BLM Seeks Comments on December Wild Horse Roundup in Nevada

by Fran Jurga | 9 November 2009 | The Jurga Report at Equisearch.com

The following press release has been made available from the Bureau of Land Management and is posted here for the information of anyone concerned with or about the next major action in this important and sensitive area of horse world politics.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Winnemucca District, Black Rock Field Office is proposing to gather and remove about 2,500 wild horses in several areas north of Gerlach, Nev., in Washoe and Humboldt counties. The proposal and associated impacts are described and analyzed in the Calico Complex Capture Plan Preliminary Environmental Assessment (EA). The BLM would appreciate receiving substantive comments on the EA by November 12, 2009.

The proposed gather is needed to achieve and maintain the established appropriate management level (AML) and prevent further range deterioration resulting from the current overpopulation of wild horses within the areas.

The proposal is to capture and remove excess wild horses from the Calico Mountain Complex: Black Rock Range East, Black Rock Range West, Calico Mountains, Granite Range, and Warm Springs Canyon herd management areas. The gather is expected to begin about December 1, 2009 and continue through the end of February 2010.

The document may be reviewed online at www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/fo/wfo/blm_information/nepa0.html.

Questions and written comments should be directed to: Dave Hays, Field Manager, Black Rock Field Office, BLM Winnemucca District Office, 5100 E. Winnemucca Blvd., Winnemucca, NV 89445-2921. Comments may also be submitted by e-mail to wfoweb@nv.blm.gov. E-mail messages should include “Calico Complex Capture Plan (Fox)” in the subject line.

Before including your address, phone number, e-mail address, or other personal identifying information in your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment – including your personal identifying information – may be made publicly available at any time. While you may ask us in your comment to withhold your personal identifying information from public review, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so.

Comments received during the public review period will be analyzed and considered as part of the decision-making process.

(End of document from the BLM)

PBS TV Premiere Sunday: Wild Horse Stallion Cloud, Film #3

by Fran Jurga | 23 October 2009 | The Jurga Report at Equisearch.com



Cloud: Challenge of the Stallions premieres on PBS Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 8 p.m.; check your local listings for times and re-broadcasts. This will be the third in a series of documentaries on PBS about the iconic wild stallion in the Pryor Mountains on the Wyoming-Montana border.

Ironically, the documentary was filmed and into production before the much-publicized Bureau of Land Management roundup occurred during the first week of September. At that time, Cloud and his band of mares were driven down from their high mountain meadow habitat to holding pens, retained briefly, and released. The plan was to reduce the size of overall Pryor Mountain population by administering birth control to some of the mares and culling some of the older horses.

That means that some of the horses you will see on the PBS special on Sunday may no longer be in the wild and some of the mares you see with foals will be barren next year.

After the broadcast, you can get the full story on exactly what is going on with Cloud and his heard by going to PBS.org and its NATURE Online section for a live discussion with filmmaker Ginger Kathrens. Click here to go to the live discussion area, where many people have already left questions for Ginger.

Ginger has been documenting the life of the reality-tv-star-stallion--who has gone on to become the icon of wild horses in America--since he was a tiny foal. She is often compared to Jane Goodall and, in natural history circles, the documentaries on Cloud are very important because they are the only documentation from birth of an individual Western Hemisphere wild animal. In addition to three documentaries for PBS, Kathrens has written two books about Cloud and is the executive director for the Cloud Foundation.

Sunday night's film contains five years' worth of filming. If you missed the first two installments, watch Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies and Cloud’s Legacy: The Wild Stallion Returns, which PBS has kindly posted online in their entirety and at no cost for the public to view.

I wish that Ginger was appearing on television so more people would see her and hear what she has to say. If you care about wild horses, or horses or wildlife in general, you should tune in. I know a lot of people think that Cloud is just for little girls, but this episode makes the trauma of Bambi look tame...and knowing what is coming a few months after this filming took place should be enough drama for the most grown-up horselovers of all.

Who needs Law and Order when you have bait trappers hiding in camper trailers with remote control gate switches while mountain lions lurk just out of sight?

The trouble is that this isn't tv drama...this is real life and these are real horses. Get to know Cloud (and Ginger) this Sunday, or spend some time beforehand watching or re-watching the first two documentaries in the series so you'll be caught up in the saga. You won't regret it.

Wild Horse Population Control Forum in Australia

by Fran Jurga | 21 September 2009 | The Jurga Report at Equisearch.com

Australia is home to ten times as many wild horses as the United States. Australian "brumbies" are being studied by a unique unit at the University of Queensland that seeks to learn about the feet of these horses as well as their genetics, behavior, and feeding habits. A major presentation of the hooves of Australian wild horses will be presented in West Palm Beach, Florida at the Fifth International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in November. Later that month, the university will host a conference on wild horse fertility control.

