by R.T. Fitch ~ president/co-founder of Wild Horse Freedom Federation
No Moss Gathering on this Stone
It’s Monday and it appears that we have a busy week ahead of us and when I refer to “us” it includes not only the advocacy but also the members of the Board of Directors of Wild Horse Freedom Federation.
As I type, our Director of Field Documentation, photographer Carol Walker, is braving the cold on a distant HMA checking up on and photographing a wild horse herd that we are certain the BLM will target for an aerial assault this year.
Meanwhile, our Director of Wild Burro Affairs, Marjorie Farabee, is on a long distance rescue of 50 donkeys that are/were destined for slaughter.
Not to be discounted our Director of Wild Horse Affairs, Debbie Coffey, is pulling together a great deal of documentation while preparing for another blistering radio broadcast on Wednesday night on behalf of the wild horses and burros.
Dawn Reveley, our Director of Legal Affairs and in-house counsel, is reviewing some key documentation for potential litigation and is keeping an eye on the activities that surround both the wild horse/burro issue and horse slaughter.
Which leaves us just Terry and myself who are working on something that, ahhh, hmmm, dahhhh…we can’t publicly talk about yet. Don’t you hate when that happens and I am the last one who can usually keep a secret, but for the sake of the equines, both domestic and wild, I am going to zip my lips; ouch, that hurts.
So it’s a busy week ahead but we face it fully recharged and ready for action. On behalf of the horses and burros, keep the faith my friends, we are making progress.
Related articles
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
KNOCK ‘EM DEAD R.T. and TERRY! 😀
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Has anyone else seen the article in the Washington Post about the BLM and the mustangs? Need some lte’s to give another side of the story.
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I hit them once this morning
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Thanks for the “update”, R.T. We are with you all.
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Wow…busy is right! Thanks for all you do!
This blog feeds live also at http://www.takodasvision.com…come visit and see our mission against abuse and neglect and the rescues plight to stay financially afloat! Hope to see you there!
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Good luck with all of your endeabvors.
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REPEAT…REPEAT….REPEAT
There is NO overpopulation of Wild Horses OR Wild Burros
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-looking-for-ideas-to-help-manage-wild-horse-overpopulation/2014/01/26/8cae7c96-84f2-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html
U.S. looking for ideas to help manage wild-horse overpopulation
Now, by devoting about $1.5 million from the new budget agreement for fiscal 2014, the agency is ready to take another shot at one of the West’s most in¬trac¬table wildlife problems. It is inviting anyone with a legitimate idea of how to curb the horse and burro populations to step up and propose it. The agency will study the ones it finds most promising and try again to find a solution.
“We need all the help we can get,” said Ed Roberson, the BLM’s assistant director of resources and planning.
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Well, this is yet another article with a lot of assumptions and few facts, most distressingly in the comments section (one “expert” asserting horses went extinct here 40,000 years ago, and even the authors claiming Wild Horse Annie acted nearly alone (?) in getting the 1971 law created. Perhaps the most egregious truth bending was the author’s declaring that people have “claimed” wild horses have been injured during roundups… never mind the death and destruction amply documented on film and in the BLMs own records. I am disappointed such tripe can even pass an editor’s desk, but it surely shows how distant some people are from the realities of the situation.
Even the first photo of two stallions “fighting over a mare” seem to be two geldings playing…
So I tried to log on there to comment. Turns out you have to provide your occupation, age, gender, zip code and position within your company (mostly limited to CEOs and the like). It’s a very intrusive list with far more personal information than anyone needs to provide to offer a comment on an article, in my view, so I declined to do so. Maybe someone else can pick up this ball. It’s disturbing this article will be read by a pre-selected sort of reader who are already weighing in with a disturbing paucity of truth.
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Is anyone surprised? Rt and terry thanks so much for your continued and never ending work. I too am aware that things come down the pipeline that you could not share with the world, but timing is everything so you are not jinksed. I look forward to what ever news you have forthcoming. Thank you again. I wish I had the money to take a few burros. I love them!
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IcySpots, you don’t have to give them that information. Just check the “other” category in all of the boxes. I’m still gathering up my information to post. As usual, there are at least three or four things that need attention at the same time.
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No point in spending valuable time at the Washington Post. Their site does not allow for links or information….only comments. All you’re going to get there are non-productive arguments, which are a waste of time.
