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Posts Tagged ‘Horses’

IDA, in collaboration with The Cloud Foundation and other organizations held a rally for wild horses and burros on January 21 in Sacramento, CA. Despite the cold and rainy weather, we had a great turnout of about 35 people. We had local folks from Sacramento and the Placerville area as well as people from the San Francisco Bay Area, a lady all the way from Monterey, and Craig Downer, author and wildlife specialist from Nevada. We gathered on the capitol steps under canopies with signs and large, beautiful pictures of horses running free. Some of the media that came out was Sacramento radio station KFBK 1530 and one from the Sacramento TV station KCRA 3.

We congregated inside the capitol for a press conference at noon and listened to experts express their passionate pleas to stop the round ups. Tawnee Preisner from NorCal Equine Rescue spoke of the reality that many of these magnificent animals will in up in slaughterhouses. Wildlife ecologist, biologist and author Craig Downer, who has been a humane observer of the round ups in Nevada, told the story of Freedom, a beautiful black stallion, and his escape from his captors. Freedom was determined to escape and jumped a six foot fence just to be caught in a second barbed wire fence. He somehow stomped out of the wire and galloped to the mountains. The observers, with tears in their eyes, cheered him on.

Click Here for more information on what you can do for Wild Horses.

Photo Credit: Cattoor Livestock Roundups

The BLM is reporting that a total of four horses have now died at the Indian Rivers Road holding facility in Fallon, to which the Calico horses are trucked after being stampeded into capture pens near their homeland.  The agency is attributing three deaths to “dietary feed change” and “failure to adjust in change in feed” and not reporting the cause of death for the other mare.

This brings the death toll for the Calico roundup to seven.  Meanwhile, BLM contractor Sue Cattoor reports 122 more horses were caught on Saturday, January 16, when public observers were allowed to observe the helicopter stampede and capture for just one hour and 40 minutes of a ten hour day.

The unofficial total for the Calico roundup since December 28 is just under 1,000 horses. We are awaiting the BLM’s official capture count this week.

This video was taken on Saturday by IDA’s observer Deniz Bolbol.  Kept at a distance, Deniz could hear the ominous thundering noise of the helicopter on the far side of the mountain, which obscured her view of the stampede.

When the horses came into view, several bands were being herded together by two helicopters into capture pens.  On the video you will see one horse who evaded the helicopters path and remained free.  When his horse comrades were stampeded into the traps, Deniz could hear the horse on the ridge call to them. They called back. She believes the back and forth calls occurred four or five times before the horse ran off to freedom, leaving his band behind. One can never know for certain what the horses were communicating, but Deniz felt that the captured horses were letting their friend know that they were trapped and urging him to run on and leave them behind.

Deniz reports witnessing the helicopters descend within a few feet of the horses, nearly touching them. Horses arrived in the pens covered in sweat despite the cool temperatures, meaning that they had been run great distances at swift speeds. Even after an hour in the trap pens, the horses remained sweaty.

This photo taken from video shot by Deniz Bolbol, shows just how close the helicopters get to the horses when stampeding them into traps.

Elyse Gardner, another horse advocate and public observer reported that Thursday’s roundup brought the cruelty of the Calico capture sharply into focus.  Although the observers are being kept at a distance, Elyse reported seeing the horses valiantly fighting capture, charging back toward the helicopters trying to run back to the hills.  Elyse reports one particularly heartbreaking scene where a stallion, loaded into a trailer packed with other horses, managed to turn himself around to look out at the hills as he was driven off, never to see his homeland or his family again.

It is a tough job to observe this brutality first-hand, a job that is made more difficult by the BLM’s restrictions, which prevent observers from witnessing the full activities of the BLM’s contractors as they stampede horses from ranges afar into trap pens situated on private lands.
Before the Calico roundup even ends, the next BLM offensive will begin . . . — a roundup of 550 horses in the Eagle Herd Management Area in eastern Nevada, scheduled to start in Mid-February. Public comments to oppose this roundup by January 27. Take action here.

More on this roundup and the proposed capture of 1,200 horses in the Antelope Complex also in Eastern Nevada soon.

BLM helicopter contractor Sue Cattoor has posted a photo of the second mare who was shot by BLM because she was “thin” and “very old.” The mare was shot after she was terrorized and traumatized in a helicopter stampede and separated from her family. According to the BLM, this is a mercy killing.

Meanwhile, two horses have died at the Fallon holding facility. The latest fatality is a 12-year old mare who had been at the facility for four days.

Current capture count: 759 horses, fatalities 5. One stallion escaped to freedom.

