Wild Burros

Send letter below to National Archives to prevent Department of the Interior massive records purge

By on • ( 22 Comments )

SOURCE:  Wild Horse Freedom Federation

The Department of the Interior’s request to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will purge massive amounts of records that involve documents about oil and gas leases, mining, wild horses and burros, livestock grazing, dams, wells, timber sales, water, marine conservation, endangered species, non-endangered species, critical habitats, land acquisition, and much more.  You can help stop this.

You can copy and paste the text below, edit or add your comments, then date, sign and fax or email to the National Archives.  Or, underneath the letter text, we’ve also attached 2 pages at the bottom of this page that you can click on and print, then sign, date, and fax or email.  Comments are due Nov. 26th.  You can learn more and read Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s complete comments HERE.

 

NARA (ACRA)                                                                                                                  8601 Adelphi Road                                                                                                        College Park MD 20740-6001

request.schedule@nara.gov

fax: 301-837-3698

Public comment on U.S. Department of the Interior Retention Schedules

RE: DAA-0048-2015-0003

I request that you reconsider your approval of the proposed records retention schedule (DAA-0048-2015-0003), relating to the disposition of Department of the Interior records.  I am very interested in the research done on the data contained in these records on America’s wild horses & burros, wildlife and resources on our public lands.

I request transfer of ownership to NARA 15 years after cut-off (with the exception being 20 years after cut-off for 0016 – Resources Inventory, Study, Survey and Mapping Files), and that NARA retain all of the records listed below permanently.  

Proposed Item         DAA-0048-2015-0003:

0013 – Intermediate/Reference Materials for Land Use Activities, Special Land Use Permit Case Files (denied), Wild Horse & Burro Non-Adoptions

RECORDS DESCRIPTION:  Wild Horse & Burro (WH&B) Adoption Files – WH&B Applications Which Do Not Result in Adoption – Consists of application, screening checklist, and related maps and correspondence.

RECORDS DESCRIPTION:  Resource Management Plan (RMP) Files. Plans to guide and control management actions and the development of subsequence, more detailed and limited plans for resources and their use.

0014 – Short Term Land Use Activities and Wild Horse & Burro Operation Records

RECORDS DESCRIPTION:  Statistics on Visitors to Service Facilities –

RECORDS DESCRIPTION:  Special Land Use Permit Case Files.

RECORDS DESCRIPTION:  Wild Horse & Burro (WH&B) Adoption Files – WH&B Animal Preparation Case Files Documenting the physical examination, freezemarking, and treatment of animals in preparation for private maintenance by adopters…

RECORDS DECRIPTION:  Wild Horse & Burro (WH&B) Adoption Files – WH&B Animal Shipping Case Files Consists of bill of lading, shipping manifest, vehicle inspections…

RECORDS DESCRIPTION:  Wild Horse & Burro (WH&B) Adoption Files – WH&B Animal Training Facility Case Files Consists of agreements with prisons or other training facility, training evaluation forms, training certificates, daily training record.

0016 – Planning and WH&B Adoptions

DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION:  Wild Horse & Burro (WH&B) Untitled Adoption Case Files Non-serialized case files documenting approved adoptions for which a request for title was never received. Consists of private maintenance and care agreement, application…compliance record… reports of escape, theft or death of adopted animals…May include additional compliance documentation…

DOCUMENT DECRIPTION:  WH&B Titled Adoption Case Files, Individual or Group. Nonserialized case files documenting adoptions that result in title to the animal being transferred by the BLM to the adopter. Consists of private maintenance and care agreement, application, screening checklist, certificate of title, title eligibility letter, compliance record…correspondence with adopters, reports of escape, theft, or death of adopted animals…

0015 – Land Title, Operations, and Realty

RECORD DESCRIPTION:  Airborne Hunting Reports – Annual reports from states… for airborne hunting or harassing of wildlife…

0016 – Planning and WH&B Adoptions

DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION:  Resources Inventory, Study, Survey and Mapping Files. Documenting the accumulation, analysis, and interpretation of information about the existence and use of natural resources. Includes natural resource inventories, surveys, studies, appraisals, and the related summary reports and maps… wild horse and burro…

I request transfer of ownership of all records above to NARA 20 years after cut-off, and that NARA retain these records permanently. 

