Lame.
http://www.durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/10/07/Salazar_wants_to_move_Wests_wild_horses_east/
Visiting dignitaries
6 09 2009That’s certainly what I consider them: Dan Elkins and Karen Herman, who visited Spring Creek Basin in mid-August to tour the herd area and meet some Wild Bunch members and our BLM herd area manager and answer questions we had about gathering horses via bait trapping and about PZP.
In June, I wrote about Dan and Karen administering the first PZP doses to mares from the Carson National Forest: https://springcreekwild.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/pzp-partnership-in-the-carson-national-forest-nm/
Learn more about Karen’s Sky Mountain Wild Horse Sanctuary here: http://skymountainwild.org/
Direct link to a story about Dan and Karen using PZP (also linked from Karen’s Web site): http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/carson-national-forest-Forest-first-to-use-contraceptive-on-wil
We learned that Karen was able to get a grant to fund the PZP program for the Carson NF mares, and that set our wheels in motion. Now we have to write a proposal asking the BLM to allow us to pursue funding to implement a PZP program – which could start as soon as this coming spring! – and agree to have Dan and Karen come back to administer it. This is the good news I alluded to when I broke the bad news about Chipeta’s colt, Joven. Best of all, Dan and Karen get their PZP doses directly from ZooMontana in Billings, so we won’t have to worry about the PZP changing hands and freezing and thawing and re-freezing and re-thawing so many times during BLM transport.
Also, our herd population stands at 49 horses (BLM does not count foals till they’re a year old), we’re still well within our AML (35-65), and so we were told the next gather likely will not be until at least 2011. In the meantime, I hope our BLM is watching the goings-on at Pryor Mountain. One thing I’m happy about there is that bands are being kept together. Also, with Matt Dillon’s documentation of the horses and MOU between the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center and BLM that they provide herd information, I’m hoping we can duplicate that partnership when it comes time to round up and remove some of our horses. I’ll never be happy about that, but I also will never condone horses starving on an overgrazed range when it could be prevented. A PZP program here will hopefully slow the population growth of the herd, allowing more horses to stay wild longer. And knowing about Dan and his method, I hope we’ll never again hear helicopter blades churning over Spring Creek Basin.
Dan and Karen are awesome. Extremely knowledgeable and friendly – it was like meeting old friends from our first handshake. My hope is that someday every herd manager in the country will know Dan and Karen. I hope a contract between them and our BLM is in our immediate future, for the horses’ sake.
Here are some random pix from that day, taken in the morning before everyone arrived:
Hannah and Sable
Butch and Storm
Pinon
Mouse and Steeldust
Sage
Hollywood
Mona, Kootenai and Kreacher
Kootenai and Kreacher
Kootenai
Mona and Kreacher
As soon as I say this, they’ll leave, but if you’re in the area to visit Spring Creek Basin, I would be surprised if, out of all those 49-plus (with foals) horses, you did NOT see this little threesome. They have been hanging out in the area surrounding the water catchment for months now. The grazing is not the best, but the water is. The other bands seem to have been going for forage over quality of water, and the only other horses I’m pretty sure have used the catchment recently are Traveler’s band and the bachelors Cinch and Bruiser. Hollywood’s band has been in that general area the past two weekends; I have not seen them at the catchment. Most recently, I saw Hollywood trying to drink from the pond area off the road to the old trap site. I did not see any water from the road, and I did not go closer … Poco and Roach followed the band past the “pond” without even stopping to try to drink.
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Categories : Advocacy, Butch, Hannah, Hollywood, Kootenai, Kreacher, Mona, Mouse, New girls, Pinon, PZP, Sable, Sage, Steeldust, Storm, Wild horses in the news, Work projects
Pryor thoughts
30 08 2009Lots of controversy surrounds the Pryor Mountain gather set to begin soon, but I would urge you to visit the Pryor Wild blog – http://pryorwild.wordpress.com – and click on the link to Matt’s thoughts in the current first post. He might spend more time on that range than anyone, and as director of the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center, it’s his job to spend a lot of time thinking about those horses and their long-term health and well-being.
This statement particularly caught my attention: “Why not work with the BLM when such a relationship is for the benefit of the PMWHR and the herd?”
Why not, indeed? Our Disappointment Wild Bunch Partners group here is trying to do just that, and while the wheels of government turn slowly (enough to frustrate a saint), I think we’re starting to see the benefits of our partnership with the BLM … for the benefit of the – our – herd. I do hope to have a post up soon about last weekend’s visit by Dan Elkins and Karen Herman from New Mexico, who came to visit the herd area for a hopeful contract gather in the future. Dan does the gentle, humane, very successful type of gathering and removing wild horses called bait trapping, and we’re very excited to know him and Karen and encourage a partnership with them and BLM in Spring Creek Basin in the future.
In the meantime, please do read Matt’s thoughts on the Pryor herd.
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Categories : Advocacy, Wild horses in the news
Some good news
5 08 2009Federal judge blocks BLM plan to remove wild horses from the West Douglas Herd Area!
