The Cloud Foundation wants to know “What Fuels the Alliance?”
Cloud: even BLM's "gather" could not quell his spirit - Photo by Terry Fitch
New York City, NY (January 17, 2010)—During today’s protest in New York City, The Cloud Foundation asks why has the Nevada Sierra Club joined in a bizarre alliance with the powerful international trophy-hunting lobby, Safari Club International (SCI), whose work to lift hunting bans worldwide often diminishes protections for wildlife. In announcing their support for the current inhumane and costly removal of 80-90% of the Calico wild horses in Northern Nevada, The Sierra Club spokesperson has failed to acknowledge that the essential cause of degradation of public lands is livestock use—not wild horses. One must ask: why the alliance? Is it forged on more than livestock? Are there energy moguls making deals behind the scenes?
Upon accepting the position as Secretary of Interior Salazar announced, “I look forward to helping build our clean energy economy, modernize our interstate electrical grid, and ensure that we are making wise use of our conventional natural resources, including coal, oil, and natural gas.”
The Safari Club sung praises for Obama’s appointment of Salazar for Secretary of the Department of Interior. Obviously the powerful SCI lobby has been actively backing Salazar for a long time.
“Senator Salazar’s pro-hunting votes over the past four years in Washington, and his support for access to federal lands for hunting throughout his entire career in Colorado will prove to be invaluable for sportsmen and women during this Administration” said SCI President Merle Shepard continuing with “SCI looks forward to working with Senator Salazar in the Obama Administration to make sure the hunter’s voice is heard on every issue that affects hunting, hunters or science-based wildlife management.”
The half-million acre Calico Complex herd management area is the last stronghold of the American mustang and was designated by Congress principally for the use of wild horses and burros.
Scapegoating wild horses and burros for range deterioration must stop—they comprise only a tiny fraction of the animals and grazing wildlife on our public lands. Millions of head of livestock graze public lands at a cost of $1.35/cow-calf pair/month. Overall public lands grazing constitutes a net loss of $123 million annually to the American tax payer following administrative costs while economists estimate the total damage at $500 million to $1 billion annually.
Cows graze within a mile of water; in comparison, wild horses are highly mobile, moving 5-10 miles from water and grazing on more rugged terrain. The BLM has failed to sustainably balance use of the “forage,” water, and space through adequate control of cattle on public land. Not only do cows eat more than 26lbs. of forage daily, but they consume as much as 30 gallons of water a day and defecate in it as well. Private and corporate livestock outnumber wild horses at least 100 to 1 on public lands.
“North America’s “green” wild horses are a return-native prey species beautifully integrated with their environment, as opposed to resource-damaging exotic livestock. We are advocating for the preservation of entire ecosystems in which the wild horse plays a vital role,” states Ginger Kathrens, Naturalist and Emmy-award winning filmmaker and creator of the popular PBS Cloud Wild Horse Documentaries.
Responding to the Sierra Club’s statement that arid rangelands can’t produce enough food for wild horses, Kathrens continues, “It doesn’t square to say that the range can’t support a few thousand “green” wild horses and yet can support millions of head of destructive domestic livestock.”
In January 2008 Western Watersheds filed a court appeal against the new and BLM approved grazing proposal for Nevada’s Soldier Meadows allotment.. Testimony on May 13, 2009 from Glenna Eckel, BLM’s Winnemucca Wild Horse & Burro Specialist, explained that she was surprised at the number of horses after a fly-over because the large population was not showing up in relation to their forage consumption.
BLM never balanced their new information on science and forage on the Calico wild horse herd.. Yet the BLM moves forward regardless with the dead of winter roundup. Was it because the Ruby Project reported to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that BLM had said they would roundup horses for the gas line?
“BLM increased the cow numbers. They misled the public about the horse numbers so they could increase the big rancher’s cattle and the amount of grass the cows could eat on public land. Then, when their own expert testified about the relative effect of the horses—BLM ignored that too. Now they are trying to do damage control to cover it all up. So from my perspective as a wildlife advocate—BLM took grass away from wildlife, and scapegoated the horses to cover it all up,” explained Katie Fite biologist and biodiversity specialist adding, “We need an investigation to get at the truth here.”
