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by SantaFeJoe on Sun Nov 08, 2015 9:43 am
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A Colorado wild horse buyer is being accused of sending a huge number of wild horses to slaughter through a NM kill buyer:

Wild Horses sent to Slaughter in Mexico

and a federal report on the matter:

BLM Investigative Report

Joe
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.  -Pablo Picasso
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by Mike in O on Sun Nov 08, 2015 3:51 pm
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I have a real problem with the management of wild horses. We have a lot of them in Oregon especially in the south east (cougars limit the population in the forest mountain areas). Right now there is going to be a round up on the Beatty Butte herd to capture 1500 animals, leaving 100 (original home of the Kiger Mustangs). They will be put up for adoption but most will live out their lives at taxpayer expense in holding pens in the Midwest. Since a court ruling that horses have to be counted on the range, cattle ranches have been clamoring for removal so that more cows can be put out on the open range units. Birth control is pretty cruel since the mares can come into heat at any time of the year (dropping foals in the dead of winter etc.). A gender specific part of our population fight tooth and nail demanding that horses have a right to our desert steppes over all other species. I personally think slaughter is the best end with the money being used for range improvement. Central Oregon had the last slaughter house in the US (not for dog food but exported and sold in France for much money, burned down by peta). While this is not popular with the Vegans, something has to be done.
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by SantaFeJoe on Sun Nov 08, 2015 4:46 pm
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In this case, the money went into private pockets. The $10 per horse paid by the guy who bought them with the agreement that they not be sold for slaughter, sure doesn't help with range management. He claimed to have sold them for $100 a head. The BLM spent $140,000 to haul them to him. On top of that, the livestock inspector and the veterinarian that were supposed to inspect the horses merely signed the documents that the kill buyer filled out himself! Neither noted the BLM freeze brands on the horses. The horses were sold by the Colorado man within a few days of acquiring them. They are supposed to go to good homes.The BLM seems to have violated the rules about how many horses could be sold to any one buyer. Seems like way too many errors along the way to be accidental to me. Whatever a person feels regarding wild or feral horses, you can't deny this was a bad deal for the horses and the public. One thing I believe is that the ranchers have no more right to the land than the horses. They pay a pittance for the right to use and damage our public lands. Around here they even fence off public lands and try to keep the public out!

Joe
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.  -Pablo Picasso
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by pleverington on Mon Nov 09, 2015 7:49 am
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Animal agriculture comes first and native species and these horses come second is what it boils down too.
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by Paul Fusco on Mon Nov 09, 2015 12:22 pm
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Public lands belong to the public. The BLM manages that land for the public. The public includes all interested taxpayers that want a stake in the management of that land, not just ranchers. When special interests are allowed to get special treatment, which may or may not come at the expense of the public's interest, then there is a big problem with the way that BLM does their business. Might be worth looking into the details, but that may mean its political or that legalities need contesting in court.
And they wonder why so many environmental issues end up in court battles. It may be the only recourse.
P
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by WDCarrier on Mon Nov 09, 2015 1:09 pm
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I have to agree with Mike.  First, mustangs are not native to the North American continent.  Although the horse evolved here, it's been millions of years since it disappeared and the ecosystems are not adapted to this type of grazing as horses do not migrate to new pastures as did bison so they increase their populations' use up their habitat, and then die.  This is an emotional issue on our love for the horse (we all want to be cowboys!!!!)  In my work I've personally seen not only the habitat destruction caused by wild horse herds but the scattered carcasses of both foals and adults that starved to death in some parts of eastern California and western Nevada. Seeing a half-dozen foal carcasses at a dried up water hole is not a pleasant sight.The BLM has been given a tough assignment to try to deal with this issue and I feel they are doing the best job possible with the cards they've been dealt.  Wild horse numbers need to be controlled and there's few, if any, takers for a 5-year-old hammer-headed stallion with a nasty temper and impossible to tame.
[font=Helvetica, sans-serif]“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” MLK[/font]
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by pleverington on Thu Nov 12, 2015 8:50 am
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There are a lot of ways to "control" populations...but they are expensive. That's why letting hunters in who actually pay for the privileged, and a bullet which is so very negligible in cost, are used  very often to "manage".  Not saying  these horses are being shot by hunters, I'm saying  the cheap highway is usually the one that is taken by any agency  that feels compelled to control animal numbers and these down and dirty methods are usually disturbing to our senses.

