Irreparable damage is being done to the few mustang herds that remain. These are OUR HORSES. The BLM is DESTROYING our mustangs against the will of the American people.

March for Mustangs Invitation

Please come to Washington DC to attend the “March for Mustangs” on Thurs., March 25th, 2010.
We will gather and hold a press conference in Lafayette Park on the north side of the White House where we will be making a stand for the preservation and protection of America’s Wild Horses and Burros. Then we will all march to the Bureau of Land Management Office as we call for the freedom and protection of all that is wild.

Please RSVP to: The Cloud Foundation, info@thecloudfoundation.org, 719-633-3842.
 
Details

 

When: Thursday, March 25, 2010, 1:00-3:00pm, Press conference and speakers at 1:30pm (Filmmaker/Advocate Ginger Kathrens, Author RT Fitch and many more - including special guests to be announced)

 

Where: Lafayette Park (north side of Whitehouse, on H Street between 15th and 17th Streets, NW). At 3:00pm protesters will march with signs to the BLM office at 1849 'C' Street.

 

Plus Mustangs on the Hill II: On Friday morning, we’ll brief advocates regarding their meetings with their Senators and Representatives in regard to saving our mustangs. Please schedule an appointment with your Senators and Congressperson for Thursday morning or Friday.

 

Why: The Bureau of Land Management’s cruel and costly mismanagement is destroying a vital piece of the American West. The American public is standing up for our horses and burros - Please join us in a March for Mustangs, rally and protest.

 

Background: Roundups increased significantly in 2000 in the Bush years and they haven’t let up under the Obama administration.  12,000 wild horses and burros are scheduled for removal from our Western public lands this fiscal year alone. These cruel helicopter roundups come at enormous expense to our wild herds and to the American taxpayer.

Recently the roundup of 1900 mustangs took place in the Calico Mountains of Northwestern Nevada during the dead of winter, ending early in February when BLM realized the herds were far smaller than estimated. To date 60 horses have died due to this roundup and the death toll continues to climb daily. This does not include the 30 plus mares that have aborted their late-term foals in the feedlot-style corrals in Fallon, Nevada, where the horses are being held. Two foals had their hooves literally separate from the bone after the helicopters ran their families for miles over rocky and sharp volcanic ground.

Secretary Ken Salazar, who oversees the BLM, has decided there is no room left for our mustangs on their legally designated lands in the West and has proposed purchasing private land and shipping wild horses (gelded stallions and mares) East to the first of seven "preserves" which many people call SalaZoos. The plan as it stands only adds to the financial train wreck that the Wild Horse and Burro Program has become.

So, rather than spending over $50 million this fiscal year to remove our wild horses and burros from the range plus $42 million to buy land in the East, let’s protect them on their Western lands. The intent of Congress’ 1971 Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act was not to warehouse our mustangs but to allow them to live in freedom in self-sustaining numbers on Western rangelands designated primarily for their survival. Drastic change is needed in the management of wild horses and burros if they are to survive, as wild animals, into the future. Wild horses benefit the land as they evolved in North America and they represent our living history in the West.

Add to the millions spent for round ups is the annual loss of $123 million running a taxpayer subsidized grazing program, often referred to as “welfare ranching”. The fees charged to livestock permittees is currently the lowest allowed by law—$1.35 per cow/calf pair per month. This rate would need to be over $9.00 in order for the program to break even. If cows were removed on legally designed wild horse herd areas and horses allowed to stay, we’d save even more—including our valued mustangs. Holding the 1900 Calico horses alone in a feedlot style facility amounts to a staggering cost of over $10,000 per day!

But change is on the way for our wild horses and burros! Some 25 protests have been mounted from coast-to-coast including Chicago, LA, NYC, Denver, Las Vegas, Reno, and Sacramento since late December. Thousands of people have braved the cold and come out with their families to hold banners and signs demanding that President Obama react to the hideous mistreatment of our spectacular wild horses and respond to the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars on a broken program that only lines the pockets of powerbrokers and cattle barons. Now is the time to say enough is enough. Open the gates and return our wild horses to their rightful ranges.

Please take action for our wild herds. An immediate moratorium on all roundups is needed! This must be followed by hearings and investigations on BLM mismanagement; accurate and independent assessments of just how many wild horses we have left and the real range conditions. Then we need to develop a sustainable plan for our wild herds on our Western public lands and restore their protections set forth in the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. Moving our wild horses in non-reproducing, broken families to the East is not the answer.

Join us on Thursday, March 25th, for a Mustangs March on Washington and take action today to save these incredible animals who are currently being managed to extinction.

Take Action:  Call President Obama 202-456-1111, Call your Senators 202-224-3121

Please visit www.thecloudfoundation.org for more information on this event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eH6g4x4CKs

http://wildhoofbeats.blogspot.com/2009/09/wild-horses-honoring-freedom-ride-in.html

The Conquest, Conquistador

Aging PBS Star Still Held And At Risk Of Death

Wild Horse Adoption Day Set for Sept. 26th

By Steven Long

Photo, The Cloud Foundation

HOUSTON, (Horseback) - Conquistador, a 19-year-old Pryor Mountain Mustang captured during a “gather” by the Bureau of Land Management over the Labor Day Weekend could soon face execution for the crime of being an older horse.

