Wild Horse Areas in the BLM’s White River Field Office in Colorado
Press Release: For immediate release
BLM Targets Colorado Wild Horse Herds
Plans include Zeroing-Out West Douglas Herd Area and Roundup of Piceance-East Douglas Herd Management Area
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO. (Feb. 10, 2015) – On January 30, 2015, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) White River Field Office issued a scoping document calling for the removal of all wild horses within the West Douglas Herd Area (WDHA), as well as the removal of 167 wild horses from Piceance-East Douglas Herd Management Area (PEDHMA) in order to reach an “appropriate” management level (AML).
“This is the just the latest BLM assault on wild horse herds living on our public lands,” states Ginger Kathrens, Executive Director of The Cloud Foundation (TCF). “BLM bristles at being accused of managing wild horses to extinction, but how else would one characterize the zeroing out of an entire herd?”
BLM’s website states, “The BLM protects, manages, and controls wild horses and burros on public lands to ensure that healthy herds thrive on healthy rangelands.” However, their actions paint a different picture. In 1971, 339 wild horse and burro herds were identified for protection on 53.8 million acres of public land. Today, only 179 herds remain and they are managed on fewer than 26 million acres (not including the zeroing out of 1263 mustangs living on 1.2 million acres of Wyoming checkerboard lands in Sept. 2014).
The BLM scoping document states: “wild horse removals are necessary to protect rangelands from the impacts on Sage Grouse.” No mention is made of the degraded state of the range due to thousands of head of privately-owned livestock in these areas. BLM states that reduction of livestock would not be “in conformance with the existing land use plan, is contrary to the BLM’s multiple-use mission as outlined in the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), and would be inconsistent with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro’s Act (WFRHBA) . . .”
“Livestock grazing is privilege, not a right and permits can be reduced or revoked per BLM Regulations (43 CFR § 4710.5) states Kathrens. “To assert that reducing the number of welfare livestock, which cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year, in some way violates FLPMA and the Wild Horse and Burro Act is ridiculous.”
The Cloud Foundation, Toni and Don Moore and numerous advocate groups and individuals have been fighting to preserve the West Douglas Herd on Colorado’s Western Slope for decades. “We’ve been keeping BLM in check from repeated attempts to zero out the West Douglas Herd though a series of petitions and legal actions beginning in the early 1990’s,” states TCF Board Member, Toni Moore.
In the most recent court ruling in 2009 when BLM attempted to zero out the West Douglas herd, U.S District Court Judge Collyer enjoined BLM from removing any wild horses from the herd.
“Mustangs have roamed the area long before Colorado was even a territory, let alone a state,” says Toni Moore. She has traced the history of wild horses in WDHA back to the 1600’s when the horses were brought here from settlements in New Mexico and Old Mexico by the Ute Tribe. The narrative of the journey of the priest explorers, Fathers Dominquez and Escalante in 1776 indicates they were met by mounted Utes in the area of the Canyon Pintado Historical Area, which is partially located in the West Douglas Herd Area.“
“It would be so sad to lose this rich chapter of Colorado history,” says Dr. Don Moore, who grew up in nearby Rangely, CO and has visited the West Douglas Herd since he was five years-old. “Wild horse herds are the legacy of the American people, and we have a responsibility to protect them for future generations.”
Comments regarding the proposals are due on February 14, 2015 and can be mailed to Melissa Kindall, WRFO, 220 E. Market Street, Meeker, CO 81641 or submitted via email to mkindall@blm.gov
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Links:
BLM Seeks Public Comment on Proposed Gather Plan
Proposed West Douglas Herd Area Roundup
Proposed Roundup, Piceance-East DouglasHerd Management Areas
Total Removal of Historic Colorado Mustang Herd Denied
Wild Horse Groups File Preemptive“Motion for Stay” to Stop Possible Back-Door BLM Roundup
Media Contacts:
Paula Todd King
Categories: Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
WOOOOOH WHOO WHooo. Now they’re targeting Colorado!? What about Wild Horse mesa and San Luis?
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To add to that…I thought we were cutting back on big beef in Colorado considering all the shrinking aquifers and how damaging they are to the open sage. It just boggles my mind. Wild horses are always welcome on my land.
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Dr Don Moore is absolutely right by saying ” Wild horse herds are the legacy of the American people, and we have a responsibility to protect them for future generations.” Isn’t it sad that those who can make a difference and do what’s right are ignoring the wishes and concerns of many, with justice being denied.
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I think we should zero-out the BLM & the welfare ranchers! Are they so blinded by greed they don’t see that they’re destroying their own heritage as well.
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By Martha Mendoza Associated Press Writer
http://www.igha.org/BLM12.html
DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — A federal grand jury has collected evidence that shows U.S. government officials allowed the slaughter of hundreds of wild horses taken from federal lands, falsified records and tried to prevent investigators from uncovering the truth.
The chief prosecutor and grand jury foreman in the investigation wanted to bring criminal indictments against officials of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, but the case was closed down last summer after federal officials in Washington — including officials outside the investigation — intervened.
“I believe that my investigation was obstructed all along by persons within the BLM because they did not want to be embarrassed,” the prosecutor, Mrs. Alia Ludlum, wrote in a memo last summer. “I think there is a terrible problem with the program and with government agents placing themselves above the law.”