Steam escaping from sweaty horses run in the cold at Calico. Photo Credit : BLM

The BLM is reporting that a mare was found dead over the weekend in the holding pens at the Fallon facility. The veterinarian is attributing the death of the horse, who was from the Black Rock East HMA to “dietary feed change.”

Meanwhile weather grounded the capture helicopter on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Calico capture stats as of Monday: 547 gathered, 518 shipped to Fallon, 24 at gather corrals, 4 deaths, 1 escaped back to freedom.

UPDATE FROM BLM

On Thursday, January 7, the BLM killed another mare claiming “poor body condition.”  What the BLM claims is an “act of mercy” likely involved chasing this elder horse by helicopter for several miles at full gallop speed into the capture pens before determining that she was too old to withstand the transition to a captive life and therefore had to be  ”euthanized” her by rifle.

It is unknown if this mare’s condition was documented with video or photos; the condition of the foal and mare who were killed last week were not photo-documented, leaving only the word of the BLM as evidence of what happened to these victims.
For updated number of BLM Calico captives click here.

A wild horse in Utah saved . . . for now

This just in: The BLM has postponed the roundup of 200 horses living in the Confusion Mountains in Utah, after the agency and the Obama Administration received thousands of emails from IDA supporters yesterday. Here’s the scoop, from IDA’s Director of Research, Eric Kleiman:

This afternoon, I spoke with Eric Reid, the Wild Horse and Burro specialist at the BLM’s Filmore, Utah field office. He confirmed that the Confusions roundup had been postponed; said he had just received an email today from the Washington office that handles the gather schedule, saying it is being removed from the schedule.

The BLM had planned to conduct this roundup without public comment and no documentation to document the capture. Further, BLM failed to do any current environmental assessment of the impacts of the action, which would have left behind only 70-100 horses in the 235,000-acres public land complex.

Eric continues:

Reid said that the BLM would now be doing an Environmental Assessment and would now be giving the public the opportunity to comment.  He expects the EA to be posted around May 2010. The May EA will include updated census information and other unspecified new data.

He said that once he receives clearance, there will be a brief blurb on the Utah BLM site regarding reasons why the roundup was postponed.  He said the postponement should be reflected in an updated national roundup schedule but he didn’t know where on the BLM site that was.

Clearly our letters, calls and emails are having a difference! The Utah horses have been spared . . . at least for now, giving us more time to organize. The more we shine the public spotlight on the BLM’s actions, the less this agency can get away with business as usual.
Let’s keep it up!

Other updates:

Wendy Mallick joins protesters in L.A.

Protesters line street in Los Angeles

An estimated 120 people took to the streets of Los Angeles yesterday to defend America’s wild horses and call on Senator Diane Feinstein for help in saving these icons of the West. The colorful rally featuring actor Wendy Malick, IDA, The Cloud Foundation, Return to Freedom and other members of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign coalition, helped draw attention to the plight of the wild horses of the Calico Mountain Complex in Nevada, who are currently under siege by the BLM.

The event is just one of many being organized across the country, demonstrating the growing outrage of American citizens over the Obama Administration’s assault on wild horses.  We must keep up the pressure and not waste a moment in our fight to help the wild horses.

Calico update

As of yesterday, the BLM has captured 424 Calico horses, well on their way to the goal of permanently removing 2,500 of these beautiful animals from their homes in the Calico Mountains Complex.
For more info on the Calico horses see this new video by Humanity through Education :

BLM Captures More Than 299 Wild Horses in First Week of Calico Roundup Scheduled To Last Two Months

Another foal who survived the chase into BLM's trap pens.

A necropsy (animal autopsy) report on the young foal who collapsed and died in a New Year’s Day helicopter chase shed more light on the tragedy befalling the horses of Nevada’s Calico Mountain Complex. The necropsy states that the little foal collapsed twice while being chased for at least a half-mile by a government-contracted helicopter. Ten minutes after the second collapse, BLM wranglers found the colt dead.

This six-month old, dark bay/brown foal’s final moments were filled with terror trying to escape from the government operation; BLM officials acknowledged to observers that the tax-payer-funded helicopters are chasing the Calico horses at speeds of 20-30 mpg for 3 to 5 miles, and up to 10 miles. The little colt could not keep up with his family. Separated from his mother, he fell behind and died.
The BLM justifies this travesty by stating that the colt had a defective heart and would have died anyway, as if that justifies the trauma this agency’s heartless wild horse policies inflicted on this innocent young horse and his family.

Read the necropsy report below.

