Join us for Wild Horse Wednesdays®, this Wednesday, March 28, 2018
5:00 p.m. PST … 6:00 p.m. MST … 7:00 p.m. CST … 8:00 p.m. EST
Listen to the archived show (HERE!)
You can also listen to the show on your phone by calling (917) 388-4520.
This show will be archived so you can listen to it anytime.
The Buffalo Trap
Our guest tonight is Stephany Seay, Media Coordinator for the Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC), the only group working both in the field and in the policy arenas to stop the harassment and slaughter of America’s last wild buffalo.
The buffalo of Yellowstone National Park, considered by many to be a living national treasure, are often harassed and killed by federal and state government agencies. BFC serves the herds as defenders and protectors, helping ensure the survival of future buffalo generations.
This show will be hosted by Debbie Coffey (V.P. and Dir. of Wild Horse Affairs) of Wild Horse Freedom Federation.
To contact us: ppj1@hush.com
TO LISTEN TO ALL ARCHIVED WILD HORSE & BURRO RADIO SHOWS, CLICK HERE.
To find out more about Wild Horse Freedom Federation and our work to keep wild horses and burros wild and free on our public lands visit www.WildHorseFreedomFederation.org
Donate Here: http://wildhorsefreedomfederation.org/donate/
1/17/18 – Carol Walker, Dir. of Field Documentation for Wild Horse Freedom Federation, on BLM denying her access to photograph wild horses at Axtell (Utah) and Bruneau (Idaho) off range corrals (where the public is not allowed to see them) to help facilitate adoptions. Listen HERE.
1/19/18 – Erik Molvar, Executive Director of Western Watersheds Project. Erik is a contributor to The Hill and his blog posts can be found here. Listen HERE.
2/21/18 – Ann Marini, Ph.D., M.D., and John Holland of Equine Welfare Alliance on veterinary drugs banned in animals used for human consumption that the BLM gives to wild horses & burros. Listen HERE.
3/14/18 – Jonathan Thompson, a Contributing Editor at High Country News and the author of River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster, on the 2015 Gold King Mine disaster, and other environmental disasters. Listen HERE.
3/21/18 – Our guest tonight is Kirsten Stade, Advocacy Director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Listen HERE.
Categories: Horse News
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Promises to be a great show!!
LikeLike
I learn from every single one of these radio shows – every single one.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Buck $tops at the top
Official Who Allowed Tree Cutting By NFL Owner Is Named National Parks Director
January 24, 2018
Laurel Wamsley
The new ACTING director of the National Park Service is a former parks official who was reprimanded 12 years ago for pressuring employees to allow the owner of Washington’s NFL team to cut down trees for a better view of the Potomac River.
Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke announced the promotion of Paul Daniel Smith on Wednesday.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/24/580448974/official-who-allowed-tree-cutting-by-redskins-owner-named-national-parks-directo
LikeLike
Listening to this radio show I was amazed although not surprised to hear the similarities of the treatment of the buffalo with the wild horses and burros. Very educational.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The NATIONAL PARK SERVICE is also is responsible for the culling of America’s FEDERALLY PROTECED Wild Burros
From AMERICAN HERDS
Direct Reduction
Congress charged the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture with the protection and preservation of our countries wild horses and burros as a response to the public’s overwhelming love and desire to end their plight.
Despite this charge, the Secretaries have served at the pleasure of those who exploit our resources, not our laws or their intent, diligently working on ways to circumvent the political process and instead, exercising their authority to “legitimize” the corruption and corrosion of these mandates.
One of the many ways this was accomplished was through the institution of separate agency “missions” place under their jurisdiction that allowed national laws to be divided, segregated and ultimately usurped.
Enter National Park Service (NPS), established through the 1916 Organic Act under the mandate “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such a manner as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations” – that use to cover wild horses and burros as evidenced by the honor they bestowed on the wild burros of the Grand Canyon and elsewhere across the Nation.
Yet new policies – NOT LAWS- aimed at promoting “other agendas” began to be instituted, until finally, the Secretary of the Interior successfully shirked their charge of protecting wild horses and burros and their habitat through a total reversal that allowed National Park Service and other agencies to literally shoot them by the thousands if they had the unfortunate luck to reside on the wrong side of the jurisdictional tracks.
It began, at least as far as we know of, with the National Park Services plan to shoot the 577 wild burros then living within the Grand Canyon that the Fund for Animals halted through negotiating their amazing airlift rescues.
In 1984, the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California began to initiate a “direct reduction program” of 5,900 wild burros in the area. In the beginning, 649 wild burros were shot on the base under this management plan until their deaths were discovered by animal welfare groups who successfully lobbied again for the humane “live removals” of 864 more.
Over the course of the next four years, an additional 4,387 wild burros were then removed by “live captures” until their numbers totaled less than 200 and now “allowed the Naval Weapons Center to reintroduce the native ungulate, the Desert Bighorn Sheep.”
http://americanherds.blogspot.com/2007/12/direct-reduction.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
From NEW SCIENTIST
Slaughter of an American icon: The Yellowstone buffalo cull
Caught in a battle between ranchers, campaigners and park officials, hundreds of bison are culled each year. Photographer Michelle McCarron bears witness
One freezing dawn last March, I stood in Yellowstone National Park’s Stephens Creek facility with a small group of journalists and conservationists. We watched as park rangers and biologists went to work on one of the nation’s most iconic and impressive animals. It was an uncomfortable scene to watch. One by one, dozens of American bison were forced into squeeze chutes. They roared in pain and fear as their enormous bodies were trapped by a brutish metal clamp called the Silencer.
