Nevada wild horse roundup set to begin; opponents stage protests

LAS VEGAS — The federal capture of about 2,500 wild horses from public and private lands in northern Nevada was to begin Monday amid protests the roundups are unnecessary and inhumane.

Federal officials said the roundup is needed because the 850 square miles of land is overpopulated.

Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman JoLynn Worley said the agency planned to begin gathering horses Monday and taking them to Reno, where they will be fed and given immunizations.

Long-term plans call for the mustangs to be placed for adoption or sent to holding facilities in the Midwest.

Horse defenders say the use of helicopters to drive horses to corrals is inhumane and risks their injury and death. Opponents also contend winter roundups expose horses to the risk of respiratory illness.

About 30 protesters gathered Sunday at the entrance to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area west of Las Vegas, waving down motorists and holding placards.

California-based In Defense of Animals planned to demonstrate Wednesday outside the San Francisco office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who protesters hope will sympathize with their calls for a moratorium on wild horse roundups.

Another protest was being planned for Wednesday in Chicago.

The roundup was to include horses from five federally managed areas in the Calico Mountains complex.

A September count showed more than 3,040 wild horses were living in the area, about three times the land's capacity, federal officials said.

Without the roundup, the horse population in the area would grow by 20% to 27% annually, passing 6,000 mustangs within four years, according to the BLM. At that point, wildlife and livestock wouldn't have enough water or forage.

The roundup is part of the Bureau of Land Management's overall strategy to remove thousands of mustangs from public lands across the West to protect wild horse herds and the rangelands that support them. The bureau estimates about half of the nearly 37,000 wild mustangs live in Nevada, with others concentrated in Arizona, California, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

-- Associated Press

Photo: A herd of wild horses grazes near the Carson River in Nevada in 2006.  Credit: Chad Lundquist / Associated Press

Comments

[Alexandra]

Anyone want to guess how many of these beautiful creatures are going to get sold to the dog food industry?

[ArtsAlive]

This roundup is completely illegal. BLM are a bunch of criminals who have been bought and paid for by the powerful special interests such as livestock ranchers who want the public land for their animals to graze on. The federal judge should have granted the injunction last week. But then the judge is probably bought and paid for, too.

[samkatvic]

Here's the latest....its all about the oil.

Denver, CO (January 7, 2010)—The Cloud Foundation asks the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to reveal the truth behind removing healthy wild horses from the Calico Complex of northwestern Nevada. It does not appear to be coincidental that the multi-billion dollar corporate project, the Ruby Pipeline, would run through the Calico Complex—site of the controversial roundup of more than 2,500 mustangs and the Buckhorn Wild Horse Herd Management Area. BLM removed over 200 wild horses at Buckhorn in December 2009 without public notice.

Director of the Interior, Ken Salazar, has told members of the public that the horses will starve if not removed because there is nothing for them to eat. The Director of the BLM, Bob Abbey, also supported Salazar’s claim when he stated this week that horses are being removed “to restore an ecological balance” even though this claim is nullified by numerous experts including a biodiversity science specialist with 8 years experience in the range and the sworn testimony of BLM employees Eckel and Drake. Abbey went on to reassert the BLM policy position that “we will need to continue removing excess wild horses from the public rangelands in areas where the land can no longer support them.”

Yet, documents recently received by The Cloud Foundation from biologist Katie Fite of Western Watersheds and researcher Cindy MacDonald (publisher of the American Herds blog) today expose what may be the real reasons behind the massive, dead of winter wild horse roundups—and they have nothing to do with horse or rangeland health—but may have everything to do with the Ruby Pipeline.

In a written response to questions posed by the Office of Energy Projects (an agency within the Department of Energy), a Ruby natural gas pipeline project consultant, Dan Gredvig, stated that “Ruby will work with BLM to minimize wild horse and burro grazing along the restored ROW (right-of-way) for three years. Possible management actions would be to . . . reduce wild horse populations following BLM policy in appropriate management areas. BLM wild horse and burro specialists were consulted in developing this management approach.” The document is dated February 23, 2009.

It appears that the public’s wild horses are being removed at taxpayer expense on publicly owned land to make way for a multi-billion dollar pipeline constructed by El Paso Natural Gas Corporation of Colorado Springs, CO. Natural gas and water would ultimately provide added resources to California and other destinations. Given these new revelations, the public has the right to ask several key questions and get immediate answers to them: 1) Who really stands to profit from removing wild horses from public lands? 2) What private contractors, possible politicians, and/or agency bureaucrats stand to benefit from the yet undisclosed details of the Ruby Project? 3) Why has the public been excluded from any discussion of this undisclosed use of taxpayer public lands?

“I don’t think it is out of line to seek immediate responses to these questions. The public has a right to know what is happening to their public lands and to the future of their wild horses, especially when it comes at taxpayer expense..” Ginger Kathrens, Volunteer Executive Director, The Cloud Foundation (named for the famous wild horse Kathrens has documented for the PBS/Nature series).

According to a Western Watersheds report this is the largest project of its type across significant public lands in the American West in recent memory. Ruby has seized upon a sliver of ecologically critical unprotected public wild land to punch a new corridor through, and bisect this irreplaceable landscape, including many of the last viable herds of wild horses in the West.

“The roundups in the Ruby Pipeline zone are questionable,” states Katie Fite, biologist and biodiversity specialist. “The public is not being told the truth. There needs to be an investigation within all levels of BLM considering the unavoidable damage to our public lands. There is no mitigation provided for to restore this biologically wild, remote, and untrammeled landscape in northwestern Nevada and southeastern Oregon.”

Wild horse advocates and concerned Colorado citizens will be gathering to protest in downtown Denver on Thursday January 7 from 12:00-2:00pm in front of Senator Mark Udall’s office building (999 Eighteenth Street, North Tower). Kathrens will address the crowd and press at noon. The group will be asking the Senator to help halt the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) massive roundup of wild horses currently living in the half million acre Calico Mountain Complex area in NW Nevada.

[midwest horse lover]

Oh, come on, people!! Should we leave animals in the "wild" to starve to death or round them up and move them to lush pastures and warmer climates? Seems like a no-brainer. But come to think of it, brains aren't exactly the strong suit of the "animal rights" movement.

[Diane]

If we all stopped eating meat, horses wouldn't have to compete with cattle for the rangeland.

[Kay Vee]

The nearly 8 million head of cattle on those public rangelands aren't exactly starving....