Actually, according to this article in the link below, horses have more historical right to be in North America than people do.. Seems they actually did most their evolutionary changing right here in North America between 54 million and ten thousand years ago(they disappeared at the same time a lot of other animals did from North America...some say they were all hunted out and extincted). Living on the plains of America for 54 million years is quite the inconvenient  truth. The hard truth is the ones that have come back home are no longer accepted as being home.The lands are only for people now.  Even if we give the animals a place of sanctuary like parks it is still for people who want to enjoy the animals that we do so...it's not for just the animals sake ever. North America is the source for the horses that now live all over the world...


http://www.discoverseaz.com/History/Horse.html

more about the argument of native rights status of the horse now on BLM lands:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greensp ... ecies.html

The entire problem would go away if we all would just stop cramming our fat faces with burgers!

Paul
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by WDCarrier on Thu Nov 12, 2015 1:01 pm
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While your arguments may be theoretically valid, their application lacks practicality ecologically, economically or socially. The prospect of the rewilding of America proposed by Noss and Soule in 1999 included bringing back the woolly mammoth, giant ground sloth, and even the cave bear…all theorized to have been at least helped into extinction by prehistoric human hunters. Is this possible? Maybe, but is it practical? Can we really believe we can go back to a time when bison roamed freely between Canada and Texas? Pretty unlikely.

In the case of the horse, domestication did not occur in North America but was the result of the breeding of several wild varieties by Eurasian herders. These animals were bred for size and stamina and the current domestic mustang is 25% or more larger than the former Equus that evolved in our plains.

Having worked a good part of my career on the southwestern deserts I have seen the effects of increasing feral horse and burro populations contributing to the declines of several modern native species, particularly desert bighorn sheep, I’m not a big fan of just letting these things settle themselves than I am of protecting feral cats or Burmese pythons. I, too, like horses but unfortunately we are obligated to play the cards that we are dealt, not those we wish for.
[font=Helvetica, sans-serif]“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” MLK[/font]
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by pleverington on Fri Nov 13, 2015 8:29 am
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If we don't have vision we will never attain more than what we already have and are,... is my response. And anyone can see we are all losing more and more each year when it comes to wildlife and nature. Every decade that goes by man needs to involve himself in hands on management of more and more animals and every decade their habitats are shrinking. These are the problems. It's not about wanting to bring back the past...it's about looking towards the future. The conflict is with animal agriculture which dominates our landscapes now. The wolves, the mountain lions, the bears, the coyotes and others are all under the gun because there simply is not much land left to support their lifestyle anymore. Freeing up pasture and grazing land, and croplands, would give us enough land.

But we are steadily eliminating the whole concept of nature on this planet. If we don't change our ways we will always have to step in and manage the imbalances of what's left. We have basically "stacked" that card deck you speak of....

Paul
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by WDCarrier on Fri Nov 13, 2015 12:07 pm
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pleverington wrote:If we don't have vision we will never attain more than what we already have and are,... is my response. And anyone can see we are all losing more and more each year when it comes to wildlife and nature. Every decade that goes by man needs to involve himself in hands on management of more and more animals and every decade their habitats are shrinking. These are the problems. It's not about wanting to bring back the past...it's about looking towards the future. The conflict is with animal agriculture which dominates our landscapes now. The wolves, the mountain lions, the bears, the coyotes and others are all under the gun because there simply is not much land left to support their lifestyle anymore. Freeing up pasture and grazing land, and croplands, would give us enough land.

But we are steadily eliminating the whole concept of nature on this planet. If we don't change our ways we will always have to step in and manage the imbalances of what's left. We have basically "stacked" that card deck you speak of....