When the Bureau of Land Management of the United States Government set out to round up the wild horses of the Pryor Mountain Range in Wyming at the beginning of this month, they opened a floodgate of controversies. Everyone and anyone could pick their favorite issue related to wild horse management and comment loudly on the Internet. It was a Wild Web free-for-all without a moderator.

One of the subjects that came up was the treatment of mares to decrease or delay fertility and how this might affect behavior of individual horses and the stablity of small mare bands attached to a single stallion. The idea of "birth control" for wild horses is not new, but the widespread practice is, and many people hadn't heard about it.

Half a planet away, Australia is struggling with a massive overpopulation of wild horses. They would absolutely laugh at the numbers that the BLM cites: Australia is home to ten times the feral horse population of the United States. And it is growing exponentially each year.

To discuss the pros and cons of fertility intervention in the vast population, the Australian Brumby Alliance will host a conference at the University of Queensland on November 24, 2009. The conference will include participation by the RSPCA, Queensland Park and Wildlife Service, and scientists and veterinarians from the University of Queensland and its veterinary college.

Click on this link to download a flyer about the wild horse fertility conference: Fertility%20Control%20Seminar%20Flier.pdf

The University of Queensland's vet school is home to the Australian Brumby Research Unit, which is the only research laboratory known to be solely dedicated to the study of wild horses. The researchers are involved in tracking horses with GPS collars, studying their habits, genetics and diet, and particularly noting the distance covered by wild horses.

The Queensland researchers are involved in helping Aborigine groups re-connect with the wild horses in their regions and learn horsemanship skills.

Data on the wild horse hooves is being studied under the direction of famed laminitis researcher Dr. Chris Pollitt, of the Australian Equine Laminitis Research Unit, who hopes to glean insights on what the truly "normal" foot is and how a foot is influenced by its environment, exclusive of human intervention factors. To that end, wild horses are studied that live on different types of terrain and in different moisture zones. One recent study involve switching horses from wet to dry and dry to wet, and the scientists monitored the changes in their feet over the course of time.

Dr Pollitt will present a major report on the brumby hoof research and how it is applicable to domestic horse research and particularly laminitis research at the Fifth International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in West Palm Beach, Florida on November 6-8, 2009.

Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Drama Over for Now; BLM's Wyoming Roundup Ceases

by Fran Jurga | 9 September 2009 | The Jurga Report at Equisearch.com

The drama unfolding in the high plains of Wyoming has been between wild horse activists and Bureau of Land Management policy makers, as horses have been rounded up, including the famed "Cloud Herd". In spite of an inspired effort by activists to block the plans in court, the roundup proceeded over the past week, with stallions, mares and even tiny foals being herded by helicopter from their mountain pastures down into holding pens.

But the real drama may lie ahead. While it is heartwarming to see all the emails, blog posts and Tweets calling people to action to save Cloud, the real crux of the matter comes on September 26, which is national adoption day. The equation doesn't always make sense, but in the BLM way of doing the math, the adoptability of these horses is critical to the program.

Did all the publicity over the roundup help or hurt the chances of these horses finding homes?

Certainly the Pryor Mountain horses are one of the most beloved of wild horse bands in the United States, in large part thanks to publicity from Cloud's story and their status as descendants of Spanish colonial stock. Just as certainly, no one outside the BLM will ever know what role public pressure played in stopping the roundup at this particular point, since it was winding down anyway, so activists can't quite claim a victory.

This afternoon, horses are galloping back toward their hills, although many mares were apparently treated with PZP as a pregnancy deterrent. Certain horses stayed behind at the holding station and are slated for adoption.

The Cloud Foundation has done an exemplary job of keeping the public informed of their efforts to stop the roundup and, once it started, to observe it and report on the condition of the horses. The contrast between their detailed blog posts and heart-wrenching photos and videos--often updated several times per day--and the BLM's carefully worded official documents is classic.

This complex issue will be off the message boards and Tweetstreams in a few days but it is far from over.

If you really care, click a little deeper:

Click here for the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center web site.

Click here for the Cloud Foundation's blog with updates, photos and video, including information about specific bands and stallions and which ones have been split up.

Click here for the BLM's information page on the Pryor Mountain roundup.

And, what are you doing September 26? It's National Wild Horse Adoption Day. That's the day to make noise about wild horses, whether you are in favor of adoption or against it. If you feel that these horses truly belong in the wild, you'll have to find a way to keep them in the news.

