Obama Administration Blasted for Secret Holiday Roundup of Thousands of Wild Horses in Nevada
- Monday, December 28, 2009, 9:34
- Breaking News
- 464 views
Roundup Begins Today Despite Federal Court Advice, Pending Federal Environmental Complaints and Violation of BLM Promise for Public Transparency
Washington, DC (December 28, 2009) . . . Public outrage is increasing as the Obama Administration proceeds with a controversial Christmas week roundup of thousands of wild Nevada mustangs despite a federal court’s suggestion last week that the action be postponed.
Today, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will commence the cruel wild horse capture in secret, on private lands where the public will be barred from observing the treatment of the horses. In response, In Defense of Animals (IDA) today released video of BLM chief Don Glenn, stating at a public meeting in Reno on December 7 that “All of our gathers are open to the public; the public is invited to watch all the time.”
Just a day before Glenn made that statement, the BLM completed the roundup of 217 horses on the California/Nevada border, an action that was taken illegally with no public notification. Two weeks later, the BLM denied a request by an IDA observer to witness a helicopter stampede of horses living in the Palomino Buttes area in Eastern Oregon , stating “no observers would be allowed or welcome at this roundup.”
“Directly counter to the spirit of the Obama Administration’s promise of transparency, the President is allowing the BLM to secretly begin the roundup of thousands of wild horses living peacefully on more than one-half million acres of public lands in Nevada,” said Elliot M. Katz, DVM, IDA president. “This roundup will commence out of view of the public during a holiday week when government officials are off on holiday and have been unable to address complaints and a formal Motion to Stay (stop) the roundup. This action reflects very poorly on the BLM and most of all on the Obama Administration.”
In a December 23, 2009 decision, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman said that the BLM’s plans to stockpile these horses in Midwestern holding facilities is likely illegal, and consequently suggested that BLM postpone the Calico gather. That ruling, combined with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) violations cited in IDA’s complaints to the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Interior Department, should warrant President Obama’s intervention to stop this roundup immediately, IDA said.
Judge Friedman’s decision was made in response to a federal lawsuit filed by IDA, Nevada ecologist Craig Downer and noted children’s writer Terri Farley, also a Nevada resident, to halt the roundup, which involves a helicopter stampede and capture of 2,700 horses in the more than 500,000-acre Calico Mountains Complex in northwestern Nevada. The horses will be traumatized, terrorized, and many will be injured and/or killed. Foals and their mothers will be separated and horse family bands will be shattered forever
In a 2008 report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the BLM was not transparent with the public about how horses are treated under its Wild Horse and Burro management program.
“For America ’s wild horses, President Obama’s promise of change rings hollow,” said IDA president Elliot M. Katz, DVM. “His administration has continued the same secretive and destructive Bush Administration war on the wild horses of the American West.”
IDA said that wild horses are removed for the benefit of private livestock owners and other extractive users of public lands. Despite a Congressional mandate to protect wild horses in the Calico Complex, the BLM has in recent times increased the number of cattle to run on the same public lands where they are removing wild horses. The BLM ignores its federal mandate to remove livestock from federal wild horse management areas “if necessary to provide habitat for wild horses or burros, to implement herd management actions, or to protect wild horses or burros from disease, harassment or injury” (43 CFR § 4710.5).
If the Administration continues its current course, it will capture and remove nearly 12,000 wild horses a year from their native Western homes for the next three years, after which time the number of horses in Midwestern holding facilities will number more than 50,000 and far exceed those left on the range.
Contact: Suzanne Roy, Program Director, In Defense of Animals
919-697-9389; sroy@idausa.org
Eric Kleiman, Research Director, In Defense of Animals
717-939-3231
IN DEFENSE OF ANIMALS • 3010 KERNER BLVD. • SAN RAFAEL, CA 94901 • 415-448-0048
9 Comments on “Obama Administration Blasted for Secret Holiday Roundup of Thousands of Wild Horses in Nevada”
Write a Comment
Gravatars are small images that can show your personality. You can get your gravatar for free today!
Please take these THREE essential steps today! Only a huge public outcry will save these horses from the trauma of being stampeded with helicopters over treacherous winter terrain into capture pens, where they will be torn from their family members before being loaded onto trucks destined for possibly illegal BLM wild horse warehouses in the Midwest.
1. Paste the letter below (please feel free to personalize) to President Obama in the web form found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/.
2. Follow your email with a phone call to the White House (both numbers) to appeal to the President to halt the BLM’s cruel Calico wild horse roundup. See letter below for details on what we are asking of the President.
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
I would just like to add to the end of your first paragraph……”that is IF they survive the roundup”.
Please excuse me for my bluntness, but this Calico wild horse roundup is totally against what the american people stand for. IT IS UNLAWFUL AND IT IS DECEPTIVE. I will RUN to the next election and vote against everyone person in congress for this outrage. and it is an OUTRAGE. I’m so angry and so disgusted at our country for destroying the very thing that we as a people stand for …..FREEDOM! This president is NOT MY PRESIDENT. This is my country. I am a cherokee indian and my family was here long before anyone showed up to destroy, rape and take what was did not belong to them.
I am sick and I am disappointed. We have raised our voices, thousands of us. We have called and faxed and emailed our views disagreeing with this winter round-up. They do not listen. The BLM is out of control and answers to nobody, spending millions of our tax=payer money for something most of us do not want.
This is an outrage! This is not a democracy based on rule of law. These horses should remain wild and free. The MILLIONS of welfare rancher, tax payer subsidized cattle must go. I am a disabled person rescuing mustangs and burros which should never have left their true home in the wild in the first place. We are becoming a soulless nation. God help us. Journey’s End Ranch Animal Sanctuary.
You rock IDA…thank you for speaking the truth and not being afraid to do it. Americans are being stolen from so that private interests can benefit. Our wild horses are paying the price…and Americans are losing a precious part of their heritage and a symbol of wild beauty and freedom.
I am very saddened and disgusted with what the BlM and this administration in doing to our
beautiful and majestic wild horses. This simply cannot continue to go on, it’s wrong and they know it. This is nothing more than mismanaging our wild horses and it seems like they can’t get it done fast enough. Rounding up and stockpiling tens of thousands in government holding facilities is to the extreme and totally ludicrous. Also, where is the concern for our taxpayers, who are spending millions a year to support the BLM’s poor mismanagement of our wild horses. “The government is acting in definance of the spirit and intent of the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act, which Congress passed unanimously -Julianne French, wild horse advocate. We MUST not give up until every wild horse is FREE, where they belong, in the West!
America’s wild horses would have been happy just living out their lives in their own lands, WITHOUT the help (?) of the BLM. Sure some would die if the ranges became over crowded, but I would rather live and die free than to be trucked to tornado alley in the midwest! The US Govenment is doing to the wild horses (mustangs) what they did to the “First Americans” . The US Govenment shot the buffalo, KILLED their horses and the American Indian tribes were taken from their lands and shipped off to the midwest.
The reason they are NOT allowing ‘observers’ is winter round ups are particularly brutal. Not only do the horses have gallop over miles of snow covered ground where they cannot see holes, rocks, brush etc, they also have to breathe in fridgid air. The combination of breaking out in a sweat/lather in fridgid temperatures is going to cause immune system compromises that will lead to pnuemonia, colds, flu and a host of other respitory illnesses and including colic and tying up. The BLM will be shooting/ slaughtering horses on the spot with broken limbs, pulled strained or torn ligaments, and those that become sick. It’s clear why they don’t allow observers, they would be photographing these attrocities for all the public to see.
I suggest if anyone has access to an extremely long telephoto lens they may want to wait and watch for the helicopter to document this.