By Craig C. Downer, Wildlife Ecologist

(This speech was prepared to be presented to the BLM Advisory board on Sept. 7th, 2009.  The BLM had announced a three minute time limit on all presentations.  Without warning, as the meeting began, they cut the time down to two minutes which meant that presenters could not complete their statements.  Such was the case for Mr. Downer.  The BLM advisory board disregarded all public comment as being irrelevant, anyway. – R.T.)

There is a war mentality that prevails among BLM and USFS officials and has

Wild Horses of the Pryor Mountains

for many years, certainly since the early 1980’s.  This hostile attitude and the actions it has engendered target America’s last wild horses and burros.  Hence, the wild horse and burro program has become among the most deviant from its true legal mandate of any national program.  The consequences of this have been devastating to the wild horses and burros in the wild most of all, and also to those in human form who value them.

These wonderful presences now find themselves reduced to pitifully low, non-viable populations throughout the West, or entirely absent from many of their legal herd areas. Overall there are around 2,000 legal acres for every horse/burro still living free.  Yet, the situation has only continued to grow ever worse for those that remain in the wild.  Those wild equids who remain wild must contend with a barrage of negative assaults upon their very survival.  These assaults start with a campaign of disinformation and end with their removal.  Of course, all this constitutes a subversion of the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 and several other important acts, including the National Environmental Protection Act (because eliminating them is a major detrimental action), the Multiple Use and Sustainability Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act.

A Pryor Mountain horse caputred, branded and tagged

I would daresay that even the Endangered Species Act is being violated when our government authorities decimate America’s last wild horse and burro herds. This is due to the fact that many of the wild equid populations being eliminated or reduced to non-viable numbers constitute unique populations that have adapted to their diverse regions over many generations. These have roots going back hundreds of years, including those Spanish Mustang remnants that I have thrilled to observe in Oregon’s Steen Mountains (the Kiger Mustangs) or in Montana’s Pryor Mountains (the only herd area of Montana’s seven legal herd areas still containing any wild horses).  As incipient subraces or even races of the horse species, these unique populations should qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act.  They should also qualify for protection under the National Heritage Act, for their value as a unique part of American historical heritage possesses roots tracing back to the earliest of pioneer days and is equally related to their great significance to Native American culture and history.  These two aspects are deeply appreciated by millions of Americans, but are being callously ignored by authorities today.

Today there is an urgent need to reform America’s wild horse and burro program, to reinstate its true purpose, to place the emphasis back on wild horses and burros in the wild and, so, to truly restore the diverse herds to their legal herd areas wherever this is still possible.  Inevitably, this means standing up to the wild horse and burro’s enemies.  This means that the rampage of wild horse and burro roundups that BLM is now engaged in must be called to an immediate halt.  A moratorium on these unjustified gathers must be promptly declared, hopefully through an expeditious Executive Order, but, if necessary, through Congressional or Judicial means, or a combination of these three.  I call your attention to the heinous planned elimination of a mere 620 very under-populated wild horses from twelve of their legal herd areas near Caliente, Nevada, in BLM’s Ely District, in a complex of herd areas comprising 1.4-million legal acres.  Many of these horses have already been eliminated from the northern three of these herd areas, but nine herd areas still have some sparsely distributed horses.  I hope and pray that their elimination from the wild can still be prevented.  These are horses that I, as a 4^th Generation Nevadan, have visited throughout my life and their absence will be keenly felt. Their planned elimination has been done mainly to accommodate livestock interests.  And many of the thousands of wild horses that have been removed from their herd areas have become fodder for the cruel and unscrupulous trade in horseflesh that involves the terrified horses’ being shipped over U.S. borders to Canada and especially to Mexico where they are subject to cruel slaughter.