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Drat, but thanks for the info. I spent the better part of two days last week trying to bring some balance to another hypermisinformed article which had a long list of folks writing in favor of slaughtering horses, and worried the new law would deprive them of their rights (?). I am disappointed with the level of what passes for intelligent discourse in our country anymore, despite the easy access to mass communication. How did Wild Horse Annie manage?
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We are all here on he ground too helping in anyway we can, with calling, tweeting, signing petitions, emailing,,, I HATE it when you do that, HAHAHA can’t tell us… HA
Fight onward and upward…. Anything else we should be doing to help just say it, and it will be so…… Thank You o very much ALL OF YOU…. 🙂
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Thank you all for all of the work that you do to save our beloved horses. Wild and domesticated. And I’ll continue to do everything that I possibly can.
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I did hear some nice news earlier today. The King Amendment has been defeated! FINALLY!
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Ahhh Patience , The first thing a wise Magnificent Horse taught to me was Patience, Thank You Spirit !!!!!! RT and Terry, do what you must do !!!!! Let the Force of the Horse guide you !!!! It is the Year of the Horse. i feel it !!!!!!
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— $35 million in Farm Bill to protect sacred cows? —
Plan to spend millions vaccinating Greater Yellowstone elk and bison is a tired idea
by RALPH MAUGHAN on JANUARY 27, 2014 · 6 COMMENTS · in BISON, BRUCELLOSIS, ELK, IDAHO, MONTANA, WILDLIFE DISEASE, WYOMING, YELLOWSTONE
Only difference is this time they might get some real money to waste-
Although the appropriation of $35-million to chase Greater Yellowstone elk and bison and try to vaccinate them against brucellosis might seem like a new issue to some, it has been around a long time.
Today the Missoulian has an article on it. Farm bill provision worries wildlife advocates; brucellosis threat could lead to elk slaughter. By Rob Chaney. A couple days ago, here in the Wildlife News, Glenn Hockett wrote about it, War on Wildlife Moves to the Federal “Farm Bill“.
The only difference now seems to be they might get real money to do it. It seems very odd given the enormous pressure to cut the federal budget, but Montana’s soon-to-step-down, senior senator, Max Baucus, is on the current House/Senate conference committee on the Farm Bill. He is a rich rancher, and probably soon to become U.S. ambassador to China. …
http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2014/01/27/plan-to-spend-millions-vaccinating-greater-yellowstone-elk-and-bison-is-a-tired-idea/
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Hmmm. Here’s another shutout, you must subscribe to even access the article which was posted on the AWHP site.
This is the first reference I’ve sen to the BLM being quoted as having rounded up over 100,000 horses in the past decade “with more than half of them sent to government-funded holding facilities.” Since adoption only accounts for about 3% of those captured, that seems to indicate 47,000 went missing?
Also disappointing they refer to the PNAS study but not for its primary findings, only a selected one which claims their surveys must be missing half those remaining in the wild.
Is it possible for anyone reading this to gather the application info, and maybe have a coalition effort to submit a proposal here which includes a voice for the horses? It looks like this federally-funded cabinet has sent out requests to big pharma and scientists but excluded ideas from non-industry folks.
I’m beginning to think journalism is dead in this country.
Here’s what I can access:
WILD HORSES: BLM TO LAUNCH PILOT PROJECTS SEEKING TO CURB HERD GROWTH
POSTED ON JANUARY 26, 2014 AT 10:26 PM
By Phil Taylor, E&E Publishing
The Bureau of Land Management in the coming months plans to begin several pilot projects to develop new and improved techniques for slowing the growth of wild horse herds in the West.
BLM this year will also be working more closely with scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey to improve how it counts horses on the range. In addition, it plans to review its policy for determining how many horses are ecologically sustainable on Western rangelands, a task fraught with legal and political challenges.
The projects are the agency’s latest efforts to find cost-effective ways to manage horses in a “thriving natural ecological balance on the public lands,” as required by Congress.
With few natural predators, wild horse herds can double every four years. A 1971 law requires BLM to both protect horses but also remove excess animals to maintain “appropriate management levels” and to ensure they do not infringe on other uses of public lands such as domestic grazing.
