Out of Control BLM Violates Law and Lies to Public, Again!
BLM contractor's chopper running Pryor Mountain horses into trap - Photo by Terry Fitch
CHICAGO, (EWA), – Despite growing public outrage and the threat of more legal action, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is keeping to its announced time table of rounding up almost half (14,518) of America’s wild horses and burros in the current fiscal year.
Following the filing of a law suit to stop a scheduled gather of wild horses in the Calico complex of Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced a delay of the operation thus avoiding an expected restraining order.
At the agency’s Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting on December 7, program chief Don Glenn assured attendees that his agency was “transparent” and that the public is welcome to attend the round-ups. Even as these assurances were being delivered, the BLM was secretly in the midst of a sneak attack on the herds of Buckhorn, California.
Unconfirmed at this time are reports of two other round-ups underway or completed at Coppersmith and Carter Reservoir. The latter is said to have also included eight Buckhorn wild horses.
The Buckhorn round-up, which was officially scheduled for August of 2010, was only brought to the public’s attention when the helicopter chasing the wild horses spotted six dead horses on the range.
The BLM had claimed that there were 596 horses at Buckhorn and that they were going to remove all but 60, but according to the AP only 217 wild horses were found and only 26 will be returned to the range. “This leaves yet another sterile, unviable herd.” said EWA’s Cindy McDonald, adding “This discrepancy casts further doubt on the accuracy of the BLM’s population estimates.”
“We keep hearing that the mustang population is growing rapidly but the BLM population numbers don’t add up. We continue to ask the BLM how 32,000 wild horses represent a population out of control but millions of privately owned livestock on BLM land are at appropriate levels,” added EWA’s Vicki Tobin.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the BLM stated that this latest removal of wild horses without public notice was due to an “internal communication failure”.
The 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act is clear in its intent. The wild horses and burros are to be protected on the 54 million acres granted to them under the law. The BLM has already removed more than 20 million acres of the original land Congress allocated to Mustangs in 1971, and more than 270,000 wild horses and burros.
It has been more than three weeks since the unified call for a moratorium was delivered to the White House and the Department of Interior but the runaway BLM train continues barreling down the track. Each wild horse round-up is bringing the mustangs closer to extinction. The EWA urges every American to call the president and their elected officials to preserve the nation’s wild mustangs and ask that the law protecting our majestic heritage be upheld.
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Categories: Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
RT It would help if you could say where these places are. The Buckhorn roundup was at Massacre Lakes in Washoe County, Nevada, but is on the schedule as in California because of the remote roads and coming from Cedarville, CA is how the contractor enters and leaves. This is where horses were found shot dead by the helicopter pilot. I wonder how close Buckhorn and Massacre Lakes HMAs are. Massacre Lakes is on the schedule for 12/07 to 12/14 to roundup about 187 horses and remove 162 which leaves the non viable 25 horses behind with mares shot up with PZP. Dead Herd. There is confusion over Buckhorn and Massacre Lakes, are they the same or adjacent? Where are Coppersmith and Carter Reservoir? There was a tip we got in late September that 1000 horses would be rounded up in Wyoming in the Green River area that has always had horses over that large region. It was an unscheduled roundup. I have asked people about it and
never gotten any information back. The roundups have needed observation and with BLM thinking we cannot even get there they are now saying”Come to the roundups and observe” and
then do as they please. This deepens our mistrust of BLM and creates more doubt about there activities and their new, so called transparency. mar
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Just passing along the press release as fast as I can, Mar. Try to get it out there, in a neat fashion, while doing several other hundred things at once.
You did a fine job on the research. If I were not working and half way around the world I would have more time for research, so keep after it.
R.T.
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Vicki Tobin confirmed to me that Buckhorn was where Massacre Lakes is in Washoe County, NV, and is where the horses were found dead. Mar
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I have found that Carter reservoir is along the route from Cedarville, CA to Massacre Lakes, NV. So Carter Reservoir is in Washoe County, NV, and has no mention on the schedule anywhere. Mar
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These are the California herd areas which, as we know, have 2 locations actually in Washoe County, Nevada; Massacre Lakes and Buckhorn. Are either Coppersmith or Carter Reservoir in Nevada also?? Can someone help find this out??? Why is this done this way?