For these and related weighty reasons, I urge all elected and appointed

Former Wild Horses languishing in dusty pens

officials to clean house in America’s Wild Horse and Burro program, both within the BLM and the US Forest Service.  This can be done by honoring citizen, congressional and judicial pleas for fairer treatment of these animals in the wild, by allocating fairer portions of resources to them, including forage and water, within their legal areas, by honoring their meticulously and scientifically proven native status in North America, and by recognizing their many ecological contributions — how they truly complement native plants and animals when given the chance (no restrictive fences within their legal areas and no depriving of natural public waters as is currently being allowed to occur).  In short, we humans need to recognize their great healing presence that includes their universally appreciated aesthetic value upon our public lands.  These two species have done so much for mankind over the centuries, but their true place is in the wild.

The ROAM bill passed the House as H.R. 1018 by a substantial margin and is now before the Senate as Bill # 1579.  It must be shaped up and passed right away in order to prevent the final decimation of the herds, for the wild ones are, to quote the Act, now “rapidly disappearing from the American scene.”   Their enemies are now in control, in positions of authority and influence, and are doing as much damage to them and especially to their freedom as they can.

A BLM sign that the Public must obey, but the BLM ignors!

Control over the wild horses and burros and their 53+-million acres of legal herd areas must be taken away from those now in charge over them, for these have proven themselves to be their worst enemies.  Though possessing the authority to help the horse and burros, they have deliberately betrayed them – subverted their very right to live naturally and freely upon their legal land.  Here these animals have both legal and moral right, as well as evolutionary precedence.

If it proves impossible to reform the current agencies in charge, it may well be that another separate and autonomous agency should be created.  This new agency would receive primary control over all original wild horse and burro herd areas and would fulfill the legal mandate of the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act that is to manage and protect wild horses and burros living in the wild as the “principal” presences in their legal herd areas.  This new agency would be run by persons who have demonstrated a true appreciation of and caring for wild horses and burros living in the wild, and who do not regard them merely as escaped, or “feral”, domestic livestock.  It would not be given over to those whose agenda is to discredit and to practically eliminate these freedom-deserving animals from their wild homes.  At long last the authority of this new agency would release the stranglehold of the grossly over indulged livestock industry upon the public lands – the wild horses’ and burros’ chief enemy!

The goal of the new ROAM (Restoring Our American Mustangs) Act will be to reinstate the wild horses and burros throughout the West.  Where it is not possible to reoccupy the 20+ million acres of zeroed-out herd areas, other equivalent or better habitat areas will be identified and legally established for viable populations of wild horses and burros.  This will allow the intelligent employment of Reserve Design in setting up complete habitats for long-term viable populations of one thousand or preferably more horses or burros.  Remember that the World Conservation Union Species Survival Commission Equid Specialist Group recommends a full 2,500 individuals for population viability (IUCN SSC ESG. 1992. Equid Action Plan).  By reinstating whole wild equid containing ecosystems and by incorporating natural barriers and predators such as the wolf and the puma, by allowing the wild horses and burros adequate vast areas in the 100,000’s and even millions of acres of contiguous habitat including a complete range of elevations from highland meadows for summer grazing to mid and lowland valley and foothills for winter survival, these animals will be permitted to fill their niche within natural or human implemented bounds, including semi-permeable barriers designed for this purpose.  And once they have been allowed to settle in, they will prove their ability as ecologically climax species both to enhance the native North American ecosystem (restored with its anciently rooted equid element) and to self-stabilize their population numbers.  This they will do by obeying the natural law of checks and balances.  This both applies externally to the population and from within the amazing social dynamics of individual family bands and those band associations called herds, or populations.  These checks and balances apply to every species or kind, plant or animal, fungus or, yes, the human species itself.  They accord with an evolving order that has been millions of years in the making upon our home planet Earth.

Our human kind is part of this natural order, an order we ignore at extreme peril both to ourselves and to the living world we inhabit.  For this reason, I implore my audience, just as I implore myself, to ACT NOW TO CHANGE past attitudes and lifestyles that are out of synch and disharmonious with such magnificent presences as the wild, naturally and freely living horses and burros.  These have earned their right to be here, to realize their own special destiny and in the process to fulfill their own special role as a truly complementary and healing presence in relation to all of life including man.