Save the Ponies Save the World!!!

Hello my name is Debbie I live in the Sierra Nevada’s on a beautiful ranch that my family and I share with our herd. Our herd is comprised of 15 horses, a Belgian, a couple TB’s, a few Quarter horses, 1 curly and 7 wild horses. We even have two small burros oh and a couple of ranch pets called Bram & Stoker they are baby Brahma bulls.  It’s the wild horses & burros that I am talking about today though. Each of the horses in our herd has their own story before they come to us. Each horse having their own quirks, likes, & dislikes from their previous lives. We try to build a partnership with them partly to understand those pasts and how it has affected them. It is through this learning process of getting to know each other that we build our mutual trust and respect for one another. All 7 of our Mustangs at one time in their lives lived free. Some were rounded up when they were yearlings or weanlings and some not pulled until they were 4 or 5. But they were all once free. Free to roam with their family.  Free to explore.  Free to learn and grow.  Free to change and Free to decide.

There were 303 herds in 1971 running free on land that Congress mandated to be primarily used for their home..  In 1971, after public outcry, Congress did their job and set aside 51.3 Million acres of which 40.3 Million were under BLM jurisdiction for our wild horses not exclusively but with the charge that they were to come first. Today that number of acres has been diminished to 31.9 Million acres, 26.6 Million of those acres are under BLM jurisdiction.  Now there are appox. 192 herds comprised of a contested number of 37,000 Mustangs & Burros on what land remains for them.

If the BLM, Bureau of Land Management, stick to their own schedule and using their own numbers (which again are highly contested) by the end of next year there will be only 26,600 wild horses & burros left to roam freely. Today already the genetic viability of those 192 herds are in jeopardy and the BLM does not see a problem with this or acknowledge this fact.  So it’s clear to see the BLM has no intention of saving or protecting our wild herds.

Speaking of not managing our wild herds let me use this as an example. This is a photo taken by Jess Lee on October 12, 2010 during the Silver King round up in Nevada about a week ago. Jess watched as a small band of wild horses fled in fear as one of the helicopters, hired as contractors for the BLM, chased them towards the trap site. In Jess’ own words this is what transpired:  Quote “They had been run a very long time trying to avoid capture. The horses had been moved along toward the trap while trying to avoid the terrifying noise of the chopper blades echoing against the canyon walls.

Tired and scared the small band of 8 mustangs made one last break for freedom, unbelievably climbing the cliff walls to avoid capture. On the last rise, the last horse in the group failed to make the final obstacle (seen just below the choppers tail, remember we were roughly a mile away) Falling back, standing spread legged and shaken as the chopper hovered nearby, she could no longer go on as the rest of the band disappeared over the ridge.

Then with an act of bravery seldom seen, the black stallion returned to stand over his weaken family member. Turning in defiance to the mechanical beast closing on him the leader of this band held his ground. Soon the other members of the band returned to the ridge protecting their exhausted family member as the pilot moved his machine a little away. In a few minuets the mare regained her strength, and climbed up to the ridge with the rest of the small herd.

While it was a momentary victory for the stallion and his herd, the fact is that they were soon hazed into the trap where they were separated into groups with stallions, wet mares and dry mares all in separate pens to await shipping to the Canon City Colorado holding and processing facility to a fate unknown.” Unquote.

One brave Stallion! That one stallion is representative of the next thing I want to talk about, the family dynamics of Horses and Burros. Having 15 horses running on our/their ranch I get the chance to see their family dynamics and social structure on a daily basis. Yes we have one herd, but within that herd are two bands, two groups that stay together yet travel with the other band as a herd. Running free on the ranch, free to come and go as they please. Everyday I see the lead mare, “Ellie Mare” a 3yr old Mustang, decides where the herd will go. Although young, she is a strong and good leader taking the herd to different parts of the ranch everyday. From the moment Ellie arrived to us she has been the leader, she was born to lead, which helped her to survive when she was rounded up as a yearling. Ellie has an innate sense about her, she knows where the herd should go to graze, she knows when its time to come back for water, she knows when it’s time for the supplemental feeding we provide and brings the herd to the front of our house. She isn’t alone in her duties, she doesn’t have a stud but our 17.2 hand high TB Kid Rock thinks he is and he supports Ellie in all decisions. See it’s these dynamics that run each herd and this is even more so and true out in the wild.

A herd goes where the lead mare takes them, where the stallion makes certain they all follow. The role of the stallion is to support the lead mare and decide who it is that gets impregnated. He innately knows which mare is old enough and ready to be a mom and that is who he mates. Keeping the numbers of the herd manageable and with the proper maturity for raising foals allows them to survive. It is his experience within his own raising and nature that gives him these special skills.

When the BLM does their round ups and then release certain horses back onto their range herd dynamics is not an area they are concerned with. As a matter of fact of the few that they may release back they will only release back the young stallions all under 10 yrs old.  By the way, they also have the right to sell any horse over 10 yrs of age and older to anyone “with out Limitation” so that includes selling to kill buyers for as little as $10. It is easy to see then why our wild horse herd population have a higher growth rate than if they were left alone. As the young stallions don’t have the knowledge and experience to know that certain mares should be bred and certain ones should not. The young stallions are simply controlled by testosterone and we all know what that leads to.