In addition, I request that NARA permanently maintain all records regarding wildlife and public lands resources. Please favor transparency when making your final decisions.  Thank you.

______________________

Or, you can click on these 2 pages to print and sign.

     

Categories: Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs

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22 replies »

  1. From AWHC
    Prepared by Mary Koncel
    Incompetent and Dangerous Management of Corrals on Full Display at Adoption Event

    (November 20, 2018) On Saturday morning, I returned to the Double Devil Corrals in the Modoc National Forest near Alturas, CA for the sale/adoption of recently captured wild horses from the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory. Seeing wild horses who weeks ago were living freely on our public lands now separated into pens from their band members – numbers spray painted on their backs to identify them and their age – was nothing short of heartbreaking.
    But on Saturday afternoon, the worst was yet to come – witnessing the incompetent and dangerous handling of the horses by members of the Modoc County Farm Bureau and wranglers hired by Farm Bureau representatives. (The Forest Service awarded the Farm Bureau a four-year $500,000 contact to help build and apparently operate the corrals.)
    That’s right, the Modoc County Farm Bureau, and specifically Laura Snell – a vocal pro-horse slaughter cattlewoman who shockingly represents the University of California as a cooperative extension agent. Ms. Snell has previously agitated on behalf of other cattlemen for the removal of wild horses from the Devil’s Garden Territory, but she has zero experience handling wild horses. Yet, she is apparently in charge at the Double Devil Corrals and was the lead in sorting and loading horses, assisted by her summer intern and several wranglers who also had no wild horse handling experience.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • Louie, just read this from AWHC – commented on an earlier blog. This blows my mind – the absolute idiocy of handing half a million to a farm bureau with no experience with wild horses.As if these horses havent been thru enough already – putting inexperienced people in charge? Stupidity!

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

    • From AWHC
      Prepared by Mary Koncel
      Incompetent and Dangerous Management of Corrals on Full Display at Adoption Event (continued)

      The predictable result of putting these inexperienced and uncaring people in charge was chaos, ineptitude, and trauma to horses as well as possible injuries.

      I’ll explain.

      While being escorted by Susie Johnson, a Forest Service staff member, to look at older or special needs horses for possible placement into sanctuaries and rescues, we stopped at a pen with about 25-30 geldings. Lying near the front was a small chestnut, estimated to be around 20 years old, in a small group of horses. In fact, a few minutes earlier, Leigh Sevy, Forest Rangeland Management Specialist, had approached me and a member of the volunteer placement group that found homes for horses captured in the 2016 roundup and has been working to place the horses currently in the pens at the Double Devil Corrals.

      Ms. Sevy was interested in placing the senior gelding because she was worried that he was stressed from being beaten up the bigger and younger horses.

      Ironically, just after she left to make arrangements to move him into safer holding, two wranglers on horseback entered the pen to sort out a horse who was either sold or adopted. The plan was to separate him from the other horses and move him through an open gate at the far corner of the pen and into an aisle that lead to the loading area for trailering.

      When the wranglers began to push the horses to where the older horse was still lying, however, a few people outside the pen asked them to stop because they were concerned that the wranglers couldn’t see him and that he could get trampled. In the response, one wrangler dismounted and got the horse up.

      But after that, the chaos began. As the wranglers continued to move the horses around the pen, trying to get the adopted/sold horse into the aisle, the other horses began to stampede, circling around and around the tight space of the 60’ x 60’ pen. At least one horse fell while others ran into the aisle and charged back out, with many of them crashing into the gateposts. This continued for several minutes, with the wranglers never backing off their efforts to move the horses.

      When I asked a Forest Service official watching this mess unfold who was responsible for hiring and training these wranglers, he responded “Laura Snell” and that the wranglers were learning as this was all “a new experience.”

      Almost immediately after this conversation, Ms. Snell came rushing over from the loading area to the same Forest Service official, complaining that “members of the public” were interfering with the wranglers’ work! One of the people she was referring to was me – simply for observing and raising concerns about the safety of the wranglers’ actions.

