By Hannah Shook as printed in the Daily Camera
“Ken Salazar should be proud,”
photo by Terry Fitch
Our wild horses are on the edge of a planned extinction by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) because it has chosen corporate socialism over the interest of the American taxpayer.
The American people must demand that the BLM stop wild horse round-ups immediately and require an independent investigation of their blatant mismanagement and betrayal of our nation’s magnificent wild mustangs. “Ken Salazar should be proud,” says filmmaker Ginger Kathrens of the Secretary of the Interior. “This is an Advisory Board that Salazar has created to manage wild horses to extinction.”
Symptomatic of the disastrous BLM’s wild horse and burro program is the uncovered evidence of 1,700 captured horses being surreptitiously shipped to the Mexican slaughter market by Tom Davis – “known kill buyer.” The BLM pretends to not know Tom Davis’ intentions of buying the 1,700 horses at $10 each and selling them for $1,000 each. More: The BLM used tax payer money to have them trucked to Davis — a lifetime neighbor and business associate of Salazar. Another subsidized bargain from friends in high places!
The BLM was given the task of protecting America’s wild horses, but instead, they are misrepresenting facts, misleading the American people, ignoring science, violating federal law, and systematically mismanaging our wild horses (a returned native species) for the benefit of big money ranchers, mining, gas and oil interests.
The taxpayer funds our corporate welfare cowboys with up to $1 billion a year.
258 million acres of our public lands are grazed and degraded by privately owned livestock for the ridiculously low price of $1.35 per month for a cow and calf.
Twenty million acres — half of the public land allocated for wild horses — has been cleverly stolen to give the ranchers more land for almost free.
Taxpayers pay to have wild horse herds whittled down — by horrific round ups and captivity — to numbers not genetically viable for the benefit of private profits
Taxpayers even pay to remove predators for the private interests.
There are now 50,000 captured horses in BLM holding area — more horses in captivity than in the wild!
Much less expensive and more humane alternatives exist than the BLM’s cruel and relentless round-ups and subsequent imprisonment and slaughter of our wild horses at an ever rising and unsustainable cost of $76 million each year to support profits of private business interests. Craig Downer’s system of reserve design, (see “The Wild Horse Conspiracy 2011”) will establish healthy and self stabilizing herds. Yet the BLM continues to run the train off the tracks rather than invest in safe on-the-range methods of management.
It is time to relieve the BLM of its illegal, mismanaged and misguided extinction plan and give the job to wild horse experts who can implement a caring and intelligent management program that follows the law, saves the taxpayer money, and graces our public lands with the timeless beauty and spirit of our iconic wild mustangs.
Forty-one years ago, the American people spoke loudly and clearly and passionately for the preservation and protection of our nation’s wild horses. The Wild and Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act was passed unanimously to protect these animals for America and absolutely not to get rid of them for private profits. The undermining of this law and trickery of adding “riders” to legislative bills without review of lawmakers is the power of big moneyed interests and not the moral spirit of America. The BLM’s hidden extinction plan is a total corruption of our democratic will. Details must be revealed in a court of law and justice done.
Please speak up for our wild horses before we lose them forever. Write physical snail mail letters to your congressmen. Create and sign petitions. Align yourself with horse advocacy. If you watch the videos of the BLM’s treatment of these wonderful animals your heart and moral conscience will guide you. (Search BLM wild mustang round-up videos online.)
Hannah Shook is an artist who lives in Boulder County, Colorado.
Click (HERE) to Comment and defend the Horses at Daily Camera
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Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
The DOI refuses to fire Ken Salazar; the DOJ refuses to take action against the DOI. There are NOT 50,000 horses left alive in holding pens any more; and it takes so much money to buy these horses it’s impossible to stop them. Even a senator can’t stop them! The President refuses to stop BLM; and frankly people, I can only pray.
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Praying is all we can do other then petitions and such.
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Our President refuses to help any animal!!!!! 2 or 4 legged!!
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No, Pres. O.,has helped whole neighborhoods by giving people cell phones so they would vote for him. That’s not helping 2 or 4 legged.
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ya wanna know the saddest part about that statement? they own a dog… a Portuguese water dog to be exact if breed matters.. don’t ya think it’s a travesty for a pet owner not to give just two flips?
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Did anybody (the press) pick up on this or did it stay local? It has to come out nationally or it won’t do anything.. Push the FEDERAL BILL TO END HORSE SLAUGHTER IN THIS COUNTRY!!! This is the ONLY WAY to end this and all atrocities in this country. THE ONLY WAY!!!
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What is the Bill number so I can write to my legislators and be specific for the Wild Horse effort.
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Everyone of us here has been given a special gift and tool to use to help the horses, we all need to recognize our own and use it for all it s worth before they kill them all …… There are thousands of us !!!!!! Imagine each one using this to save them , we cannot LOSE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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A great well written and informative article. If we can’t get the publicity we need for this issue this is one way we can inform the public.
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Another piece of the puzzle:
“What would you do if you owned 180 million acres of land in the American West?