The BLM’s own documentation states that the herds managed by them have had a 20% population growth rate each year. Using BLM math the herds double in 4 years. The math I learned says, even with their 20% per year, it would take 5 years to double a herd’s size. It kind makes you wonder how they came up with the 20% in the first place if that is the way they do their math.  We believe that any problem with the population growth rate is a direct result of the BLM’s mismanagement of removing all the older more experienced studs and replacing them with less experienced younger studs. We do have a model to compare this up against as well. Karen Sussman from the ISPMB International Society for Protection of Mustang & Burros, who has been saving mustangs for decades now has noted this in her two healthy untouched herds who being left untampered with and being allowed to reproduce at their own speed has shown that these herds have not had the same growth rate as the ones “managed” by the BLM.  In fact the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) study commissioned by the BLM concluded that the actual population growth rate was closer to 7 to 12 %. The BLM, by destroying the social structure of these herds, has had a direct effect on their herd numbers.

If the BLM had properly trained equine specialist on staff and had up to date scientific data some of these issues would not be as problematic at they have become. Some of the data that the BLM relies on is over 30 years old.  The BLM did request a study by the NAS and NRC (National Research Council) in 1982 however they only used selected portions from the study that supported their management goals.  It’s ironic that the NAS study pointed out that the BLM had in prior years used selective and bias data which resulted in inaccuracies and making the wrong conclusions.   Recently the BLM announced that they have asked the National Academy of Sciences to do new research to provide them with up to date data. You would think this would be a step in the right direction, and on the surface it is. Although being advised that this data would take 2 years to compile it doesn’t offer much hope for our wild horses as long as they keep rounding them up. Not to mention the fact on how well they did or didn’t use all the data from the first time the NAS prepared up this information for them. Hey I just sayin…

Lets talk about the gathers or more precisely the round ups for a bit. It has been a very aggressive schedule to date starting at the beginning of this year in Nevada with the Calico herd. During the dead of winter our precious wild horses were run down mountain snowy slopes for ten’s of miles. They were run so hard that some of the young foals literally sloughed off their new little hooves. Deaths started adding up quickly and ending with over l30 and 40 spontaneous miscarriages. . There was so much media coverage of these deaths that the BLM on the next roundup oh I mean gather  decided to deviate from their normal guideline for public access and closed gather activities to public and media access. That gather was right at the end   of the foaling season, something that typically is not done.  Usually they wait at least 4 weeks after the foaling season so as to not disrupt the new little colts and fillies and allowing them to have some maturity before being chased down volcanic rock mountains by helicopters. As a result in one of the following round ups in Tuscarora, there were 40 deaths. These deaths were confirmed to be because of dehydration after being run for miles and miles w/o a break. Officially the count may have been higher as the BLM only reports what they call “gather deaths”. Those are deaths that occur after the horses have been removed from the traps. They don’t include any horses that die during the stamped or once in the traps.

Are all these facts an example of the BLM effectively managing our wild horses & burros? I think not! They are being managed all right managed right into extinction.  There are already 37,000 wild horses in long term holding facilities and it’s costing you the taxpayer $100,000 a day for their up keep, you should have something to say about it.

The fact is that the BLM isn’t managing our horses & burros moreover these poor animals have become a hindrance & nuisance to the BLM. They offer many reasons as to why these defenseless creatures need to be pulled out of the wild a few are:

The The BLM say’s:

• The BLM say’s: There are Too many Horses and Burros on 26.1 million acres.

o    Yet they allow livestock to graze this same land plus 160 million acres more and the 2 million plus livestock out number the 37,000 (According to the BLM) Horses and Burros.  That’s the BLM math again.

• The BLM say’s: Horses and Burros are Starving and there just isn’t enough forage for them.

o    Yet there seems to be enough for livestock to graze and in far greater numbers.

o    Take a look at the Horses and Burros that are being removed from the ranges, they look in better shape than many their domesticed cousins.

o    The BLM’s own website states that on the very worst ranges in Nevada it takes 240 acres of land to feed a Wild Horse for a year. But there are Herd Management Areas like Twin Peaks here in California that is over 656,000 acres so that range should be able to support a minimum of 2700 Horses but they say there should be only 448 Horses and 72 Burros.

• The BLM say’s: There is Not enough water for the Horses and Burros.

o    Yet they allow ranchers to overpopulate the ranges and then put up fences, ON OUR PUBLIC LAND, so the Horses and Burros can not have access to it.

o    A Horse requires about 10 gallons of water a day.  According to a New York Times article the Mining Operations on OUR PUBLIC LANDS, where the Horses live, drain nearly 10 million gallons of water a day from the aquifers in Nevada and that water becomes contaminated.  Maybe if they made them stop for one day each month there would enough water for every Wild Horse still roaming free.

• The BLM say’s: There are not enough predators to control Horse and Burro Populations.

o    But the Wild Life Services of the Department of the Interior (The same DOI that the BLM is under) spends millions of dollars each year to kill predators to protect the livestock on OUR PUBLIC LANDS where the Horses and Burros live.

• The BLM say’s: The Horses are Feral.

o    It is an accepted scientific fact that Equines were native to the Americas.

Well We say:

• We say: There are too many in Horses in long term holding facilities. The BLM projects that there will be over 46,000 by the end of 2011 and only 26,600 left on the ranges.  The cost for these facilities is projected to reach 47.8 million dollars in 2011.
• We say: Not enough marketing for adoptions.  When was the last time you saw a PSA (Public Service Announcement) on adopting a Mustang or Burro?
• We say: The BLM doesn’t use proper data.  The GAO (Government Accounting Office), NAS (National Academy of Science) and many recognized Scientist have stated and/or reported that the BLM relies on information and data gathering methods that are inaccurate, outdated and is selectively biased.
• We say: The BLM does Not really have equine specialist or Mustang Experts.  The personnel they purport to have these credentials admit that their knowledge and expertise is not in these areas but general agriculture and livestock disciplines.
• We say: The BLM is not allowing the public to have unfettered access to their operations in spite of have a specific policy to allow just that and this Violates our rights protected by the First Amendment.  What is it that they are trying to hide?  We know what and that’s why we are here today!!