Meanwhile, the BLM reports that, as of January 4, it had rounded up 299 Calico horses. The capture operation has now moved from private land in Paiute Meadows Ranch to private land in Soldier Meadows where they will remain for the next two weeks. Daily access for public observation of the roundup activities is being denied and the BLM has selected three days each week (for the next three weeks) to allow orchestrated public observation. BLM claims staffing constraints as the reason to limiting public observation of this multi-million-dollar government operation. The only individual given unlimited access to view the roundup over consecutive days is a photographer hired by the BLM.

Necropsy Report

Date:                          1/1/10
Prepared by:          Albert Kane, DVM, MPVM, PhD

Location/Event:      Calico Complex Gather
Animal ID:              6 month old, dark bay/brown, colt

History: The pilot reported this colt lied down twice while moving just ½ mile from the original location of the band of horses. The second time he radioed to the trap for wranglers to come with a trailer and assist the colt as he seemed unlikely to make it to the trap. I accompanied the wranglers to the location. We arrived to the colt’s location about 10 minutes after the call from the pilot. On arrival he was found dead, lying in left lateral recumbency, with no signs of struggle or agonal movements apparent in the surrounding snow.

Examination: Alan Shepherd accompanied me during this necropsy examination. The carcass was rolled onto the right side, no external abnormalities were noted. Front right leg was lifted and reflected dorsally. On opening the chest cavity negative pressure was apparent. There was no blood present in the trachea. There was a large amount of free blood in the chest cavity. The lungs were pink and airy with no abnormalities noted.

On examination in-situ a hole was apparent in the pulmonary artery at the base. The left ventricle was thickened and larger than expected and the atria were thin and without muscular tone. There was an area of thinning and apparent aneurysm on the left atrium.

The abdominal cavity was examined with no abnormalities noted. Body condition was moderately thin with only small amounts of subcutaneous and abdominal fat noted.

Conclusion/Differentials/Dx: Left side heart failure.
Death caused by acute pulmonary artery rupture attributable to a pre-existing, probably congenital heart condition. Gather related but attributable to a pre-existing condition

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – – - – -

Albert J. Kane, DVM, MPVM, PhD
Veterinary Epidemiologist
Senior Staff Veterinarian
APHIS/BLM Wild Horse and Burro Partnership

Trapped by senseless U.S. government policy

As we enter the New Year with the BLM’s assault on the wild horses of Calico Mountain in full swing, and more BLM roundups set to start in Utah and another area of Nevada over the next month and a half, it is easy to feel frustrated and powerless over the plight of these majestic icons of the West.  While we mourn the news of the mare who was shot by the BLM, her orphaned foal and the little colt who was run to death in Calico, we must also take heart at the growing momentum of opposition to this inhumanity and the growing international pressure on the U.S. government to change its illogical and illegal wild horse policy.

Consider for a moment, the amazing events of the past two months:

Wild horse defenders braved snow and cold in Ketchum,Idaho.

• American citizens submitted over 10,000 public comments to the BLM in opposition to the Calico roundup.
• A federal lawsuit was filed pro bono by Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney, a prominent national law firm against the BLM, and U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman concluded that the BLM’s stockpiling of 35,000 (and counting) horses in Midwestern holding facilities is likely illegal. (The case continues.)
• Thousands of news reports have appeared internationally, exposing BLM’s inhumane and unnecessary war on wild horses to a worldwide audience.
• Our effort to pressure  the Obama Administration into reform by highlighting its shameful continuation of the Bush Administration destructive wild horse policies is gaining increasing attention in the national political press, as evidenced by this LA Times political  blog entry, Top of the Ticket.
• Citizens are taking to the streets in defense of America’s mustangs.  Last week saw colorful, peaceful rallies in San Francisco, Chicago, Las Vegas, London, Colorado and Idaho. This week more rallies are scheduled for Los Angeles, Albany (NY), New York City, Las Vegas and Denver. See below for news coverage of these rallies.

My message to all wild horse advocates worldwide is keep the faith and keep up the fight! Remember that, for 40 years, the BLM has subverted the intent of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, which protected the mustangs as living symbols of freedom and important parts of our national heritage.

Change will not happen overnight, but the pressure is building as never before!

If you have not done so already, please let President Obama know how you feel about his war on wild horses.  Follow us on Twitter and on this blog for more updates.

Please take a minute to speak up for Wild Horses in this on-poll :

Should the federal government round up wild horses in Nevada?

On New Year’s Day, the BLM rounded up 10 wild horses but only captured 9 because a 6-month old foal died en route. APHIS vet at the scene, Dr. Al Kane, reported that after being chased by the helicopter for “1/4 mile” the little foal was behaving strangely, lying down periodically. It is reported that the pilot radioed Dr. Kane that this foal was having problems and Dr. Kane went out to see the foal who was found dead. Dr. Kane said that he did a necropsy in the field and discovered congenital heart defect and said that foal couldn’t have handled any exercise and probably wouldn’t have lived to adulthood.  They left the body in the field and refused to allow the public observers to witness the body.

