Home News Press ReleasesWild Horse Roundup Humane Observer Calls for Help--Meets with Feinstein’s Office and Speaks to Public

Wild Horse Roundup Humane Observer Calls for Help--Meets with Feinstein’s Office and Speaks to Public

04 February 2010

Media Contact: cloud_foundation_logo_cmyk

Makendra Silverman

Makendra@TheCloudFoundation.org

Tel: 719-351-8187

Anne Novak

Anne@TheCloudFoundation.org

Tel: 415.531.8454

For Immediate Release

Wild Horse Roundup Humane Observer Calls for Help--Meets with Feinstein’s Office and Speaks to Public

Tonight Novato resident will show slides, describe cruelty and inhumane treatment at tax payer expense

San Francisco, CA (February 4, 2010)—Elyse Gardner, the ‘humane observer’ for wild horses comes home to give a first hand account of the controversial Calico roundup. Gardner has been observing and documenting the roundup of 2500 wild horses in the Calico Mountain area of northwestern Nevada since late December. Her blog (www.humaneobserver.blogspot.com) helps people worldwide stay informed due to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) lack of transparency. At least 34 mustangs have died to date and 25-30 mares have had late term, spontaneous abortions in the corrals likely due to the stress of the roundup. Two foals have had their feet run off and more deaths are being reported every day in a roundup that the BLM is conducting seven days a week with limited public access. Back in California for one day only, the passionate and well-spoken Gardner will be meeting with Senator Feinstein’s aide, Mr. Molinari, in the morning and will speak to the interested public and media on the cruelty seen at the roundup tonight. The free talk will be held in Petaluma at Roundtable Pizza (the Excalibur room), 1520 E Washington from 7:00-9:00pm, today, February 4.

“BLM is creating a fabrication a scenario in which horses are starving and need to be rescued” explains Gardner. “Doing something wrong for many years does not make it right. These horses were gorgeous and healthy. Again and again, I see how they know how to live in their habitat. They are now being subjected to cruelty that the BLM is doing their best to hide. We want and need an immediate moratorium on all roundups if we are to save our wild herds.”

20-30 mares have aborted their late term foals according to BLM. The Agency claims this is because of poor forage on the range. “This is a smoke screen on the part of BLM,” states Ginger Kathrens, Executive Director of the Cloud Foundation who has spent 15 years documenting mustangs in the wild for her Cloud programs on PBS as well as other films on horses. “A much more likely reason is that BLM has chosen to chase wild horses with helicopters in the dead of winter when all wildlife survival hangs by a thread. Stress on these animals is intense. On at least one occasion the wild horses were not even given water as they stood overnight in a crowded capture corral. Then, they are separated from their families and trucked four hours to a feedlot style facility and fed hay. Even BLM admits that deaths are occurring because the horses cannot adjust to this new diet.”

Rather than responding to the public demands that the “government sponsored and taxpayer funded cruelty” halt immediately, BLM digs their heels in deeper—continuing to remove every horse they can find in the remote half million acre Calico Mountain complex—home to mustangs for over 500 years, far longer than the privately-owned cattle that outnumber wild horses at least 100 to one on public lands. “By appointment only” public access has been limited to ten people for 3 half-days per week. Gardner is among many who have been setting aside their own daily responsibilities to watch out for America’s wild horses as best she can. Access has been limited compared with the round up of Cloud’s Herd in the Pryor Mountains which Gardner observed in September 2009. The BLM now restricts access to viewing from 75 yards away as well as insisting they sign a “ground rules” waiver.

“Just yesterday they shot a mare after she was kicked in the head. Another stallion broke his neck; foals are loosing their hooves after being chased by these helicopters for miles over rough rocky, snowy ground. And trying to even get the facts from BLM, let alone get close enough to monitor these horses is next to impossible,” says Gardner.

BLM Wild Horse and Burro program Chief Don Glenn broke his promise to allow the public to ‘watch any roundup, anytime’, (video: http://bit.ly/aXK1Au). The public has not been allowed to observe a roundup in full since his statement to the public at the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory meeting on December 7^th in Reno, Nevada.

Despite receiving well over 100,000 phone calls and written demands, public protests in over 18 US cities, worldwide media coverage and pressure from over 150 organizations and celebrities such as Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson, Ed Harris, Lily Tomlin and Bill Maher, the BLM continues the roundups which are costing the wild horses their lives and the taxpayer millions of dollars at a time of national financial insecurity.

“This is an enormous, unsupported expenditure of taxpayer money benefiting special interests and destroying America's wild horse and burro herds. Stopping the round ups now would be a win-win. The wild horses win and the taxpayers win.” explains Kathrens, adding “The only losers would be the roundup contractors, who make multi-millions and the corporate ranchers who run cattle in outrageous numbers on public lands costing the public a minimum of $123 million a year.”

The American public is calling for Congressional hearings and an immediate investigation of the BLM Wild Horse and Burro program that even Secretary Salazar, describes as unsustainable. BLM appears to be afraid of the potential passage of the ROAM (Restore Our American Mustangs Act, §1579) that passed the House and is now in the Senate. Secretary Salazar has proposed an expensive and absurd plan to move and warehouse 26,000 wild horses to pastures in the Midwest and East thus removing even more wild horses from the pitiful 4% of public lands they are currently allowed to roam. Meanwhile, more than 4 million head of corporate and privately owned cattle graze on the wild horses’ limited acres of public lands.

The BLM currently spends half its $69 million budget removing wild horses from their designated public lands and the other half feeding and warehousing the over 34,000 mustangs already removed from the wild. Their program is currently non-sustainable with over 12,000 wild horses and burros being removed in fiscal year 2010 while fewer than15,000 likely remain in the wild. Fewer than 3000 mustangs are projected to be adopted in 2010. More herds are reduced to non-viable levels, which are then often zeroed out completely despite excellent rangeland and horse health. Advocates are concerned the Obama administration’s “New Energy Frontier” is forcing the wild horses off their land in the West. The BLM plans to roundup 595 more Nevada mustangs off the Eagle Herd Management Area next, leaving only 100 horses on an area the size of Rhode Island yet allowing over 2700 head of cattle to remain.

"I'm asking President Obama and Senator Reid to stop the Calico roundup of the American wild mustangs in Nevada NOW until Congress decides how to manage our living legends of the West"—Sheryl Crow, GRAMMY® award-winning singer/songwriter.

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Links of interest:

Humane Observer blog http://humaneobserver.blogspot.com/

Good Morning America at Calico http://bit.ly/bXtwd5

New York Times “Horses Die in Roundup” http://nyti.ms/atZqF5

Feds Deny Gas Pipeline Related to Wild Horse Roundup http://bit.ly/buLfh5

Ruby Pipeline press release http://bit.ly/c4pfOA

Don Glenn “welcome to the roundups” video clip http://bit.ly/aXK1Au

Wild Horse Emergency PSA with Sheryl Crow, Viggo Mortenson http://vimeo.com/8441353

After campaigning for Obama, Sheryl Crow at odds over his administration's wild-horse plan (Associated Press)

http://bit.ly/6UQleO

Mestengo. Mustang. Misfit.
America’s Disappearing Wild Horses
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