The Cloud Foundation and over 195 organizations, ecologists, authors and celebrities (Sheryl Crow, Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris, Lily Tomlin and more) have called on President Obama to support federal grazing permit buybacks. The Unified Moratorium letter calls for reductions in livestock grazing and a subsequent reanalysis of appropriate management levels for herd management areas to allow for self-sustaining, genetically viable wild horse and burro herds to exist in the West
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Categories: Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Strange bedfellows… mar
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The plot thickens …………. 😦
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It does indeed! The Sierra Club has been throwing fits about the cows for years. Now, suddenly, cows no prob. It’s all horses.
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I have always disliked the Safari Club, its trophy hunting promoting is disgraceful. One day there will be no ‘trophy’ sized animals if hunters continue to take the biggest, which are usually the oldest & wisest animals. Every time Obama gets on the air (like yesterday’s pres-con for Ted Kennedy’s seat) he talks about “Green” jobs. We all want a cleaner fuel (owned by the USA) but he needs to get a clue about the real world, not this fantasy he has envisioned. As long as Ken Salazar supports Obama’s false green agenda, we will never get him out of his position as wild horse executioner.
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Sorry, Sierra Club. No more donations for you. Ever.
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Sierra Club (bizarre move) – off my list, and a good amount of bad mouthing, oh I mean education of the masses, too!
My following comment should be with Ruby Pipeline story – which I cannot find:
Where are these 150,000 homes, are they new or existing, do the people know the “real cost” of them getting this energy, would they pay for solar instead to save a wild horse?
Can we find out at least the region this pipeline is to serve and canvas that area -hold a protest in that area/community? I bet a lot of teh 150,000 if they new what was occuring, would join us and look for alternatives like solar on the roofs instead.
No should be building a new home right now, with all the forclosures on the market. Obama said we were all in this together – where are the “all”.
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One other thing that is niggling me about the whole Ruby Pipoeline thing is that I have heard mention that Madelain (Sp!) Pickens’ husband will be supplying the water they will be using to build this … how much truth is there to that? That would surely shed a whole new light on her involvement too! She seems to have this nice little fantasy that she can build this wonderful preserve where people can view the mustangs and have picnics and campfires and all the rest, it just all sounds a bit too juvenile to me … is that just me and my suspiscious mind?
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Hi Lori- I don’t know why Mr. P. would be supplying water, he’s an oil/energy man… but ??? Madeleine’s vision may seem like a juvenile fantasy, but there are many dude ranches and cattle drives that do the same thing she’s suggesting. Like a wildlife safari, in Ohio. You can watch Bison (as well as many others) up close, still they seem wild. I think they should add Mustangs, too!
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Lori and kas,
While I think it preferable to return all the prisoned horses back to thier homes and stop these horrific roundups, my second option would be to keep them in the west where they are already aclimated. I see Madeleines approach as offering an immediate solution to an existing problem. Maybe not perfect. I don’t find anything on her site that she supports BLM or the roundups in the first place. And if her hubby is supplying the water, we don’t know if he is or not, but he may be intending to supply it at cost – someone is going to have to provide the water.
I guess as a third option, keeping them in safari zoos is preferable to slaughter. As long as they have plenty of room. But these horse are not aclimated to the grasslands of the east or midwest. There were wild horses there at one time, but that is where they aclimated to – those horses were already out.
And thier hoofs are still going to have to be delt with – that is a horrible torture for them to endure over and over again. But I guess that is something they already are enduring anyway.
Oh – we must get BLM and USFS to stop killing mountian lions, to stop roundups and retrun the horses to where they came from. Just my opinion – go ahead and sterilize every single one of the prisoned horses if they must – just get them out of the hell they are in and back to open freedom.
Cattors – go find another profession – I have to, along with millions of others in this economy – whats the big deal about you – you are not more special than anyone else and I suspect you could just retire anyway on your millions of my tax dollars you already have?