Below are the photos of the roundup that took place today (Saturday, January 2, 2009) showing how the captured band stallion, “Freedom,” valiantly fought for and regained his liberty although he had to leave his family of 8 adult mares and 2 colts.  Jumping a 6-foot fence and immediately thereafter breaking through a barbed wire fence and injuring himself, this was an awe-inspiring, do-or-die effort demonstrating the loathing of captivity to a wild horse and his need for freedom.  We can only pray for his recovery from the injuries the sustained from the barbed wire.

Before his escape, he became hung up by his front legs when he reared with all his might to attempt an escape from the narrow fenced area where he was being examined by BLM contractor Sue Cattoor and her wrangler.

Also included here are shots of the capture of his entire band, the 11 horses including Freedom himself.

The capture of Freedom and his band by helicopter, 11 horses.

Band stallion, Freedom, in the lead. You can see the Judas horse, trained to run into the pens so the wild horses will follow, being released.

Desperate horses, Freedom and his family huddle together.

During examination, Freedom attempts escape and gets caught up on the fence.

Preparing first failed attempt to clear 6-foot fence to freedom. He fell on his back during this attempt but pressed on to try again...

Preparing for final herculean effort to clear 6-foot fence to freedom...

...only to have to crash through barbed wire...

...to a bittersweet return to freedom, for leaving his cherished family behind

More to come.  Right now we are just sending stills.  We have videos and interviews, but these photos really do capture the anguish and drama of the roundup for these majestic icons, our treasured American wild mustangs.

For video of the capture on 12/30/09 visit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl0keG49kQU

This blog was contributed by Craig C. Downer, Wildlife Ecologist and Elyse Gardner, Public Observer

We were thrilled and energized by the turnout and energy present at the San Francisco rally today, supported by IDA, The Cloud Foundation and the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, in front of Senator Diane Feinstein’s office.

Rally in San Francisco, CA

Over 75 people participated in the rally, including famed children’s author Terri Farley, whose wildly popular Phanton Stallion book series tells the stories of the Calico horses.  The San Francisco protest drew lots of press coverage, and Senator Feinstein’s office is interested and actively engaged in finding a solution to the BLM’s wild horse mismanagement problem.

The event coincided with other events today in London, Colorado, Idaho and Chicago, organized to call attention to nthe tragedy that is befalling the beautiful wild horses on the Calico public lands complex.

Our observer, Deniz Bolbol, witnessed this tragedy first-hand when, today, she visited the Calico horses who have been captured on Monday.

Stallions bunch together near the gate closest to the mares.

This is the only mother/foal pair who were kept together, as the foal, estimated age 3 months, was too young to be weaned.

These are some of the mares, separated from their foals by an iron fence.

Less than 48 hours ago, these horses were free on the range, living peacefully in the Calico complex with their families. Stallions led their close-knit family bands, protecting their mares and foals. But then the helicopters came and the horses were stampeded over snow and ice into BLM capture pens.  Families that had been together for years were torn apart.

According to the BLM, 74 horses were captured on Monday; 73 were transported in two trailers to the new BLM Falllon “Broken Arrow” holding facility. (BLM says that the 74^th horse was killed due to old age and emaciated body condition [rated 2]).  An additional 22 horses were captured Tuesday and will soon be trucked to Fallon as well.

The photos you see here show the Calico horses within 24 hours of arriving at the Fallon facility.  The things that are most  important to them — freedom and family — have just been taken away.  Foals have been torn from their mothers and are kept separated from them by an iron fence. Stallions are held together in separate pens across a driveway from the mares.

The Fallon holding facility is brand new, constructed in the last 60 days on land purchased just a few months ago. According to the BLM, the Calico horses were brought here, instead of the open-to-the-public Palomino Valley facility near Reno because they are prone to develop a highly contagious bacterial infection called “strangles.”   The stress and trauma imposed on the horses by the BLM roundup, compromises their immune systems, making them more susceptible to this potentially fatal illness.

The private contractor who operates the new Fallon facility is a rancher from California who has never before managed a BLM horse facility.  Thus we have a situation where the BLM takes horses off the range to allow for ranchers to graze more livestock, then pays ranchers to house the horses both at short-term facilities in the West and long-term pastures in the Midwest. The ranchers are the clear beneficiaries of the BLM’s multi-million dollar wild horse program; the horses the innocent victims, swept off their rightful lands like the Native Americans were so many years before.

Tomorrow, our observer Deniz travels to the Calico Complex to witness the roundup. Stay tuned for more updates.