The pilot projects will seek to develop “more effective population growth suppression tools,” BLM Principal Deputy Director Neil Kornze said in written responses to members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who expressed concern over the future of the BLM program.
“Pilot efforts supported by the BLM will be peer reviewed by a group of well-qualified scientists,” said Kornze, who is nominated to become BLM director.
BLM hopes to issue a request for applications for the pilot projects by March 1, said Dean Bolstad, a senior adviser for BLM’s wild horse program in Washington, D.C.
That request will be based on the responses BLM received from a request for information last October to veterinarians, scientists, universities, pharmaceutical companies and other researchers for ideas on “new, innovative techniques and protocols” for wild horse population control, including longer-lasting contraception and permanent sterilization.
BLM sought information on birth control methods including surgical, chemical, pharmaceutical or mechanical, such as intrauterine devices, but it excluded surgical castration.
“It was to get an idea of what kinds of things are out there,” Bolstad said, adding that responses to the RFI are proprietary until when, and if, BLM decides to award them grant money. “We just absolutely have to control the population growth with something other than ‘remove, remove, remove.'”
BLM has gathered and removed more than 100,000 wild horses over the past decade, with more than half of them sent to government-funded holding facilities, a strategy almost everyone agrees is unsustainable.
Last year, BLM spent 60 percent of its wild horse budget to feed and care for horses in captivity, up from 46 percent in 2000. The number of animals in short- and long-term pens has risen to 50,000, up from 30,000 in 2008 and 10,000 in 2001.
BLM is quickly nearing its total holding capacity of 53,809.
Bolstad said the pilot projects will be determined in part by the budget BLM receives from Congress for the remaining fiscal year. The omnibus spending bill expected to pass Congress this week would provide $77 million for wild horses, up from $72 million that was appropriated last year.
Many horse advocacy groups would like to see BLM scale up its use of the short-term contraceptive porcine zona pellucida, a drug that, while tedious to administer, has proved successful in some herds while causing minimal stress on the horses (Greenwire, July 29, 2013).
BLM treated about 1,000 mares with the PZP vaccine annually in 2011 and 2012, roughly double the rate of the past six years. But it treated just 509 horses in the last fiscal year, a small fraction of the estimated 16,000 reproducing mares on the range.
In addition to the pilot projects, BLM also intends to refine its population survey methods, Kornze told the committee.
The effort comes after a National Academy of Sciences report last June found BLM’s current survey methods may, in fact, miss up to half the horses (Greenwire, June 5, 2013).
Bolstad said BLM last year worked closely with the USGS office in Fort Collins, Colo., which has agreed to provide BLM hands-on surveying expertise. The new survey methods will account for animals that are undetected and unobserved during aerial flights.
“These methods are complicated. They require statistical analysis of the data. They have to be carefully planned and designed,” Bolstad said. “We’re going to have much better numbers in the future.”
BLM estimates 40,605 wild horses and burros currently roam 10 Western states, based on data collected last February. That’s about 14,000 more horses than the lands can sustain, the agency said.
Kornze said BLM is also looking into ways to reduce the numbers of animals in off-range holding facilities by reforming the adoption program, entering into new partnerships and exploring options for lower-cost off-range holding facilities.
“Each of these efforts will be grounded in the best available science and incorporate the input of interested stakeholders,” he wrote to committee members.
Originally Posted By E & E Publishing
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Here’s a place you can comment. They ran the same story and don’t appear to be frightened by links to valid data.
STANDARD-EXAMINER
http://www.standard.net/stories/2014/01/27/blm-seeks-suggestions-how-manage-wild-horse-overpopulation
BLM seeks suggestions on how to manage wild horse overpopulation
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Thanks, Louie – did comment on the standard. Much easier.
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arlene > GrandmaGregg
• a few seconds ago
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There is only one viable solution, first of all there is not a overpopulation of Wild mustangs , never has been, there was absolutely only lies told , the BLM has no right or reason to remove Mustangs from their Home the Range or to terrorize them , 80% of America agrees, the SOLUTION is Put them Back to the Range on the Land that belongs to them, the taxpayer pays for their protection and preservation not to eradicate them… !!!!! They are Natures Natural BALANCE PROVEN Beyond a doubt !!!! They are The Royal American Ambassadors of Freedom !!!!
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