      In the past 10 years, I’ve attended over 15 BLM wild horse and burro adoptions across the country where hundreds of horses and burros have been sorted and loaded into trailers. Never once have I seen such utter bedlam.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. Sent letter today!

    On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 9:16 PM Straight from the Horse’s Heart wrote:

    > debbiecoffey posted: “SOURCE: Wild Horse Freedom Federation The > Department of the Interior’s request to the National Archives and Records > Administration (NARA) will purge massive amounts of records that involve > documents about oil and gas leases, mining, wild horses and bu” >

    Like

    Reply

    • Thanks Louie – had seen some of the pictures – most very stocky horses – and most in good shape, BUT there are many that are not – frankly, not all of the thin ones are older horses, either. I hope they all get to be in a good place and also that these people who are taking them really are aware of what they are doing! I may not have ever been around a wild horse, but I believe it requires patience more than anything – thats why so many end up in bad places.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Maggie, some of those that didn’t look to be in good shape might have been mares that had lost their foals or are still in foal. They been put through Hell.

        From AWHC
        Prepared by Mary Koncel

        “Several mares have foaled at the Double Devil Corrals, but only one delivered a live foal. The mare and foal were adopted as a pair this weekend. The exact number of miscarriage has not been reported. Many mares in holding are also pregnant.”

        Liked by 1 person

      • From AWHC
        Prepared by Mary Koncel

        WHC also has ongoing concerns about the….

        “The Forest Service offering geldings who had just been castrated for adoption/sale when they were still bleeding and looked as if they had not yet recovered from the surgery/sedation.”

        Liked by 1 person

    • With the myriad of issues facing ALL of the horses that have been captured and made to suffer unimaginable grief at the hands of insufferable idiots whose only motivation is the big fat money, let us not forget the big picture.

      STOP THE ROUND UPS!!!!

      STOP THE SLAUGHTER!!!!!!

      Forbid the BLM, the USFS, and corrupt enterprises like CATOOR to continue their assault on our Wild Ones!

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  4. From PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility)

    SUIT TO PENETRATE POLITICAL SCREENING OF INTERIOR GRANTS
    Inspector General Decries “Weak or Non-Existent Controls” on Grants and Aid
    Posted on Nov 20, 2018

    In December 28, 2017 memo, Scott Cameron, Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, directed all offices to submit all grants and cooperative agreements with values in excess of $50,000 to universities and other outside groups to ensure they “promote the priorities” of the Secretary. Grants of any size are also subject to “an after-the-fact review process.” The memo ends in a bold face warning that “Instances circumventing the secretarial priorities or the review process will cause greater scrutiny and will result in slowing down the approval process for all awards.”
    Interior awarded $806 million in project grants and administered $763 million in cooperative agreements during FY 2016, involving more than 18,000 grants and agreements. The person reviewing all these grant applications is Steven Howke, a kindergarten and high school classmate of Zinke who spent his career at a credit union in Whitefish, Montana, Zinke’s home town.
    “In Zinke’s Interior Department all roads lead to Whitefish,” remarked PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the Office of Surface Mining cancelled in mid-term a contract with the National Academies of Science to study the socio-economic impacts of mountain top coal mining in Appalachia. “The scientific priorities for Interior now revolve around political science.”

    A PEER FOIA request seeking information about how this screening process is being implemented, whether grants have been denied, or withdrawn, and what guidance has been given to applicants has gone unanswered for months. As has a similar request for information about grant screening this June submitted by a dozen Democratic senators.

    https://www.peer.org/news/press-releases/suit-to-penetrate-political-screening-of-interior-grants.html

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. Thanks for all you do for the horses!

    Trying to copy/paste 2-page letter to email today (before 11/26 deadline), but only one page keeps pasting into my email draft.
    Is there a way we could sign /submit this letter to National Archives right from your site?
    No printer/fax access today.
    Thanks!

    Like

    Reply

  9. These horses are owned by the American people and these policies are cruel and unacceptable. There is no justification for this simply corruption and self interest! Stop this now!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

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