The BLM is killing wild horses, and breaking our hearts

With today's euthanasia of a 25-year-old mare at the government's Indian Lakes Road holding facility, the death toll of wild horses from the current BLM Nevada roundup has climbed to 28.

That's 1.5% of the 1878 "excess" horses that the BLM has scoured from their native ranges since these "gathers" started, in late December.  It doesn't include the dozens of spontaneous miscarriages that have been caused by the stress of the roundup, and also by the mares' inability to adjust from range forage to an enforced diet of domestic grass hay, in mid-pregnancy.

According to Elyse Gardner, one of the few intrepid onsite observers who are battling snow and frigid temperatures to document the suffering,  BLM contractors are now making it increasingly more difficult for them to get close enough to really know what's happening to each individual horse.  But this much is clear:  healthy horses who were thriving in peace and in freedom in the Calico Mountains are being run into the ground.  They are dying because men in helicopters are chasing them until their feet literally fall off.  They are dying as accident victims when too many of them are herded into cargo holds or corrals.  Some are just "found dead," and while we may never know exactly what killed them, we do know who did.

Writing in her Humane Observer blog on Monday, February 1st, Elyse Gardner dispels the BLM's often-repeated assertion that it is rounding up horses who would otherwise perish because they don't have enough to eat.  To the contrary, she says:

"These horses were gorgeous and healthy.  Again and again, I see how they know how to live in their habitat.  These horses are not even close to starving.  They are well muscled and beautiful.  I am not close enough to document respirations and detailed sweat patterns or easily see leg or other injuries, but I can certainly see muscles and basic conformation."

In an interview with Steven Long in Horseback Magazine, Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the U.S., describes the deaths from the current Calico roundup as "shameful."  According to Pacelle, it is "totally inconsistent with the proper and humane management of these populations, and it's happening at a time when the program is so severely broken that they've lost the trust of the American people."  Pacelle says he is "speaking directly with the BLM leaders," in an effort to redirect their efforts.

We can only hope they'll listen to him.  No one else seems to be getting through.

In the meantime, the people who care deeply about the mistreatment and mismangement of America's wild horses are not giving up.  There are more public protests planned.  Be at one of them, if you can.

Breaking News! You can hear Elyse Gardner on Thursday night, February 4th, when she will make a special presentation entitled, "How Can We End the Inhumane Roundups of America's Wild Horses?" in the Excalibur Room at Roundtable Pizza in Petaluma, CA from 7-9pm. Call 707-762-1861 for more info.