funds are entirely dedicated to state agencies who sell the most killing licenses for more killing) - as long as killing funds our state agencies, that is the only voice that state agencies will listen to. ORGANIZE by state to change laws to general public funding WITH a voice for all of us. This has never been democratic and we need to change this now. Hunters and trappers have our legislators tied up at the committee level because all legislators care about is being re-elected...so we need to bring them a bigger voting bloc than hunters and trappers do. Wildlife watchers bring more revenue to state and local tax coffers appreciating wildlife than hunters do - but it is directed to general human issues, not wildlife. Julie Lewin wrote a book called GET POLITICAL FOR ANIMALS. Organize.
LEAVE these beautiful wild creatures alone! The land belongs to them. No doubt greedy nonenities need them removed for thier own purposes. It just beggars belief that no animal is safe when governments do not and will not make strict laws to protect them. Always one excuse after another in attempt to fool the public. We are not fooled and have to stand up to the powers that be to ensure they DO protect animals in particular these wild maginificent horses!
I do not comprehend the necessity of rounding up these magnificent creatures then leaving them for the slaughter houses. Why are they doing this year after year?. What is the harm in leaving them alone to run wild and exist in peace.
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