(The News as We See It) by R.T. Fitch ~ Author/Director of HfH Advisory Council
Too Little Too Late
BLM Security at Twin Peaks to guard against 2 female reporters and one male ~ photo by Terry Fitch
SUSANVILLE – (SFTHH) The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced that it plans to release this week a very small number of wild horses and mules into the Twin Peaks area, where over 1,700 of the federally protected animals were cruelly and unlawfully removed last year.
Returning 10 horses, 11 mules and a burro to the range northeast of Susanville California is part of the agency’s work to maintain “a sustainable population with desirable animal characteristics,” said Jeff Fontana, a BLM spokesman in Susanville. In reality it is little more than a joke and a slap in the face of concerned taxpaying Americans.
The Twin Peaks wild horse management area was the site of a controversial late summer roundup that attracted national attention and lead to the exposure of the BLM’s inequitable and unlawful violation of the public’s first amendment rights. Witnesses at Twin Peaks documented that the inhumane helicopter stampedes left virtually no wild horses on the range while thousands of privately owned cattle and sheep remained.
In February, during another controversial and inhumane BLM helicopter stampede, BLM Director Bob Abbey repeated that the agency would increase fertility controls and reduce the number of horses it removes from the range for at least the next two years while the Obama Wild Horse Harvesting Machine will continue to consume thousands of federally protected wild horses and burros from their rightful land based on junk science, arbitrary numbers and bad math.
All of the mares scheduled for release in the nearly 800,000-acre area, which extends into northwestern Nevada, have been treated with a fertility control drug, Fontana said, which ensures that the herd will not survive. The mare release will achieve the agency’s target of 60 percent stallions and 40 percent mares, said Ken Collum, manager of the BLM Eagle Lake Field Office which adds to the BLM’s target of zero herd population growth.
The stallions selected for release have the horse conformation and size to maintain the characteristics of the Twin Peaks wild herd, he said, yet with the released mares unable to conceive it seems unlikely that this statement makes any sense.
The mules and burro are being released because they are over adoption age. They will not contribute to population growth, Fontana said, just as the released horses won’t, either.
The wild horse releases are open to the public. Those interested should meet at 8:30 a.m. at the BLM corrals, 21 miles near Litchfield on Highway 395 east of Susanville. A high-clearance four wheel drive vehicle is required along with a good understanding of BLM double-talk.
Bad weather will postpone the release, Fontana said, and, as usual, BLM security will be present to intimidate and threaten the public
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Categories: Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
I have always wondered WHY BLM removes any mules. A. They are a non breeding animal and B. They are typically very difficult for adopters. Thanks for the post…
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BUT!!!
they eat cow food, an important component in any Herd Management Area.
BUT!!!
they are, in population surveys, counted as burros.
BUT!!!
when viewed from the air, as in aerial surveys, they look a awful lot like horses (who can tell ears from a thousand feet in the air??!!).
I think our beloved Wild Mules are the Placeholders of the range, magical little game pieces that can be moved around to increase a population when too many large 4-legged equines are necessary; increase a population when too few small 4 legged equines are found; and contributors to the shiny Non-Reproducing Herds of the Future.
It’s also my sincerest hope that the BLM is jus’ plain scared of ’em. Anybody see those pictures floatin’ around the Internet of a pack mule kickin’ the hell out of a cougar for trying to make a snack out of the Mule’s hunting dogs? And I’ve seen photos of a Twin Peaks (pre-roundup) herd with a mule as the stallion’s lieutenant; how perfect is THAT?
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In order for us to understand just how ridiculous returning only 10 horses and one burro to the 789852 acre Twin Peaks HMA actually is, you may want to review some of the Twin Peaks roundup information and here is one very good scientific piece:
http://horsebackmagazine.com/hb/archives/4046
Naturalist Craig Downer Issues Twin Peaks White Paper – Excerpt
October 16, 2010
Conclusion: The line transects population survey estimates only 265 wild horses remain in the Twin Peaks HMA. The population of wild horses should be restored to the low Appropriate Management Level (AML) of 448 wild horses. In addition, no burros were detected in the survey the population could be dangerously low. BLM plans to maintain 72 burros at low AML leading to inbreeding and mal-adaptation. Recommendation: RETURN 187 HORSES AND 159 BURROS to the Twin Peaks HMA. All burros should be returned to ensure a minimal genetically viable population.
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Re: “In reality it is little more than a joke and a slap in the face of concerned taxpaying Americans.”
No truer words were ever written.
I am amazed that they even thought this was worthy of mention.
Obviously they’ve been hitting the Kool-Aid again, and must have thought it would be good PR for unknowing couch potatoes, certainly not the majority of the American Public, who caught-on to their games years ago. Or, as usual, didn’t think at all! Ridiculous, pathetic, and disgusting are some rebuttal words that come to mind.
Re: Returning 10 horses, 11 mules and a burro to the range northeast of SusanvilleCalifornia is part of the agency’s work to maintain “a sustainable population with desirable animal characteristics,” said Jeff Fontana, a BLM spokesman in Susanville.
How any of them can keep spouting their lies over-and over-and-over again with a straight face is beyond me!
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Pitiful!
I am glad for those released, at least they will have a minuscule bit of hope after being scrambled and terrorized, drugged and imprisoned and processed… and for what purpose?
Their lives, their heath, their love and future, will never be the same.
