STATEMENT ARCHIVES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 16, 2011
WASHINGTON, DC (March 16, 2011) — The latest public relations exercise by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), who issued a news release yesterday announcing they are soliciting proposals to establish wild horse “ecosanctuaries” on non-BLM managed land to “help the BLM feed and care for excess wild horses that have been removed from Western public rangelands,” exposes the hypocrisy that runs rampant through the Department of Interior agency.
Madeleine Pickens has been negotiating with the BLM for more than two years to set up a wild horse sanctuary, and has bought the grazing rights on 500,000 acres in Nevada to do so, but is no closer now to closing the deal than when she started.
The BLM have run out of money to continue their mission of mass destruction of America’s wild horses and burros, and are beseeching Congress for more taxpayer dollars so they can finish the job. Not sure they will get it because of a recent cut in funding of $2M because of hard work by advocates exposing the harsh truth about the BLM’s mismanagement of the Wild Horse & Burro Program, what an opportune moment for this type of damage control.
Incidentally, while all of this is going on, the BLM are shopping around other federal agencies for part of their budgets to beef up their barren coffers to continue their assault on the nation’s wild horses and burros.
The news release goes through the hoops of bureaucratic red tape interested parties must jump through, stating “applications for partnerships relating to ecosanctuaries located on both private and BLM-managed lands will be posted at a later time.”
America’s wild horses and burros should not be in long-term holding costing the taxpayer a reported $100,000 per day. In escalated and unnecessary roundups based on conjured numbers by the BLM, they have been harassed, abused and sometimes killed, stripped of their freedom, robbed of their rightful homes, separated from their families, with little or no hope of their lives ever being the same. These are violations of the Free-Roaming Wild Horse & Burro Act enacted to protect them from exactly this.
By the time the BLM are through with their roundup plans, there will be very few wild horses left on public lands. The small herds remaining will be below genetically viable survival numbers due to the gelding of stallions and the treatment of mares with admittedly experimental birth control drugs that could potentially cause the mares to be permanently sterile.
The only wild horses and burros left under BLM control for the proposed ecosanctuaries they are suddenly interested in will be the ones languishing in long-term holding who have escaped the three strikes rule and sold into uncertain futures.
Perhaps the BLM sees the ecosanctuaries they are suddenly interested in — managed as “private-public partnerships” — as a way to be rid of long-term held horses too. At least for awhile. Until, of course, the BLM declare there are too many wild horses and burros in the ecosanctuaries they intend to keep a say in.
SOURCES
• BLM News Release
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2011/march/NR_03_15A_2011.html
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Vivian Grant Farrell
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