This is a list from Manes and Tails;
Here are the CA herd areas (some of which are burro HAs) ‘There are 33 Herd Areas and 22 Herd Management Areas within California:
* Bitner CA-267
* Buckhorn CA-262
* Carter Reservoir CA-269
* Centennial CA-654
* Chemehuevi CA-698
* Chicago Valley CA-681
* Chocolate Mule Mountains CA-671
* Coppersmith CA-261
* Devils Garden CA-252
* Fort Sage CA-241
* Fox Hog CA-263
* High Rock CA-264
* Lee Flat CA-652
* Massacre Lakes CA-268
* New Ravendale CA-243
* Nut Mountain CA-266
* Palm Canyon CA-662
* Piper Mountain CA-656
* Red Rock Lakes CA-251
* Twin Peaks CA-242
* Wall Canyon CA-265
* Waucoba-Hunter Mountain CA-651
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In Lisa Dines’ American Mustang Guidebook, the location of Buckhorn is very much South of Cedarville, CA. which leads to the Massacre Lakes on route 299 East. South of Cedarville and Eagleville and Madoc National Forest is Coppersmith and adjacent Buckhorn. Both of the herd areas straddle the CA/NV border. If there were roundups in Coppersmith and Buckhorn they were not on the December roundup schedule for 2009. Massacre Lakes was and this is where the dead horses were reported early in that roundup. Buckhorn/Coppersmith is not adjacent to the Washoe County herd areas. They are North of the large Twin Peaks herd area. Buckhorn was to be have the roundup in August. Coppersmith is not on the Schedule.
I would say, because of the large herd areas along the CA/NV border, that the BLM will likely do more of this and we may need to demand the Transparency that they just bragged of, but have famously never been able to deliver.
Thanks RT. I just get livid over this and want to keep up with what is going on. Everyone was saying BLM would make a move while the Advisory Meeting was going on. I guess they went where the weather permitted and did all the damage they could. But like Green River, Wyoming, will we ever get a head count or even a description of the roundup and whether or not horses died? The head count that was in the press release was likely for Massacre Lakes. The game playing on behalf of BLM and the murkiness they keep us all under regarding their activity should be apparent to anyone at this point. Elected officials who continue to disregard their constituents letters of alarm and requests for investigation and a stop to the gathers, have become the White Elephants of Washington. There is a rather large herd of them. Mar
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Carter Reservoir is in the area of Twin Peaks and Coppersmith/Buckhorn, but I have not got more info on that yet. Although Vicki Tobin confirmed that Buckhorn was Massacre Lakes, I believe that they may have occurred at the same time but as I have described they are not adjacent to one another and are not the same place. Coppersmith, Buckhorn and Twin Peaks all straddle the CA/NV border. There are still hundreds of horses here. Each side of the border has many herd areas and they have some on the 2010 schedule. Don’t expect them to keep to it. mar
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Carter Reservoir is in Washoe County, NV, adjacent to Massacre lakes and is the place the horses were found dead. Carter Reservoir is not on the schedule. Buckhorn is south and not adjacent to Carter or Massacre but straddles the CA/NV border. We must expect more of this along the NV/CA border and the herd areas in each state where there are still hundreds of wild horses. The escalation of BLM activity in winter and when the public has not been told or legally allowed comment makes this war with BLM uglier by the day. This Is What They Want. This is not what wild horse advocates want, not at all. We want to be able to deal honestly and upfront with these issues in order to curtail these activities that become increasingly illegal, if that is possible. I guess we cannot. BLM has set the tone for decades and kept the public and advocates at bay. It will have to change and be a decision outside of BLM/DOI. The sad part is that the horses and burros pay for all this with their lives and loss of freedom and land. Keep contacting the White House friends. Keep telling the story to all who will listen and those who haven’t a clue. Stop BLM. Mar
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