For the moment, until a few "bugs" in the new Network have been cleared away, we'll be publishing stories that relate to several other countries on the United Kingdom group. Thanks for your patience!
Your letters still needed now!
By Sharon St. Joan, Best Friends Network
"In the evening, they pick up their heels. In the twilight, around sunset, they perk up and frolic. In the heat of the day, they seek shade.
"Beautiful paint, pinto, medicine hats, and bays, a great variety of horses--from original Mustang Indian ponies, plus some of Morgan descent let go after the advent of the tractor. Marvellous horses--alive and healthy. They complement the ecosystem and restore it in so many ways! I was first out there in the summer. They were coming to drink at the sand stream area. They graze on a lot of dry grass."
Craig Downer recalls the first time he visited the wild horses near Ely, Nevada in the early 70's. He's never forgotten them and has been back many times since.
He's a native of Nevada, a wildlife ecologist, now living in western Nevada, south of Reno. Outspoken for years in the defense of wild horses, he is now fighting to prevent the removal of all the remaining 620 wild horses from Bureau of Land Management lands near Ely, due to take place this summer and fall, as government helicopters conduct drives to round up all the horses.
HR 1018 passes the House
Today, however, there was some very good news! HR 1018 has passed the House; it still needs to go on to the Senate. This law will stop the slaughter and sale of wild free-roaming horses and burros.
Despite this moment of good news--America's wild horses are still under threat!
If this law is passed by Congress, it will stop wild horses from being slaughtered, but it will not stop them from being removed from the range. The removal of the wild horses is a government activity that's been going on since the 70's.
This year the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to eliminate 9,000 wild horses--rounding them up with helicopters, taking them off the range which is their home, and offering them for adoption for a fee. The Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Program is well known. Less well known is that most of the horses removed are not adopted and have to spend the rest of their lives in holding pens.
Even for those that are adopted, this still means that the horse's days of freedom, of a natural life with the herd, are over.
Defending the horses
According to Craig Downer and several groups working to preserve the wild horses, this is an outcome that is completely contrary to The Wild Horse and Burro Act, which took effect in 1971. The act's intent was to protect America's wild horses on their native lands, preserving their natural wild lifestyle. Since its passage though, tens of thousands of wild horses have been removed from 111 herd areas on 19 million acres in the U.S.-- land that was supposed to be set aside for them by the Wild Horse and Burro Act.
Craig Downer, along with the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, a coalition of almost fifty groups, is fighting to keep the wild horses wild, on the land where they have always lived.
The rights of the wild horses, recognized by law, run up against the business interests of the cattle industry--and the horses are often on the losing end.
The law meant to save America's wild horses has been used instead to harm them and deplete their populations. The government's "management" of the wild horses is a long, sad story. You can read it on the website of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (please see below).
"Too few"-- not "too many" horses!
Undaunted by the discouraging history of harm done to these magnificent animals, Craig Downer continues to speak out for the wild horses.
The reason given for removing the horses is generally "overpopulation"--that the herd area cannot sustain the number of horses there. It seems that the actual on-the-ground facts are radically different.
The wild horses of northeastern Nevada
There are eleven legally set up herd areas for wild horses near Ely, Nevada. Two of these--the Seaman and White River areas--lie around 80 miles south of Ely.
The other nine herd areas are part of the Caliente Wild Horse Complex--the Meadow Valley Mountain, Blue Nose Peak, Delamar Mountain, Clover Mountains, Clove Creek, Applewhite, Mormon Mountain, Little Mountain and Miller Flat Has.
In a June 2009 letter to the BLM District manager John Ruhs, Craig Downer states that there is no "overpopulation" of the wild horses. On the contrary, the 11 wild horse areas extend over nearly 1400 thousand acres--where there are currently 620 horses. This allows 2,237 legal acres for each horse. So there is no overpopulation of horses. He also asserts that it is not wild horses that are "destroying the ecosystem."
Another letter--from a Nevada physician, Dr. Don Molde, quoted in the July 7, 2009 Environment News Service article "BLM's Wild Horse Elimination Plan Angers Ecologist"-- describes vast expanses of open range, and no "overpopulation".
Dr. Molde describes a thirty mile drive he took across the White River herd area on July 5. He saw fewer than a dozen horses and calls the area "breathtakingly beautiful" with lush green vegetation. Mentioning that nearly 700 wild horses have already been removed in the past ten years from that particular herd area, Dr. Molde concludes that there must be adequate water for the horses that are still left there.
Altogether 620 horses remain in these eleven herd areas; all are scheduled to be removed this summer and fall.
In August the Bureau of Land Management will start rounding up by helicopter the horses in the Seaman and White River herd areas. Although the official comment period for this proposal has ended, your voice can still be heard. Please see below.
For the nine herd areas of the Caliente Wild Horse Complex, the comment period ends at midnight tonight. The government plan is to "eliminate" these wild horses this fall, starting in October. Please see below to send a fax to help these horses.
A better plan
Craig Downer is calling on the BLM to implement a plan to save, instead of eliminate, the wild horses, which would include:
First--declare a moratorium on round-ups.
Two--instate a new emphasis--to restore the herds.
Three--make sure the horses have sufficient water, forage, space and shelter.
Four--take down the cattle fencing that now criss-crosses the herd areas, which are publicly-owned land. This would once again allow the horses access to their natural sources of water.
Five--make use of the BLM's perogative of "closure to livestock" on these public lands in cases where horses are being deprived of access to water.
This plan would continue the multiple use of the land and would not shut out cattle ranchers, so it is a reasonable plan. It would preserve and protect America's last remaining wild horses, allowing their herds to be restored--as the law intended, in a way that most Americans support.
Good for the eco-system
The presence of the wild horses benefits the ecosystem.
Wild horses enhance the ecosystem, contributing in many positive ways through soil building, seeding, and they do not camp on riparian areas as do livestock. Instead they tend to wallow at dry clay areas, producing catchments which later, when it rains, hold the water for the benefit of other wild life.
To combat any possible danger of overpopulation, Craig Downer adds the following advice--"to allow the wild horse populations to self stabilize" using "both natural and artificial barriers, restoration of natural horse predators, such as puma and wolf, and the allowance of natural band social structure by which elder horses inhibit reproduction in younger horses.
"This returned North American native, the horse, has a natural right to live on their land."
The Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971 states:
"…That Congress finds and declares that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene. It is the policy of Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands."
To read the full act, please click here.
What you can do
Please write to the following officials.
Please ask that the helicopter drives to round up the wild horses in Nevada--and in all the U.S. western states-- be canceled for 2009 and permanently, allowing the horses to live out their natural lives in freedom.
To help the Nevada horses of the Caliente Complex
(due to be rounded up in October 2009):
To comment on the Preliminary Environmental Assessment #DOI-BLM-NV-L030-2009-0037-EA, please fax a polite, brief comment to
Victoria Barr, the Field Manager of the Caliente Field Office, Bureau of Land Management, Caliente, Nevada. This Environmental Assessment lays the basis for the removal of all the horses in the Caliente Herd Complex. Comments should be in by midnight tonight, July 17. Comments must be faxed (not emailed) to 775-289-1910. Since it's likely that you won't be able to meet this deadline, please send your comment in anyway, and please also write to the following--for whom there is no time limit.
To help the last remaining wild horses in Nevada and other western states, please write a short, polite letter to
- To order Craig Downer's book, Wild Horses: Living Symbols of Freedom, send US $13 (U.S. postage included) to
P.O. Box 456, Minden, NV 89423.
cdowner@aol.com
Photos: Craig Downer / Nevada wild horses