Yesterday at 10:12 am, November 9, 2010, our good friend, wild horse advocate and blogger R.T. Fitch received the following comment on his blog. It was caught in Fitch’s spam filter, but he found it and reported it yesterday in his blog. Here is the text of the message:
Animal Rescue Unit is an organization dedicated to revealing the truth about animal suffering, we specialize in investigation, rehabilitation, education and legislation for animal welfare. Over the past few years we have become increasingly concerned about the tactics the BLM is using to round up the wild horses. We decided to launch an investigation into the round ups and organized a team of investigators to go to Burns Oregon to do three days of observation of the Warm Springs Herd and the Warm Springs Round up on November 6th. We teamed up with experienced wild horse observer Leslie Peeples to guide us on this western tour.
As the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) prepares to enter a Reno, NV courtroom to answer charges on First Amendment rights violations and Contempt of Court charges, yet another instance of discriminatory press and public access took place.
This winter BLM plans to roundup 9107 wild horses and burros and remove 6,244 of them. After that they plan to roundup 5,548 wild horses in the summer and remove 4,502 of them- total of 14,655 rounded up and 10,746 removed for fiscal year 2010.
On October 27th the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a press release stating that it would hold a “media day” at two of its mid-western wild horse long term holding facilities November 9th and within minutes Horseback Magazine (HB) editor Steven Long responded to the BLM’s Washington D.C. public affairs officer, Tom Gorey, that HB correspondent Laura Leigh and chief HB photographer Terry Fitch would be in attendance.
The BLM’s comment period for the Augusta Mountains HMA Preliminary EA for a Wild Horse Gather closes on 11/6. Please take the time to email your comments to Jerome Fox at AugustaMts_HMA_PrelimEA@blm.gov (mailing address and fax are in the letter). This plan is to capture 344 horses, including 50 outside the HMA. Mares captured within the HMA are to be treated with the contraceptive PZP-22 and released, the 50 horses outside the HMA are to be removed to adoption facilities.
It didn’t take long; only several weeks ago New Mexico announced plans to purchase 12,000 acres of private land with the intent to turn a portion of the property into a wild horse sanctuary and already the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is attempting to interject itself squarly into the middle of the state’s proposal.
Ah, the BLM, as usual busy destroying horses’ lives and human jobs. On October 15th 2010, a BLM contractor helicopter drove a frightened young, wild foal so relentlessly that the foal broke a leg, wranglers shoot him and hauled his mother away for adoption or a lifetime holding pen. Local people lose another opportunity to prosper with their wild horses. The road not taken. Let’s go down that road…
This Sunday we will be talking about the BLM and saving our wild horse herds with the author of Straight from the Horse’s Heart, R.T. Fitch!
It’s been a tough month for Wild Horse Advocates, even tougher for the horses. Months of legal planning had been mapped out by the HfH Advisory Council in an effort to stop four, specifically targeted BLM roundups from occurring. Two of those were postponed by a year, one directly due to our efforts. But the other two went forward, one struggle even made it to court. Did we make any progress? Were the horses helped in anyway? To put it mildly; “You bet ya!”
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