California’s 9th Circuit Allows Wild Horse “Gather”
SAN FRANCISCO, (IDA) – Today, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion to stop the roundup of half of all California wild horses, plaintiffs in the lawsuit are joining more than 54 members of Congress who are calling on the Obama Administration to halt the government roundup. Over 2,000 wild horses and 200 burros will be removed from the Twin Peaks Herd Management Area in northeastern California by helicopter stampede scheduled to begin on Wednesday, August 11, 2010.
Last week 54 members of Congress sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar demanding a halt to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wild horse roundups and recommending reform of “what seems to be a deeply flawed policy. . .” Representatives Barbara Lee, George Miller, Lynn Woolsey, and Mike Honda are among the members of the California Congressional delegation who signed the letter on July 30, expressing concern over the BLM’s recent helicopter roundup of 1,224 Nevada mustangs, which caused the deaths of 34 of these iconic animals, including at least eight foals.
The Twin Peaks roundup will be conducted in the heat of summer and will unnecessarily subject many old, sick, lame and vulnerable young wild horses to potential injury and death. The BLM’s current policy of mass roundups, removals and stockpiling of horses has created what Interior Secretary Salazar has called an “unsustainable” situation whereby the agency is spending tens of millions of dollars annually to stockpile more than 38,000 wild horses.
The lawsuit was filed July 16 on behalf of ecologist Dr. Chad Hanson, a researcher at the University of California at Davis and author of numerous scientific studies; Barbara Clarke, wild horse expert and director of 2,000-acre DreamCatcher Wild Horse and Burro Sanctuary in Northeastern California; Linda Hay, a local resident who has visited and enjoyed the Twin Peaks horses for the past thirty years; and In Defense of Animals, a Bay Area-based animal protection organization.
Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C., is joined as counsel in the lawsuit by the national law firm of Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney and San Francisco Bay Area-based environmental attorney Rachel Fazio.
“The President must step in if this roundup is to be stopped. The Interior Department continues to disproportionately allocate public resources in order to serve the private livestock and other commercial industries and in turn scapegoats wild horses and burros deeming them overpopulated,” said Stuart G. Gross, of Cotchett, Pitre and McCarthy. “In Twin Peaks, the Department authorizes four to seven times more privately-owned sheep and cattle than wild horses and burros to graze on Twin Peak’s nearly 800,000-acres – which is federally protected to serve as horse and burro areas.
“Under the Obama Administration for the first time in history, there are now more wild horses in government holding facilities than are left on the Western range. The vast majority of the captured Twin Peaks horses will join the 38,000 mustangs already stockpiled in zoo-like conditions,” said William J. Spriggs of Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney. “This scheme is not only fiscally unsustainable, it is also blatantly illegal.”
“The Department of Interior has a policy of removing mass numbers of wild horses from the range without fulfilling its obligation to establish the need for the action,” said environmental attorney Rachel Fazio.
Wild horses comprise a small fraction of grazing animals on public lands, where they are outnumbered by livestock nearly 50 to 1. The BLM has recently increased cattle grazing allotments in areas where wild horses are being removed. Currently the BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public lands of which cattle grazing is allowed on 160 million acres; wild horses are only allowed on 26.6 million acres of this land, which must be shared with cattle. The Obama Administration has accelerated the removal of wild horses and burros from public lands in the past year.
San Francisco, Calif. (August 10, 2010)
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Are we still living in the USA? It’s beginning to look more like the old USSR. The people don’t seem to count anymore.
Of all the letters I’ve written to the President and the Congressmen who are supposed to represent me, I’ve gotten one canned response from the President and one canned response from one Senator and that’s IT.
Who is running what used to be OUR country?
I agree, the govt. does not listen to us at all anymore. The Cattle lobbyists seem to have all the money and power where the wild horses are concerned. I hate the BLM, this crappy tyrannical govt. that continually tells us what is good for us.
These are our wild lands and horses. It is a crying shame. I have a mustang who was captured at 1 yr. old. It is not true that these horses are genetically unfit. He is the smartest, most level headed horse I’ve ever been around and he’s only 4. When the govt. doesn’t listen to us, what can we do?
I was down in the twin peaks area on monday and tuesday prior to the roundup and was told that there would be some horses in one particular area as they are usually there and many people have seen them and as far as I’m concerned before the roundup even started I believe they already had some trapped or in an area that they could stage a what they would consider an appropriate and safe roundup where as in reality it was violent and Inhumane some of the photos from the sacramento bee speak for themselves. This is cruel and inhuamane It is our Land and our Horses and we should have the right to say what needs to be done and that is NOTHING they have lived out there and died out there for hundred years or so many family units and now they are seperated by human greed. We live in a sad society when our Govt allows Greed and law breaking to attain what they want and not the people they serve. I Pray for our People and Land and most of all our beloved “WILD HORSES”