The BLM has come up short on the number of horses they planned to gather from the Pryor Mountains but has stopped the gather. The reason is unknown at this point. Wild horse advocates are celebrating.....kind of. Though it's great to hear there will be no more, the damage is already done. Word is that BLM still has their "quota" of horses to permanently remove from the Pryor range. Some wild ones have been released but Clouds' family will lose more members than originally stated in order to make up for the short count. The issue of older horses not going for adoption still remains. There will be more information on this later.
In the meantime,childrens' author,Laura Leigh, has filed a federal court action seeking protection for the wild horses soon to be part of the gather from the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. Heads up folks this is not a BLM gather. This one is orchestrated by the Bureau of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Many people believe the BLM is the only agency managing wild horses... untrue. ( more coming on this in the "Wild Horse 101" series of posts")
Laura Leigh is not attempting to prevent the gather of approximately 400 "feral" horses that is already underway. Apparently there is no legal case for doing so in this instance. Her case centers around the removal of these horses "without regard to their future welfare". One paragraph in a court document filed Sept 2 of this year sums it up well.
"Plaintiff is informed and believes the Defendants’ current unpublicized plan of shipping Sheldon Horses to private entities, incorporates the same type plan utilized by them previously when horses from Sheldon where shipped “in mass” long- distance, ultimately making their way to slaughter. "
I know this getting to be a rather long post but bear with me here. This is important!
The June 2006 round at Sheldon is well known for ghastly images of foals left hog-tied in desert heat for wranglers to pick up later. They found eight of them..... five were already dead.
Ten of the Sheldon horses were seized by RCMP in Alberta Canada, a hub for horse slaughter. In a letter to the Director of U.S. Fish and wildlife, Nick Rahall, Chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, stated,
"The RCMP seizure clearly exposes the inadequacy of the existing regulatory framework... Moreover, existing procedures to track adopted animals once they have been transferred to the care of an adoption agent can no longer be assumed to be effective."
O.K. I'll stop already. But there is so much more to tell you. Come back tomorrow and I'll finish this one up.
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4 comments:
Thank you for all this wonderful infromation-- just came across your blog! Can you join us in DC for "mustangs on the hill" on Sept. 29th and the BLM advisory board meeting on the 28th in VA?
more info at: http://thecloudfoundation.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/mustangs-on-the-hill/
This is a great great great blog!
makendra at the Cloud foundation
The Sheldon Refuge was developed and is managed as a refuge for native wildlife: antelope and sheep, not horses. If you open your eyes, you will see that unmanaged wild horses stomp out water holes, compete with native wildlife and can cause large scale negative impacts across the habitat for all species.
To: Anonymous
Thank you for your comment. I will be soon be posting information which will address the issues you have brought to light.
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