Would you lease almost 80 percent of it to livestock grazers (many of them corporations) for 10 percent of its market value, only to watch livestock shear off the native vegetation, erode the soil, degrade water quality, reduce water quantity, destroy riparian areas and harm endangered species, native plants, and wildlife? … And would you then stand by and watch as those abusing your land received additional millions of dollars in loans using the grazing privileges you granted as collateral for their debt? Bad news. You already are.”
Above excerpt from “Mortgaging Our Natural Heritage”
http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/DocServer/Report_Mortgaging_Our_Natural_Heritage.pdf?docID=962
The practice of ranchers using livestock grazing permits as collateral for a loan would be like me getting a loan using the house I RENT as collateral for the loan. The bank would never do it and I would probably end up in jail for fraud and yet the grazing PERMITEES do this and get away with it… take a quick look at the article.
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STANDING OVATION for this article! To the point!
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Excellent call for reform, Hannah! And I am following through on this Reserve Design proposal. Hoping to get enough support to begin right away. I have prepared a proposal for those of you who want to see it. Just contact me at ccdowner@aol.com. Also please sign onto my petition to stop the excessive roundups. It is at signon.org/sign/stop-the-excessive-roundups. I will be delivering these soon. Best wishes for the holidays! Craig
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Craig, I know that your heart is in the right place for our horses, but signon.org is funded by MOVEON.org which is being funded by villains I will not name, but who are suddenly able to mine previous metals, drill for oil, frack, etc. for corporate profit on both public lands, and in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Brazil thanks to their connections with the Senate President and Secretary Salazar, the great master planners of the American universe. With the funds that the natural resources that our nation is producing being fortunately funneled to these people—even now the infamous Rusy pipeline, and God knows what else Ken Salazar has arranged to swap our wild horse herd lands for, so the evil ones can make a profit and then reinvest it into re-electing Senator Reid from now into infinity. It is impossible for me to sign a petition for a reserve design plan for wild horses, knowing that these people are raising our the states where our wild horses have run free to make sure they have an unending supply of funds to keep again, I choke, someone as nafarious as Senator Harry Reid in power.
I don’t see a possible end to this in sight as long as Senator Reid remains in the Senate. Since 2009, I think the Senate has passed less than a handful of bills. Bills can’t get into committee, and they cannot get out. It would be an act of mercy to the country if Nevadans recalled Senator Reid. As far as I am concerned, and you needn’t worry about my two cents, signing anything associated moveon.org or signon.org. would be like dipping my pen in horse blood before I signed it. However, the powers that be were put into office with this money (as well as money largely from some of these same sources but donated through groups that one would not associate with horses at all or politics. However, the truth of the matter is, the bloof of our horses is being spilled to keep Ken Salazar in office and Senator Reid in power, so they can make these deals and keep their power structure in play that means that news organizations such as Propublica, Huff Post, Yahoo News, et al keep coming your way. It means that you will still get emails from Credo offering to pay $350.00 and give you a free phone if you will quit Verizon and AT & T. It means that the Sierra Club can continue its anti-coal campaign, lobby for more federal land to be removed from human uses, and support groups like Occupy Wallstreet with the generous donations they receive in part from the profits that certain selected businesses are allowed to earn from the precious elements, natural gas, water, and oil, and other use.
But perhaps since this is such a powerful group with so many billions of dollars to invest in whatever special interest groups they so desire. They didn’t have to invest anything in us for this past election, despite the fact they did nothing to stop the round-ups and nothing to stop slaughter. However, the UN or ICUN does not recognize any horses in the U.S. as worthy of saving—every other species of horse but Equus caballus—if the species is in Asia or Africa.
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I have said it before and I will say it again. I don’t believe there is any mustangs in holding pens all over the country. One of the reasons is because no one has seen them. The only horses that have been visited by any of us is set up in such a way that you have to be escorted in a bus to see them in the pasture or pens. No one is allowed to just drive to the property and take any photos, no one has any addresses to the other pens in any state except the few that has been set up as a photo op for publicity purposes. If anyone has the addresses to the ranches where the 50,000 horses are supposed to be stored I’d like to see it so it can be checked out. There is some reason why the BLM will not allow anyone to have the address or state that these ranches are in.
Privacy for the so called owners is nothing but BS and it always has been. There are a few horses in small holding pens in some states that the BLM website has photos of being offered for adoption
but it does not amount to anywhere near 50,000. The BLM is treating the horses like it is a top secret military operation like Area-51. I makes no sense, there is something wrong here.
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God Bless the people that have a voice for the AMERICAN PEOPLE and our horses. We do not want our horses rounded up and we mostly do not want our beautiful horses sent to slaughter. Thank you for posting and letting us know what is going on. God Bless all of you that are brave enough to stand up to our powers that waste waste and waste our land our horses and our taxes!
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This is almost as bad as killing the wolves. This world is a beautiful place if the stupidity of people were under control! I pray for these animals.
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We just re-published this article. Please let me know if it is not ok.
Robert Winkler, Publisher
The Desert Independent ( http://thedesertinde.com)
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