The agency has 33,000 wild horses in captivity, and despite the fact they manage 256 million acres, it has no place to release them where they can run free. What’s more, BLM has so depleted its budget, spending $27 million holding the horses in captivity, the agency last year seriously contemplated euthanizing tens of thousands of Mustangs and burros.

Despite having a leading role in the PBS “Nature” series starring the famed wild palomino Mustang named Cloud, the aging horse known to television fans across the globe as Conquistador is at risk.

Last year documents came to light under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) query by a Phoenix group regarding an equicide plan to destroy healthy horses gathered on public lands and placed in holding pens by the thousands

Ironically, the plan was dubbed “The Conquistador Program.”

The BLM deems natural resources on Pryor Mountain as not being able to sustain the number of horses living off the land there.

Agency policy considers horses such as Conquistador as too old and thus, expendable. Under a 2004 law, the BLM is required to sell horses “without limitation” that are either more than 10 years of age, or which have been passed over for adoption three times.

The law’s mandate to sell without limitation is subject to interpretation, and while BLM vigorously denies that it sells to slaughter plants or to “killer buyers,” scant scrutiny is given to potential purchaser after the sale. Numerous reports have reached Horseback Magazine by observers who allege they saw the distinctive BLM brand on the necks of horses destined for abattoirs across the Mexican and Canadian borders as they were confined to holding pens with a telltale slaughter tag attached to them.

Minutes of BLM discussions of the Conquistador Plan reveal the agency at one point became so desperate to rid itself of the horses it now holds that it considered euthanizing horses more than 10 years old after only one attempt at adoption, not three.

Beginning in July, 2008, managers compiled a 68 page document dubbed Alternative Management Solutions. It detailed methods of dealing death such as barbiturates, gunshots, or the often cruel captive bolt.

The report revealed that it would call upon the agency’s public relations arm to shield those doing the killing from the scrutiny by the public, media, or even members of Congress.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D), Louisiana, has said she would consider removing management of wild horses and burros from the BLM..

The plan even contemplated psychiatric counseling for BLM employees or contractors who would do the actual killing of thousands of horses.

While Cloud and members of his herd were released back into the wild, albeit fatigued, and depleted of much needed fat fat after as much as a 10 mile stampede by helicopter, Conquistador remains in BLM custody along with two other horses that will be seen in the next installment of the Cloud “Nature” series on PBS. The program by Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker Ginger Kathrens is scheduled to air in October.

The gather, completed September 8, captured 146 horse including 15 foals.

A meeting of the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is scheduled for September 28, in Arlington Virginia.

The agency’s National Adoption Day is scheduled for September 26. The 57 horses, including Conquistador, that were not returned to freedom on Pryor Mountain will be offered for adoption that day at the Britton Springs camp at the base. Pryor Mountain is located in Montana near Billings.

The BLM left 125 horses on the mountain to face the fierce Montana winter. The agency claims no horses were injured in the gather despite video of Cloud limping after his release.

A BLM spokesman said sore feet don’t constitute an injury.

Repeated requests for an interview with BLM Director Bob Abbey have been refused.

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Thursday, 27 August 2009 13:43

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- August 28, 2009: The Cloud Foundation and Front Range Equine Rescue have filed a lawsuit and a request for an injunction in Federal Court in Washington, DC to prohibit the Bureau of Land Management from removing horses from the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, and to stop the unprecedented round up of the Pryor Wild Horses slated to begin September 1, 2009.

The appellants argue that this removal of 70 horses will leave this unique and historical herd genetically non-viable and unable to sustain itself into the future. According to noted equine geneticist, Gus Cothran, Ph.D. of Texas A&M University, “… a census population of 150-200 is required to achieve the minimum effective population size…. The [Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Herd] has been one of the most important and visible herds within the BLM Wild Horse Program and it is important that it stays viable.”

The Bureau of Land Management is circumventing Congress’ wishes that wild horses be protected in the American West. The House just passed the Restore Our American Mustangs (ROAM) act and the Senate will review this bill (now S.1579) when they return from recess in September. “Is BLM just trying to do as much irrevocable damage to America's wild horses as fast as they can before the Senate can act?” asks Ginger Kathrens, Volunteer Executive Director of the Cloud Foundation.

“Right now there are twelve entire herds being eliminated from 1.4 million acres near Ely, Nevada because these lands are suddenly not appropriate for wild horses,” Kathrens continues. “However, no action has been made to reduce cattle grazing in these areas.” There are no grazing permits in the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range and reasons for holding an unprecedented removal this year are not clear. The range and adjacent lands are in excellent condition following three years of drought-breaking precipitation.

Cloud and the wild horses of Montana’s Pryor Mountains are world famous but fame and an outcry from the American public does not seem to impact the BLM’s plans. There are currently only 190 wild horses (one year and older) living in the spectacular Pryor Mountains. The BLM plans to remove 70 of them, including young foals and older horses who could be sold directly to killer buyers.

The Pryor Mountain wild horses are descendants of the Lewis and Clark horses who were stolen by the Crow Indians in the early 1800's. George Reed, Secretary of Cultural Education for the Crow Tribe Executive Branch, wrote in 2006: “We advocate preserving our heritage, culture and language, and these Pryor wild horses are part of our culture.”

The Cloud Foundation
719-633-3842

CALL, FAX AND THEN HAVE YOUR FRIENDS CALL AND FAX!

BLM Director Bob Abbey
Call: 202-208-3801 or 866-468-7826
Fax: 202-208-5242
Robert_Abbey@blm.gov
 

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