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Somewhere there is a non-viable herd of BLMers who reproduce by cloning and have the undesireable but pre-potent characteristics of false-speak and deception. Unfortunately we are dealing with them. Can’t trust them,can’t believe them. And when they retire, they are on the steering board. They are like the Hydra….. a many headed dangerous monster. What science is there in this release ? None. What is the reproduction rate of this herd ? Zero. All we can do is fight them again–work to defund them–as they sprout more evil heads.
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I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that BLMers do not know that mules are non-reproducing. This agency has so many unfriendly horse and burro policies that it challenges the minds of anyone who thinks critically, has even the most rudimentary knowledge of equines, or is trained in the application of scientific method. What a total waste of tax payer dollars. And we are surprised that we trail other developed countries in science? Wonder were Gamdhi would rate our humanity since he contended that the measue of a nation ismbasesmon the the way we treat our animals
I would love to wake up in the morning and discover that I have totally misjudged BLM! And if I have, I ask for forgiveness ahead of tme, but unless and until, I see evidence of a genuine commitment to the preservation and protection of these wild ones, and changes to the approach in management, I have to agree with those who see this agency a joke with this qualification. Jokes are supposed to be funny, and the BLM’s treatment of our wild horses and burros is decidedly not funny, and the very idea that we are paying the salaries, health care, and pensions callous, prevaricating, bloated bureaucrats. Thia is, to use Director Abbey’s own word, untenable.
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KEEP CONTACTING your senators and representatives:
http://tinyurl.com/3h9xmqf
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Signed and forwarded. Heavy hearted over this. I will be calling the senators tomorrow!
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When you call, Athena, as them to de-fund the BLM or at the very least, hold them to their 2010 base.
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Signeds and forwarded 25 times
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RT sorry but the more I read the more I understand that BLM does double talk and has for years. I wonder where they went to school to learn this. The double standard, double talk and double dealing BLM is enough to make the strongest of us just want to vomit.
Herds aren’t sustainable at less than 150-200 breeding animals. And this by BLM’s own experts. They didn’t want to listen to this. So they keep repeating the same cow manure–with the intent that if they say it enough times it somehow becomes the truth. How can one burro be expected to reproduce him/her self???
I thought Twin Peaks was Federally recognized HMA? Doesn’t this mean they really are suppose to do EA’s? Although we know that they do this thing about fast tracking so as to side step the EA.
There has to be some way to get the horses away from the BLM who has never had the horses best interest at heart.
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Well here’s another piece of their thinking. It isn’t enough to castrate the studs. They have gelding lth pastures and mare lth pastures. They keep them separated eventhough they are already nonproducing. Somehow they think geldings can get a mare pregnant.
Don’t even get me started sustainable gelding herds.
One of the worst was some BLM’er named Solari from Wild Horse Annie days. I think the people that are the higher us today are somehow students of this guy and his thinking.
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With their intelligence, they probably think the geldings will get pregnant!!!
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At this point, not a single burro should be rounded up on any HMA. They are at the point of extinction. Less that 2000 on 10 western states. This agency is such an incredible joke.
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For those that can–Fax and Call your representatives and senators.
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The BLM is a joke all right, but none of us are laughing. I am ashamed that these people are part of our country. They have way too much power and far too little wisdom. Instead of planing and carrying out plots to murder and maim wild horses, they should have been focusing on the reform that was so desperately needed in MMS. When you add the still untold cost of the Gulf Oil Disaster to wasteland Interior is creating in the West, this administration is totally failing in its critical mission.
This is one federal agency that should be shut down…totally…tomorrow. Completely razed. There is no justification for their lies, deceit, and misuse of our tax dollars. I do not want one penny of my tax dollars spent to feather the nests of government employees engaged in what would otherwise be considered criminal behavior.
Lars
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My hard earned tax money is being used by BLM to pay for animal abuse … it makes me sick.
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Don’t forget the BLM is playing with vasectomies. Many in the near future that will be released (if not the ones they are planning to release this time) will still look and act like stallions but still be non producing. These animals WILL die out because of the damage already done. The only way to get viable herds anymore is to bring in more bloodlines. The BLM have removed too many and the ones they release will never reproduce. The kigers that were removed from ex BLM employee, should probably be used as breeding stock, to freshen the bloodlines. The few that are left in the wild are not sustainable and you know as well as I do that there might be 100 if that in holding that are not sterile yet. These jerks make me sick.
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I had fun with and was pretty good at math in school…which is why the BLM confuses me so much…their numbers used for calculating HMAs and for everything they do…do not add up. The numbers they are releasing in proportion to the numbers held do not add up. The numbers used to calculate the viable breeding of wild herds do not add up. Nothing they do makes any sense in terms of the science or math or good husbandry. The only math that makes any sense in all of this mis-management is that cattle far outnumber the horses and burros and no one stands to make money out of the poor horse like they do out of cattle. The people at the BLM (and apparently their masters as well) just don;t know horses or even like horses. It is evident in everything they do.
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Nice they let us know to be there at 8:30 AM. Would be even better if they let us know which day this week it would be.
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Believe it is Wednesday … I hope some people can go to take pics and to let BLM know we have not forgotten their destruction of California’s once largest remaining herd …
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Bad weather doesn’t seem to postpone the round-ups
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Yeah, funny that comment hey Louie? Bunch of nauseous morons!
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