10.20.08
Government urged to save wild horses - Advocates call for changes in management
I heard this discussed on the radio last night. I know it’s not a story about gays, but it’s so important to everyone and gays could do a lot to save the horses by calling their Senators and Reps in Congress telling them to put an end to the rounding up and euthanasia. The BLM is using our tax dollars to kill the horses.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is rounding up healthy wild horses planning to euthanize them. The BLM wants the horses off grazing land used for cows.
Wild horse advocates fear the free-roaming legends of the West might vanish from the ranges within five years if the federal government continues to round them up, as they’ve done in Red Rock Canyon.
At a news conference Monday, they said they will petition Congress to force several federal agencies to stop most roundups and return horses now in some holding facilities to historic ranges.
They also don’t want “excess” horses euthanized, as Bureau of Land Management officials have suggested might be necessary.
“How can we let our government destroy the last of what we have?” said Karen Sussman, president of the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros, wrapping up the weekend’s Wild Horse and Burro Summit in Las Vegas.
Any hope for keeping viable herds in Clark County have already been quashed by emergency roundups by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service in recent years. No viable herds now exist near the Las Vegas Valley.
About 35 horses roam the south end of Red Rock Canyon, about a dozen are left on Mount Charleston, and no horses or burros are in the Muddy Mountains or Gold Butte, based on estimates by the National Wild Horse Association.
Sussman, speaking to reporters at a corral near the Western Trails Equestrian Park, said it takes about 150 horses to maintain a genetically viable herd and 75 percent of the nation’s herds have fewer than that.
She said the herds are rapidly declining and many will be zeroed out in five years, even though BLM officials disagree.
“I think that’s an erroneous statement,” said Doran Sanchez, communications chief for the BLM in Nevada.
Barbara Wolin, a Las Vegas wild horse enthusiast who was one of about 75 summit participants, said the BLM should put horses back in herd areas that are being used for ranching and other interests (cow grazing).
“I just want to see the horses handled properly and given their just due. They need their place on the range,” she said.
“I don’t think they’ve made the effort to do what they need to bring some relief for these horses,” Wolin said about the BLM.
Laurie Howard, who has served on the boards of a number of wild horse advocacy groups, brought her pinto mustang, Coco, to Monday’s news event. She wants Congress to intervene so that wild horses won’t be euthanized.
“We’re only hoping that the BLM will listen to our suggestions,” she said.
Howard said BLM Deputy Director Henri Bisson seemed to be leaning the way of advocates who called for a halt to the roundups and understood their concerns for wanting to return gelded horses to historic herd areas and pursue better birth-control methods for mares.
“He was very receptive to everything, but he’s on his way out,” Howard said, noting that Bisson plans to retire early next year.
“One of the things we’re concerned about is that (BLM) wild horse specialists are trained properly and that the management is trained properly” and that they understand that family bonds among horses shouldn’t be broken, Howard said.
Sanchez said even if there are gathers next year, the horses that are left have a 20 percent reproduction rate. In a few years there would be too many horses for the ranges to support, especially in Nevada, where wild fires have taken a toll on forage and water is scarce.
“It’s imperative to maintain the overall health of the range and not only for wild horses and burros but also for permitted livestock and wildlife,” he said in a telephone interview.
Sussman said the BLM’s estimates of 29,500 wild horses in 10 Western states is off by as many as 15,000.
Sanchez said, however, the BLM’s count is accurate.
In Nevada, the BLM estimates about 16,000 are in the state, mostly in central and Northern Nevada. Those in Southern Nevada represent 2.5 percent of the nation’s wild horses.
Meanwhile, federal holding facilities are at capacity, adoption outlets are saturated and the BLM is considering exterminating those that are declared excess. The BLM’s budget for wild horses is not expected to increase and bureau officials say they are left with no choice but euthanasia to curb holding costs.
Nearly 74,000 horses were taken off the nation’s ranges between 2001 and 2007. Some 44,000 have been adopted, leaving about 30,000 in holding facilities.
“This is a force that has to be reckoned with,” Sussman said about the BLM’s roundup practices. “They have not been an agency we can rely on.”