Paul


Good response!  I think you and I would get along very well.
[font=Helvetica, sans-serif]“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” MLK[/font]
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by SantaFeJoe on Fri Nov 13, 2015 12:12 pm
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I agree that wild horses, burros and wild cattle (Yes, we have them here too!) can damage the land and cause erosion, especially in the drought conditions the west has been experiencing for the last several years. Their numbers are greater than the land can sustain in certain areas. Just look at the area around San Felipe Pueblo between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. There is no vegetation left at many times. Fortunately, for the horses sake, some people feed them and deliver water to strategic locations. While this alleviates the starvation and dehydration problem, it cuts the natural die-offs from those problems and the numbers continue to increase as a result. This only magnifies the problem. And, yes, now something has to be done to protect the welfare of the horses.
My biggest problem with the subject of my original post is the way that things were handled. Why would the BLM sell the horses in that quantity, against their own rules, to somebody without checking out the conditions under which the horses would be kept and cared for????? They were only supposed to be adopted out, and not sold for slaughter. Some say there is no other option. I totally disagree. These horses do not belong to only some, but to all. Being that humans created the problem, we also need to handle these horses more humanely. There are several wild horse sanctuaries that have taken in many of the horses. In New Mexico, our former governor was behind a plan to establish a public sanctuary, but that met with much resistance. The private sanctuaries are the ones that have been more helpful to the horses. They are allowed to live out their lives wild and free. Here are a few links to some of the sanctuaries in this area. These sites tell about their mission.

http://www.cimarronskydog.org/

http://skymountainwild.org/

http://alibi.com/news/30407/All-the-Wild-Horses.html

http://www.eastmountaindirectory.com/ar ... exico.html

http://rtfitchauthor.com/2010/11/06/the ... sanctuary/

and other areas:

http://www.wildhorsesanctuary.org/about-history.html

Joe
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.  -Pablo Picasso
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by pleverington on Fri Nov 13, 2015 4:04 pm
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I wish I was rich so I could support some of those places that are helping to take care of these horses.

I'm not sure how much the following may figure in peoples take on all this, but it really seems to me that horses are not just any other animal to human beings. They are special. Not just in North America, but all over the world. Not as much now maybe, but how does one measure the contributions the horse has made to all of mankind?? They literally carried us on their backs for hundreds, thousands of years. They plowed our fields, they gave us transportation, they fought with us in battle, they were the power in clearing the land, they did all the work that would have otherwise just kept man primitive doing all his own labor. The fact is we love them. This is why so many people want them.. We just plain love them. And not for just being an animal, but for being our friends and our partners in survival and progress. There is just so much history here.....

So yeah.......let's have them just like we have our dogs, our cats, and the other major players in our lives. They are part of our existence and heritage. Plus if one has ever befriended them one knows exactly how rewarding that experience is. And whats more beautiful than a group of wild horses running across the plains....free.....?

We are never going to make everyone happy, we can't make anything perfect, but sometimes, in some places beautiful things can still be allowed to happen. I think beautiful looks good, but I also think beautiful in our lives make us strong. We simply live for those brief, but wonderful beautiful moments.

Slaughterhouses, culling, leaving them to die because there is not enough land allowed for them is ugly. I think we die a little bit more and more as we keep doing these short sighted, stupid, and shallow temporary "fixes". We need to wake up the powers that be to these things. Create revelation.

When I lived with the then called Papago Indians on their reservation(now referred to their native language name of "Tohono O'odham"), I spent much time walking the desert. Many days I spent around a large pond in no mans land which was a mecca for the wildlife to drink and bathe. At times a small herd of wild horses would show up. It was mind blowing. I mean most of us never think of a horse as a wild animal and free do we? We tend to always think of them underneath an Indian or cowboy or pulling something. To see them wild and free is a real treat and everyone is entitled to that experience. They are a beautiful animal that will always be a part of us.


Paul
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