SAN FRANCISCO–Since joining Protect Mustangs in June as their new youth campaign director, Robin Warren, age 11, has met with a Nevada State Senator, documented wild horses on the range, was a featured speaker at the Stop the Roundups rally in California’s capitol and gave oral comments at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) helicopter hearing also in the golden state. At the hearing, Warren presented the BLM representative with her Petition to Save Wild Mustangs asking the BLM to stop helicopter roundups.
The Bureau of Land Management is claiming an emergency drought and plans to capture 12 horses near the Summit Springs on the Surprise Valley High Rock Complex – 615,946 acres of federally protected herd management area (HMA) in N.W. Nevada.
When outgoing Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced last month that he was pushing to reduce America’s national deficit by reducing “welfare ranching” in America’s heartland, so quiet was the political response in Washington that you could practically hear the crickets chirping along the Potomac. Undaunted, Sen. Nelson last Wednesday went one step further, announcing that he has introduced an eminently level-headed “Fair Grazing Fee” bill, designed to require the various agencies of the executive branch to charge market-level grazing fees for private ranchers who are running livestock on public land.
As Wyoming swelters under the summer heat, as the ash and dust from its forest fires spread out across the Western states, as a sustained drought deepens the fissures in its barren expanses of scrub and rock, the battle over the fate of thousands of its wild horses has just exploded anew in court. Here is a nasty bit of litigation worth watching for many different reasons, not the least of which is that may help more people better understand the magnitude of the economic and political forces which are currently arrayed against the federally-protected American mustang.
Some say that bad things come in threes and if that is the case the horses are suffering the curse in spades this dark Tuesday, July 10th, 2012.
A judge has given permission for federal authorities to remove 40 to 50 horses from a historic wild horse herd in a drought-hit area of Colorado.
The Cloud Foundation, which contends the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been trying to eliminate the herd for decades, said it was relieved the judge had permitted only partial removal of the horses.
DENVER, Colo. (July 4, 2012)—Yesterday in a telephone meeting with the Federal Court, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was given the go-ahead to remove only a portion of the wild horses in the West Douglas Herd on Colorado’s Western Slope. BLM’s Environmental Assessment (EA) stated they would remove horses both inside and outside the herd area. The Honorable Judge Collyer limited BLM’s removals to only 40-50 horses. BLM’s environmental documents contended were “in danger,” from drought.
On Tuesday, of this week, the honorable Judge Collyer heard our collective plea to stop the alleged “Emergency” roundup of a portion of the fragile and very special West Douglas herd of Northwest Colorado. The judge has been a champion of these horses over the years and she was no less when she based her decision to allow the roundup to proceed upon the incessant and inaccurate claims of no water, no forage and eminent death put forward by the BLM. She was concerned about the horses yet we private citizens knew the BLM and their intervenors were less than truthful and that there is a much more sinister and deadly agenda swimming not very deep under the surface of those mucky BLM waters.
Related articles BLM Backdoors More BS Against West Douglas Wild Horse Herd (rtfitchauthor.com) Wild Horse Advocates Level Another Legal Blow Against BLM’s Bogus Emergency Gather (rtfitchauthor.com) BLM Overlooks Arsenic & Mercury; But Gets Rid of Wild Horses (rtfitchauthor.com) Wild Horse Groups File Preemptive Motion for Stay to Stop […]
It seems while the BLM was in a Nevada Federal Court recently claiming a drought “emergency” as the reason they needed to remove wild horses from the federally protected Jackson HMA (Herd Management Area), the BLM may have omitted telling Judge McKibben about their big geothermal lease sale just 6 short months ago, in which they sold thousands of acres in/around southern Jackson HMA for about $2 an acre for geothermal exploration. BLM listed parcels for more than 17,500 acres, including and just around the southern portion of the Jackson HMA.
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
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