HOUSTON, (Horseback) – The federal Bureau of Land Management faces a burgeoning scandal that threatens to embroil to cabinet level agencies.
Three members of the agency’s Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board should have left their post on June 14, 2010, but continue to serve despite shady authority to have their terms extended until new members are appointed.
During the much contested roundup of 1,400 wild horses in Northern Nevada’s Antelope complex many disturbing videos and photos came to the public’s attention, to no avail. There was the filmed case of a mare that was run to exhaustion and finally collapsed on the ground, where the helicopter continued to harass her, and the multiple photos of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) flying stampede contractor, Sun-J, using their aircraft as a weapon and physically assaulting lone and defenseless horses. Likewise, Terry and I witnessed other atrocities while we spent time with Laura Leigh until the early conclusion of this tragic debacle.
ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. – The Bureau of Land Management is planning to scale back its program to round up wild horses as the federal government looks to cut $2 million from the agency’s budget.
March 10th and 11th the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Advisory Board will be meeting at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel, 340 N. 3rd Street , Phoenix, AZ 85004 to further cloud the facts and accelerate the demise of our national icons in accordance with the whims of the special interests that make up the board. This meeting, with your help, will not go quietly into the night.
During the final days of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) “scorched earth” wild horse eradication program on Northern Nevada’s public lands private cattle were being quickly herded onto the same range that native, wild horses were cruelly removed from just hours before.
Wells, NV – On Friday, Feb. 25 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) abruptly canceled the controversial wild horse roundup in Northern Nevada known as the Antelope Complex, while the following day the agency released twenty chemically sterilized mares and two studs back onto their federally protected public lands, nine had been released earlier in the roundup.
The controversial Antelope Complex wild horse stampede was concluded on the 25th of Feb with nearly 1,400 federally protected wild horses removed from their rightful land with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) releasing 20 chemically sterilized mares and 2 studs back to the HMA the size of Rhode Island on Feb 26th.
Yesterday, out on the range, roamed a dust covered and weary car full of anger and frustration.
Perhaps it was because its occupants had just climbed to the top of a ridge to watch a green and dangerous contract helicopter pilot chase a band of four wild horses across a mountain top and into a treacherous canyon only to release them. The release was good, but in that four was a very pregnant mare and a foal. Couldn’t the BLM contract pilot have figured out that was animal cruelty in Nevada about 8 miles earlier?
The day goes something like this: we hear the distant sound of helicopter rotors. Across the valley we see a small cloud of dust as a family band of wild horses runs to escape an overhead helicopter. The cold, frozen wind roars in our ears as we watch the seven horses run one way and then another trying to escape the noise of the pursuing chopper.
Brutal captures and deaths of American wild horses are occurring on the range. This is not a fictional western gone bad but federal policy. The government tries to justify this cruelty with junk science and is sheltered in its actions by procedural barriers and judicial deference. For nearly four decades, federal contractors have been capturing wild horses and burros across the western United States under the guise of “management” pursuant to the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.[1] The horses are often chased down by helicopters, sometimes for miles through rough terrain in the heat of summer, lassoed, and forced to the ground and then into trailers.
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