Meet Madeleine: Equine Rescue on the Grandest Scale Makes Her ABC's Person of the Week

I wanted to turn the television off this week. Enough, enough with the bad news about the economy. But one story kept me hanging in there, through the disgust over Detroit CEOs in their private jets, through the forgiveness shown to Joe Lieberman, through the news (you call this news?) of Madonna's divorce and another Rosie spat.

Madeleine Pickens wanted to save all the wild horses in the BLM's holding pens, I reported earlier this week.

In just a few days, that headline morphed into a real possibility. The BLM is now seeking funds from Congress to cancel the mass execution of the unwanted mustangs and instead keep them housed until Madeleine's million-acre sanctuary can be ready.

The New York Times congratulated Madeleine this week in a rare editorial. Today, ABC News made her "person of the week". I suggest the media drops her sub-title ("wife of....") and show this long-time Thoroughbred breeder and animal advocate the respect she deserves.

Thank you, Madeleine!

Madeleine Pickens Rides to the Rescue of US Wild Horses

I was reading a story in the Washington Post this morning about the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the crisis facing their management (or containment, anyway) of feral horses in the western states. I'm trying to understand this important issue facing horse welfare in our country.

The government has threatened that euthanasia is the Final Solution to the crisis in their pens out west.

About a third of the way through the story, I was sure I was dreaming when I read that horse-lover Madeleine Pickens, wife of bazillionaire energy-evangelist and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, was planning to take all those wild horses off the BLM's hands. The Post reported that she is shopping for a suitable real estate package for the horses.

Ms. Pickens was a vocal opponent of horse slaughter in the state of Texas and helped to close the plant outside Dallas. After Hurricane Katrina, the Pickens took matters into their own hands to rescue animals and people, donating $7 million and circumventing FEMA with a Continental Airlines airlift of 800 pets out of the disaster zone.

The problem that motivated Ms. Pickens, who also owns racehorses such as the now-retired star Rock Hard Ten, is a law that allows the BLM to euthanize a horse that is older than 10 and has failed to be adopted after three tries.

Organizations, including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), are promoting contraceptive intervention as a possible aid in stabilizing the increasing wild horse population. Watch this blog for more details on the HSUS work in this area, as well as the Pickens Plan.

BLM Announcement: Mass "Euthanasia" of Unadoptable Wild Horses A Possibility

I wanted to post on this subject when I first read news of it, but thought it was important to wait for the official press release from the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency charged with the "management" of herds of wild horses roaming the American West, as dictated by a federal law that was designed to protect wild horses and burros and keep them wild. Today, it is estimated that more "wild" horses live in government-owned or -subsidized pens than in the wild.

Buried in this press release is an announcement of critical importance as it marks a major sea change in management policy for the BLM's wild horse management scheme.

The word "euthanasia" is used incorrectly in this press release; what the government is proposing to do is more technically "culling", albeit on a major scale. This is what is done in some other countries, such as Australia.

Here's the statement:

BLM Confronts Challenges in the West's
Wild Horse and Burro Program

The Bureau of Land Management is facing a number of difficult challenges in the National Wild Horse and Burro Program. Our goal in the West is to manage healthy, free-roaming herds on healthy rangelands; however, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

Wild horses and burros in the West have virtually no natural predators and their herd sizes can double about every four years. As a result, the agency must remove thousands of animals from Western public rangelands each year to ensure that herd sizes are consistent with the land’s capacity to support them. As of June 2008, there are more than 30,000 wild horses and burros that are fed and cared for at short-term and long-term holding facilities.

It is essential to keep the BLM’s wild horse and burro program in balance. Right now, the cost of keeping these animals in holding facilities is spiraling out of control and preventing the agency from successfully managing other parts of the program. For example, this fiscal year, holding costs will exceed $26 million, more than three-fourths of the BLM’s congressional appropriation of about $37 million for this program.

In addition, rising energy prices have increased costs. In one year alone, energy costs for transportation and feed have increased almost $4 million. It is clear the agency cannot continue current removal and holding practices under existing and projected budgets. Neither can the BLM allow horses to multiply unchecked on the range without causing an environmental disaster.

That's why the BLM is exploring options to exercise its legal authority to (1) sell older and certain other unadopted animals “without limitation” to any willing buyers and (2) euthanize those wild horses and burros for which no adoption demand exists. We know this is not a popular option, but we are at a critical point where we must consider using the legal authorities allowed us.

The BLM welcomes your input as we work to improve the program and the welfare of the West’s wild horses and burros within our budget. To leave feedback on this program, please call 1-800-710-7597.

(end of BLM official statement)