Mrs. Ludlum’s memo is among thousands of pages of grand jury documents in the case obtained by The Associated Press. Those documents also show that the grand jury foreman was incensed that federal officials were blocking the investigation, and that his requests to indict them were ignored.
Mrs. Ludlum, 35, formerly an assistant U.S. attorney, is now a federal magistrate judge at the courthouse in Del Rio, which serves West Texas. She refused to be interviewed for this story, but she acknowledged the authenticity of documents obtained by the AP.
Spokesmen for the Departments of Justice and the Interior denied that their agencies had done anything wrong, but they refused to answer questions. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who oversees the BLM and by law is responsible for protecting wild horses, refused to be interviewed.
Wild horses and burros, which compete with domestic cattle for forage, have been protected by federal law for 25 years. The BLM decides how many animals can survive on public lands, rounds up the excess animals and lets people adopt them for about $125 apiece. After a year, an adopter can receive a title to an animal, if the BLM finds the animal is receiving proper care.
The law says it is a crime to kill a wild horse or burro taken from public land. It prohibits anyone who adopts one of the animals from selling it for slaughter.
Mrs. Ludlum wanted to indict BLM officials for allowing horses to be slaughtered.
Recent AP investigations have found that thousands of the horses are eventually sold for slaughter, and that the whereabouts of tens of thousands of adopted but never titled animals are unknown. The BLM has attacked the AP’s reports, saying its investigations show that slaughter “is occurring to a far, far lesser degree than was alleged.”
Although Babbitt refused to speak, the last person to serve as his chief at BLM said Babbitt has known all about problems in the wild horse program for a long time.
Jim Baca, who quit as BLM director in 1994 after a falling out with Babbitt, said in an interview that he discovered the program was in turmoil and wanted to take steps to correct it.
He said Babbitt told him to back off.
“The orders were: `Don’t make waves, we’ve got enough problems,”‘ Baca said, adding that his efforts to shake up the program went nowhere.
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Louie – How long ago was this mess – in the 90s? Just goes to show the BLM has gotten much smarter at covering things up. This is the kind of article that should be highly publicized right now! Remind anyone of Watergate & the kind of things that went on in our government back then?
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thanks, Louie, for posting this. I hope everyone shares this far and wide so newer advocates can look into the history of the corrupt BLM Wild Horse and Burro program and can read Martha Mendoza’s articles that chronicled the corruption even back then.
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Reblogged this on hocuspocus13 and commented:
jinxx ♠ xoxo
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Maggie, that is just a portion of the entire article.
From AMERICAN HERDS
The four-year grand jury investigation of the Wild Horse & Burro Program and the over 3,000 pieces of evidence it accumulated that was slammed shut in 1996 (without any of this evidence ever being heard) is often referred to in wild horse circles as “Del Rio”.
http://americanherds.blogspot.com/2009/03/breaking-through-del-rio.html
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The legality of this should be questioned.
Legal Declaration from former BLM official
DECLARATION OF LLOYD EISENHAUER
Katherine A. Meyer
Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal
1601 Connecticut Ave., N.W.
Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-5206
Timothy Kingston
408 West 23rd Street, Suite 1
Cheyenne, WY 82001-3519
(WY Bar No. 6-2720)
(307) 638-8885
Attorneys for Defendant-Intervenors
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF WYOMING
Rock Springs Grazing Association, Case No. 2:11-cv-00263-NDF
Plaintiff,
v.
Ken Salazar, et al.,
Defendants,
10. I am also very concerned about BLM’s agreement with RSGA to permanently zero out the Salt Wells HMA and the Divide Basin HMA, leaving no wild horses in those areas that have long contained wild horses.
I have been to fifteen of the sixteen HMAs in Wyoming, and to my knowledge none has ever been zeroed out by BLM.
It is my view, based on everything I know about these areas and the way these public lands are used by wild horses and livestock, that BLM has no biological or ecological basis for zeroing out a herd of wild horses in an HMA that existed at the time the wild horse statute was passed in 1971,
as is the case with both the Salt Wells and Divide Basin HMAs.
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” Where the big money flows, is where you will find the problem originating. ”
Never once, was the practice of farming and ranching cooperatively with Nature, ever discussed either. – There again, the small family farms and ranches have been the one most impacted by the changing policies of an ever-increasingly bought-out “big government”. The biggest of the big always get their way, while the rest of us (and Nature’s other children) suffer needlessly.
The “Zeroing-Out” policy is also inconsistent with the “Wild Horse Annie Laws”!
Those wild horses belong to all of us just as we all belong to Nature and “Nature’s God”. This mass-privatization of everything in our natural world into so few hands will see all of us, to include the Nature we all cherish, disappear. How long will it be before enough of the people finally say: “This is beyond enough!” – and actually DO SOMETHING about it??? – It should be painfully obvious that the BLM, USDA, and the rest of the lot simply do NOT answer to us anymore. They answer to those with the deepest pockets, and it is those with the deepest pockets who are also making us all sick and diseased with decrepit, poor-quality food to boot!
BTW:
They are also doing this with our Wolves too! There are plans afoot to make virtually all of the wolves extinct.
– “And now, . . . – the REST of the story.”
– Rev. Dragon’s Eye
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seems all we can do is talk about it ,, we need to do something about it
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