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Roxy- You and I have had this (safari/zoo) discussion before ;). I agree with you the horses should be FREE. However… the ones in LT holding should be able to have a better life then they are living currently. The safari in Ohio creates as natural a habitat as they can. They have a ‘sand desert’ for the camels, authentic grass ranges for the Bison and I’m guessing the could create a habitat for the horses that would be conducive to ‘hoof control’. I am always trying to think outside of the box.
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Lori- I saw an interview with TB Pickens this AM, he is supporting natural gas now. So… maybe he is providing water for the Ruby Pipeline??? Maybe the Pickens’ don’t see the whole picture YET?
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kas, yes I agree it could be done well. Actually if they partnered with alreaady existing safari like zoos I would have more hope for them. But this agency alone has not shown that they can do anything right so far.
Maybe Pickens was part of the whole picture all along. Don’t misunderstand me, I think her idea was the best so far other than sending them all home. Madeleines idea is now taking more shape. Perhaps her habitat in Nevada was to take the rub off of hubby being part of Ruby Ridge knowing that would not be popular with, and perhaps appease, naturalists and animal lovers – especially wildhorse lovers? Whether water or natural gas (I think he always promoted natural gas, just wanted more wind and solar). It still would be better than where the hores are now being kept. Just thinking out loud.
Any wind is not turning out to be the greatest thing anyway – takes HUGE amounts of water, kills birds, and causes health problems for mamals exposed to the sound. Solar “farms” also take huge amounts of water.
So today, beef boycott due entirely to UOH (maybe once a week), and instead of eating beef – beefing up campaign to put solar on roofs instead of solar farms, instead of Ruby pipeline like projects. Let the utility companies own the solar panels and we pay a lease for them on our roofs if they need to be that greedy.
Anything to save the wild horses.
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Roxy- I love our debates. The whole Mustang mess needs taken away from the BLM. Let the advocates adopt herds (HMAs), watch over them to make sure they are not causing damage to the range. If/when they do, pen them up for a short period of time to give the land a rest. Or drop supplemental feed that all animals can utilize. Anything is better than warehousing them until they are old enough to sell to slaughter (oh I mean “without limitation”). Quit taking land away (oh I mean “land swaps”) from the horses.
PS I didn’t know solar farms needed lots of water… I had heard the wind turbines were causing problems for other wildlife. Americans just need to cut down on crap we don’t need and conserve energy and this will in turn help save our environment, which will in turn benefit our horses! Anything to save the horses.
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kas, I just “heard” that about solar plants sucking up water – really should have researched before I posted. Probably a lot for fire protection, but that just stands there waiting, not being used all the time – never hopefully. Wind though uses a lot of water for cooling the turbines, plus the fire protection. I fear the ones in the ocean – what will that sound do to the whales and dolphins and other ocean life?
Your right on every point!
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I don’t understand that if Germany can be utilizing solar so well why can’t we? Solar works on cloudy days too, depending on how cloudy. I jsut ont’ get what is gong on- or actually, I do get wht is going on and its about sucking eveyr tax dollar out of we the people and putting it in corporate profits.
Find and documentary “The Corporation”, its in 3 parts, has a silouette of man in a suit with devils ears and tail. Includes interviews of corporate leaders – they tell you exactly what they have in mind for our public lands – which is NO public lands. We must save our wild horses from this force – this about saving ourselves, not just horses.
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Roxy- Its all about the money. Oil producing countries wine and dine our leaders, their constituents (like that big word? lol)invest in the oil market which makes lots of money. Nobody can charge to use the sun. Once the panels, etc are in place its a matter of maintenance, only the little guy working in the field makes money. Which I might add supports themselves and our economy. No more corporate profits.
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kas, yes it is all about the money. And Utility companies run diferent in diferent areas. My thought is divert federal government investment toward solar panels instead of everything else they are doing, let the utility companies own the solar panels and charge us to lease them, we would essentially pay the same, but should go down some over time – sort of a forced lease I guess so they can slowly convert to that idea. We can buy them now for almost noting withthe rebates, but you have to have so much money up front, why not have the feds, our tax dollars, pay for the whole thing, we already paying the rebates anyway? Well off topic of horses, but it sure would help all our public lands, our wild horses and all wildlife.
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