The shocking cruelty with which 1900 wild mustangs have been forcibly removed from their native habitat in Nevada's Calico Mountains by the BLM is the inspiration for a pending lawsuit to be filed against the agency by In Defense of Animals (IDA), a California-based international animal protection organization.
IDA announced today that it has retained the national law firm of Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney to sue to "stop the BLM's planned roundup of nearly 500 wild horses living in the Eagle Herd Management Area in Eastern Nevada." According to IDA, the scheduled roundup "would leave just 100 horses behind to roam over 670,000 acres of public land."
In a letter to the Department of Justice, the lawsuit's lead counsel William J. Spriggs contends that "the Bureau of Land Management's proposed plan fails to comply with the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, rendering the action arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion."
The IDA lawsuit will attempt to protect the Eagle Herd horses from the inhumane fate that has befallen the wild horses who have lost their freedom during the Calico Mountains Complex roundup in northwestern Nevada:
"To-date, over 30 horses have died as a result of the Calico roundup and 20 or more pregnant mares have spontaneously aborted. Deaths include a colt with a heart defect who collapsed and died while being chased by helicopter, a colt who was run so hard, fast and far that his hooves were severely damaged and partially sloughed off, a mare who crashed into a gate and broke her neck, and numerous horses who colicked and suffered painful deaths."
Attorney Spriggs explains that "our legal actions aim to halt the inherent cruelty of the BLM's wild horse roundups, which traumatize, injure and kill horses, subvert the will of Congress and are entirely illegal."
IDA points out that "wild horses comprise a minute fraction (0.5 percent) of grazing animals on public lands, where they are outnumbered by cattle at least 200 to 1."
Comments
From the BLM's own FY 09 Herd Area Statistics: Herd Management Area
Nevada Acres
15,249,265
(divided by)
Nevada Equines
17,461 =
1 Equine per 873.33 acres
AML (BLM level of range sustainabilty)
12,688 =
1 Equine per 1201.87
This is what the BLM is issuing as fact - that it takes 1200 acres of rangeland to sustain a single wild equine.
Sustainble herd levels throughout the management areas - 31,864,461 acres of rangeland & 26,578 equines. YOU do the math.
And it's not just my inability to reconcile these idiotic figures, it's the brutal thoughtlessness. The older mare who was summarily euthanized - her condition was due to age, not infirmity. When older horses are removed and destroyed, it's tantamount to burning the family Bible. The herd's legacy and culture lie within the elders - where to eat, what to eat, what to avoid. Allowing her to live and return would have harmed no one. But understanding THAT would have required knowing what the hell you're doing.
Via la lawyer! Thank you, thank you, thank you. Let's make the Butchers of Land Management squirm and waste their GFY'09 and GFY'10 budget on legal fees. That's that much less for Slaughter Sue Cattoor and her "professional" group of wranglers. Perhaps this will be the light at the end of the tunnel. For heavens sake, oneof the BLM hired idiots thinking about offering hay to a mare in the grasp of death as a result of a spontaneous abortion. If they want to waste our tax dollars; then we'll waste it all right in the Courts of Common Sense, Decency, and Humanity.
Thank you for putting this information out for public awareness. Great to hear the lawsuit. Thank you IDA for setting this in motion. Thank you.
Lisa, you sound as angry and heartbroken as I am. I've studied the pictures of those mares, and NO WAY were they starving! They were old and thin, yes, dead on their feet? NO! The BLM just wanted them out of the way.
Even if they had not survived winter on the range, what do you think the mares would have preferred if they could have given their opinion? Would they have preferred to stay home and let Nature take it's course? Or be in the hands of the BLM, even if they had allowed them to live? Anyone who knows horses knows the answer.
One thing's for sure - if the BLM had left them alone they would be alive NOW.
Good luck with the lawsuit. That's all the world needs: wildlife management by legislation. SCIENCE is the only way to manage wildlife and habitat--- not some silly vote or by blood-sucking lawyers who only care about their bottom line. Plain fact of life: wildlife and feral livestock will regulate their own numbers by starvation and disease and the resulting population crash is not pretty. Meanwhile the habitat will take YEARS to recover. Oh yeah-- horse with winter coats look fat; until you rub their ribs. It's plain to see that you posters have little real-life experience. Good luck in you disney-esque world and the land of make-believe.
This is an absolute OUTRAGE!!!
1922 mustangs captured, 610 estimated left on the range. At least 79 horses have died and 40 some mares have had late term spontaneous abortions. Foals are being born in the pens now, 200 or more expected (photo gallery).The death toll continues to rise in the Fallon feedlot-style facility where the Calico mustangs are held.
All this violence for cattle ranchers! See how the greed just expands unless people stand up and demand an end to this violence and power/land grab. Even the BLM is hiding right now after spending $67.5 million of our tax dollars (someone's getting rich off this!) You can watch videos of mothers aborting their embryos due to BLM violence and BLM putting horses used to running free in tiny cages like concentration camp prisoners -makes me SICK!
at the humaneobserver dot blogspot.com
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