Many bled and their horns were ripped off as they tried to escape.
This year’s cull will be larger. It’s aim: to drastically reduce the size of this last herd of wild bison.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331130-600-yellowstones-controversial-buffalo-kill/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for sharing the additional info, Louie.
LikeLiked by 1 person
From GRIZZLY TIMES
Yellowstone Buffaloes’ Last Stand
March 6, 2017
How is it that this harassment and torture of bison is happening inside a national park, which is presumably all about preservation? The extent to which Park Service personnel work to keep their violence towards buffalo out of the public eye is perhaps emblematic of a conflicted conscience and cognizance that something is morally wrong. But a lawsuit brought last year by journalist Christopher Ketcham and Stephany Seay, Communications Director of the Buffalo Field Campaign, (BFC) requires the agency to now show the media what it is doing. I can say that witnessing the Park Service-administered treatment of buffalo is not for the faint of heart.
With the help of poles and electric cattle prods, bison after bison was forced from a small pen into a hydraulic squeeze chute, where it bucked and thrashed and bellowed, in a crazed panic. Each bison was squeezed so hard inside the metal cage that most finally stopped bucking, at which point a metal bar pinned its head up to the side of the chute. Through the slats in the chute, you could see their tongues hanging out, and their eyes bulging. Their hoarse breathing was audible, even from 20 yards away. Many had blood on their coats as a result of injuries from the horns of other distressed bison-a direct consequence of being stampeded, slammed up against each other, and pushed between pens along a maze of metal-reinforced alleys. Some of the younger bison literally tore their own horns off against the cages and bars. If there is a hell in the bison world, this must be it.
Needless-to-say, the Park’s proposal to send bison to Fort Peck’s facility is stridently opposed by livestock organizations, but supported by some conservationists and Tribes.
Two weeks ago, Republican state legislators killed a bill that would have authorized the shipping of Yellowstone buffalo to Fort Peck. There is no doubt that regressives in the livestock industry have the upper hand, and will not make even modest concessions to those who have more altruistic and public-minded values.
In keeping with the narrative of bison as diseased livestock, it was interesting to see that most of the 12 involved Park Service employees (including only one woman) played the part of cowboy in this week’s bison “processing.”
Only the head of the operation, Brian Helm, who bore the military-style title of “Incident Commander,” seemed to be truly enjoying himself. Of all the techs, Brian was most cowboy in his dress and demeanor. His chaps had fancy leather fringe. He stood on top of the catwalk above “the Silencer” and gestured dramatically with white-gloved hands, signaling to the other techs how much tighter the neck bar needed to be; whether it was time to draw blood, check teeth, or lift the animal to get a weight; what gender the animal was and in which pen they should be herded.
Every operation has one who seems to relish the job of its commander, even if the work is brutal and cruel. In the course of human history, we have demonstrated time and again, how easy it is for humans to normalize the unthinkable—especially if you include a fancy-dress outfit.
(photo) Brian Helm of NPS on the catwalk
https://www.grizzlytimes.org/single-post/2017/03/06/Yellowstone-Buffaloes-Last-Stand
LikeLiked by 1 person
From COUNTERPUNCH
The Epic Shared Journey of Bison and Grizzly Bears (excerpts)
by DAVID MATTSON
Yellowstone National Park is the only place on Earth where bison and grizzly bears coexist in significant numbers. Most people, inured to the on-going ecological holocaust of recent centuries, probably think this 2-million-acre area is huge. Yet the current joint distribution of bison and grizzlies comprises only around 2% of what we once had in this country; 1% of what we once had on this continent; and a truly miniscule fraction of what we once had in the Northern Hemisphere
Yellowstone’s populations of bison and grizzly bears have sustained a relic relationship between these two species that was probably critical to grizzly bears in much of their former North American range.
One thing we know for sure. Bison have been and still are an important source of food—meat—for Yellowstone’s grizzly bears, far exceeding anything one might expect simply from numbers of bison in the ecosystem—by a factor of 2-½-fold and more. Bears obtain almost all this meat by scavenging rather than by predation.
And how are we treating this rare and highly vulnerable relic? Last year we killed roughly 1,400 wild bison as part of a plan to deliberately confine them to within the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. This slaughter was justified by the presumed need to protect a handful of regional livestock producers from the near non-existent threat of disease transmitted from bison to cattle-a disease called brucellosis that was originally introduced by cattle. Simultaneously, we are poised to remove Endangered Species Act protections for Yellowstone’s grizzly bears, with the intent of turning them over to the tender mercies of State wildlife managers fully intent on instituting a trophy hunt.
And nowhere in the mountain of tedious planning documents spawned by the numerous involved management agencies will you find any recognition of, much less prioritization for, the precious remnant we have in Yellowstone of a relationship between bears and bison that once spanned continents and millennia. In short, a travesty
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/16/the-epic-shared-journey-of-bison-and-grizzly-bears/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Too many Bison, or too many people? Monthly human population in Yellowstone can reach 900,000 in summertime (and is probably higher as many are not counted). 1,200 Bison vs. millions of tourists, who come in large part to see free-roaming… BISON!
https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/visitationstats.htm
LikeLiked by 1 person