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/20295785/detail.html
Here’s another link from Pam Nickoles’ blog: http://thesoulofahorse.com/blog/federal-court-slaps-the-blm-says-mustang-removal-illegal/
I was thinking about the mustangs in Nevada the BLM wants to remove when I read this article, and this next-to-last sentence is perfect: “To my knowledge, this ruling on the Colorado herd is the first ever that addresses the BLM’s illegal actions against the wild horses. It could be the beginning of a new day for this icon of the American west.”
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Categories : Wild horses in the news
Small battle won
17 07 2009Email today from the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign:
The Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act – HR 1018, introduced by U.S. Representatives Rahall and Grijalva, passed in the House of Representatives this morning. The bill amends the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act by adding important new protections and provisions, such as the banning of helicopter round-ups and the reclaiming of land lost by America’s wild horses over the past 30 years. Thank you so much to all who raised your voices in support of this critical piece of legislation. Now we need to prepare for the Senate vote!
On behalf of the horses, thank you for your support,
The AWHPC Team American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign
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Categories : Advocacy, Wild horses in the news
Book signing
9 07 2009For you Colorado readers out there, particularly those on the Front Range, this might be of interest to you: Michael Blake, author and screenplay writer of “Dances with Wolves,” will be at Zuma’s Rescue Ranch later this month to do a book signing for his new book, Twelve the King, a tribute to his mustang stallion.
The event will be held from 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, July 24, at Zuma’s Rescue Ranch, 7745, N. Moore, Littleton, Colo. For more information, call (303) 346-7493 to R.S.V.P., or visit their Web site at http://www.zumasrescueranch.com
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Categories : Advocacy, Wild horses in the news
Advisory board meeting
22 06 2009Colorado photographer Carol Walker attended the BLM’s National Wild Horse and Burro Program Advisory Board meeting June 15 in Sacramento. Follow this link to read her blog post about her take on the meeting and the statement she made during public comments: http://wildhoofbeats.blogspot.com/
I’m so discouraged by this information, I just don’t even know what to say about it. We can fight irrational nonsense with science and experience and common sense, but this is … irrational nonsense! That our government would engage in such discussions – in secret – may not be surprising (and how awful is that), but it just defies everything Americans have said we want for our wild horses – their well-being and freedom. Surely we owe them that.
Check this one, too: http://americanherds.blogspot.com/
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Categories : Advocacy, Wild horses in the news
Kick in the gut
13 06 2009Well, if this isn’t a disturbing development to find out about on my first morning on vacation.
http://www.conquistadorprogram.org/blm__court_documents_on_wild_horses
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Categories : Wild horses in the news
PZP partnership in the Carson National Forest (NM)
2 06 2009http://www.skymountainwild.org/PZP.html
The above link is to information about PZP being used for wild horses in the Carson National Forest, our neighbors to the south. The below link is to an article linked at the bottom of the above Web page.
This is what it’s all about, from Sky Mountain Wild’s Web site: “The use of PZP represents a vast shift in the management of wild horses in New Mexico, as the previous method used to control population numbers has been the round-up and removal of wild horses from their territories.”
Note the photo by Claude Steelman, who was in Farmington to document the PZP administration.
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Categories : Advocacy, PZP, Wild horses in the news
Just say no more
17 05 2009On Wednesday, May 20, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will conduct a public hearing to discuss the use of motorized vehicles or aircraft in the monitoring and management of wild horses and burros on public lands in Nevada.
Please contact BLM to protest the harsh practice of chasing wild horses and burros with helicopters, often over exceedingly long distances. Please also ask that what appear to be no-bid contracts to BLM?s primary round-up contractor, Catoor Livestock Roundup, Inc., totaling about 18 million dollars (our tax dollars!) since 1996, be subject to review.
BLM?s primary concern in round-up operations continues to be efficiency, to the detriment of the horses? welfare. Instead of helicopters, urge officials to use bait trapping, a much safer and more humane method of capture. BLM has refused to use bait trapping in such instances as the 2007 Jackson Mountain round-up, when 185 horses ended up dying at the holding facility due to stressed immune systems. Demand that limits on distances over which horses may be chased be enforced, and that accountability and penalties be established for round-up contractors who violate humane handling procedures.
The hearing will be held at 10 a.m. in the Great Basin A and B conference rooms at the BLM Nevada State Office located at 1340 Financial Boulevard, Reno, Nev. To make oral or written statements to present at the hearing, contact JoLynn Worley at (775) 861-6515.
Written comments can be emailed to: nv_gathers@blm.gov or mailed to: BLM Nevada State Office, Attention: Helicopter Hearing, P.O. Box 12000, Reno, NV 89520 and must be received by Tuesday, May 19 to be considered at the hearing.
For eye-witness accounts of helicopter round-ups, please click here.
The AWHPC Team
American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign
www.wildhorsepreservation.org
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Categories : Wild horses in the news
