Open Letter from Charlotte Roe
Environmental misdeeds are flourishing, as those who value their financial gain above clean air and water, wildlife, and measures to combat global warming are using the COVID-19 pandemic to make hay. One of the biggest is now before us — and calls for quick action.
photo by Terry Fitch of Wild Horse Freedom Federation.
1. The BLM, in its long delayed report to Congress, proposes removing 220,000 wild horses and burros over 10 years to reach its rigged “appropriate management level” (AML) of 26,690 at a cost of $1 billion. The BLM’s goal is a blueprint for extinction: the numbers the BLM intends to round up are 2 1/2 times those it estimates now exist in the wild! Under its plan, thousands of wild mares would be ovariectomized, a discredited form of sterilization that is as life-threatening as it is abusive. As the BLM’s budget request contains no funds to assure mustangs and burros’ safety in captivity, the plan, while nominally not proposing slaughter, would surely lead to pumping up the slaughter pipeline.
Please let me know if you have questions. That said, the most effective action is personal contact: pick up the phone & dial their office. Calling to leave word after hours or on the weekend to leave word can work just as well — it all gets tabulated.
2. The following NPR article hits on a sore subject: massive environmental rollbacks are continuing apace while the public’s ability to speak out and learn what’s going on has been severely weakened.
3. Turning again to extinction, the attached CNN report, besides containing some excellent links, has photos of some little-noticed mammals that may not be long for this earth if we humans don’t mend our ways. Who ever heard of the Punk-haired Mary River Turtle? the Aye-Aye Lemur?
4. Infuriating, disheartening news bombards us. Here’s a change of tone: Carl Jones, a biologist and chief scientist at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Mauritius, has saved 12 species from extinction, often using highly unconventional methods:
Stay safe, stay strong in intention and deed, and remember the storm will pass, the sun will rise.
Categories: Horse News, Uncategorized, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Andy Kerr’s Public Lands Blog #161 Udall-Heinrich Bill Would Emasculate the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
This concerns a bill that would continue to protect livestock grazing in New Mexico. Well worth reading – good intentions, more or less BUT like always – protection for the same industry that is doing so much damage all across the West!
Everywhere – as Charlotte has put forth – species – all wild species – are in such danger. Yet we protect so many “industries” that do nothing but damage the environment, destroy habitat & slaughter all our wild animals – wild horses one species!!
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The Bureau of Land Management released plans to clear-cut 38.5 million acres of public land in the West,
targeting native pinyon-juniper forests and vast sagebrush seas. The tools of destruction would include
bulldozers, logging, fire and application of cancer causing herbicides — wildlife (and wild horses and burros) be damned.
Although the BLM claims the purpose of this project is to restore native ecosystems and reduce fire risk,
the methods chosen have no proven environmental benefits and will take place across a landscape
already scarred by gold mining, livestock grazing and fossil fuel development.
We MUST oppose the BLM’s plan to clear-cut, bulldoze and otherwise destroy millions of acres of
native forests and shrub lands in the Great Basin and the habitat for native species – both flora and fauna.
Because the BLM’s plans would further degrade public lands and habitat for hundreds of native species,
I ask that you select the “NO ACTION” alternative, and tell BLM to abandon this project, and instead to
use the best available science methods to restore this ecosystem.
Don’t be overwhelmed by this gigantic plan when trying to figure it out … any and all public comments are needed.
Remember the Starfish Story … your voice matters.
Public comments are due this Tuesday June 2nd.
Email: BLM_PEIS_Comments@blm.gov
Link to doc.: https://go.usa.gov/xdfgV
More information: BLM Fuels Reduction and Restoration: License to Destroy Sagebrush Ecosystems – George Wuerthner
https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2020/05/27/blm-fuels-reduction-and-restoration-license-to-destroy-sagebrush-ecosystems/
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Thanks to you – I ALWAYS remember the Starfish Story! It applies to so much right now.
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https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2020/05/30/asd-we-are-at-the-mercy-of-the-wildfire-cheatgrass-dynamic-proposed-restoration-causes-opposing-views/?fbclid=IwAR2LSrn8Pj2K9uvd8CQAupstWN7EQOtxj88pdZpueXeMkbphsYmAbhuz6JE#.XtO9GlRKj3h
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https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-opinon-bureau-of-land-management-leaders-have-lost-their-way?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email
Bureau of Land Management leaders have lost their way
A former state director argues narrow interests have dominated the agency’s direction.
“I’ve spent over 40 years — spanning seven presidential administrations and across five Western states — serving the American public. Nearly all of that time was with the Bureau of Land Management and Department of the Interior. I believe that Americans value their public lands: They see them as part of being American, and they expect to see them passed intact to the next generation.
The BLM’s mission is not ideological and does not give preference to certain land-users. Its legal mandate calls for managing public lands for a variety of uses, treating energy generation and conservation equally. But now, the agency is losing sight of that mission. I worry that the nation is on a path that will deeply embed private interests into public lands.
A coal train travels north of Douglas, Wyoming, past a Chesapeake Energy drilling site on BLM land. The BLM has made oil and gas lease sales on more than 200 thousand acres of public land in Wyoming, Nevada, Montana and Colorado despite the oil market glut.
Kristina Barker
Jeopardizing millions of acres of federal lands and skewing land-use plans to maximize certain uses — with little interest in, acknowledgement of, meaningful public participation — goes decidedly against the BLM’s mission. ..”
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