Saturday, October 17, 2009

Salazar Sez's

The Thriving Natural Ecological Balance:
A Comparative Analysis of Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros
In Relation to Habitat, Wildlife and Livestock Populations”

by C.R. MacDonald, October, 2009

Recently, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar Sez’s, “There’s just no room for wild horses and burros out West anymore”.

With the drought taking its toll on Western rangelands, wildlife struggling to survive, and out of control reproduction rates and populations of wild horses and burros constantly threatening fragile arid habitats, Salazar Sez’s, "The time has come to sterilize most of what is left, both on and off the range, and ship America’s Mustangs & Burros to private sanctuaries far removed from their native ranges on public lands".

Salazar Sez’s, “Let us not look behind the scenes at how we got here but only look ahead at this new solution for the Wild Horse & Burro Program”, a solution many are already coining the final one.

Never mind the fact that for two decades, the Government Accountability Office has repeatedly issued reports stating the obvious; BLM cannot provide evidence that removing wild horses and burros improves rangeland health and that the entire concept of excess is based on “informal decisions made by BLM Field Managers” – no data required.

Salazar Sez’s, “Who needs BLM to finally publish their long-awaited acreage report before they hustle more wild horses and burros off the range to multi-million dollar private sanctuaries instead?

And, “Why bother publishing the new policy manual BLM has been writing (for 40 years now!) to establish guidelines on how BLM should go about determining what is appropriate use for wild horses and burros?” After all, BLM would just ignore it anyway like so much else - so why create a legal precedent before shipping most of them to privately owned sanctuaries?

Salazar Sez’s, “Who needs a Congressional investigation into what the Department of the Interior has done to get us to this point?” Despite the DOI’s abysmal reputation for ethic violations, never mind that now, Salazar’s here and those days are behind us!

Salazar Sez’s, “We don’t need an independent count of what’s in the holding pens” – despite the fact that nobody has ever seen all these “excess” horses causing such financial distress. And Salazar doesn’t seem too interested in looking into an independent census of what’s still remaining on the range because, as Salazar Sez’s, “We are going to create a new home for them now anyway!”

Despite nearly a decade of mass cleansings, which has swept the majority of our herds from their ranges, Salazar Sez’s, “Danger! Danger! Excessive wild horses and burros must go now!” and as a result, BLM has scheduled the removals of over 12,000 more wild horses and burros this year based solely on those ‘informal manager decisions’ – even though Salazar’s own home state of Colorado has reported their 292,000 elk have been “over population objectives for the last 20 years” (1) – what’s a decade or two when it comes to elk.

Before following what Salazar Sez’s – because this is not a game and we are not children anymore - let’s take a serious look at what “excess” wild horses and burros on public lands means to Secretary Salazar and BLM before we blindly follow the newest Judas horse just released before the public.



Click on the link above, "The Thriving Natuaral Ecological Balance", to review the full collection of State by State analysis of wild horses and burros populations compared to “everything else”, forage allocations of livestock, and available habitat on federally managed lands.

(1) Taken from "Elk Management in 5 Western States: (Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, and Utah)".

6 comments:

Kathleen said...

Please amend this article to more boldly highlight the link to the analysis document containing the charts. It's not easily found being that it is the actual title at the top of the column. Maybe set off in a box with bold lines surrounding it?

It is also is a bit confusing after you click the link and a google page pops up. It did not go to an actual pdf file immediately for me on the first go round, the google docs page came up instead - it did however on the second visit I made. Another link to the actual pdf document is shown there on the google docs page but the link and option to download or view is small and a bit obscure up in the upper left hand corner. I share this because I just want everyone who comes to this site to see it without fail. It is vital that people read it and understand what these animals are facing and what history shows.

Thank you so much, C.R. McDonald, for compiling this information into a format that cannot be argued. It shows without doubt the injustice and inequality visited upon our wild horses. The fact that all this data has been compiled FROM THEIR VERY OWN RECORDS when available is further indictment of the BLM's mission to eradicate these animals.

WEML said...

Excellen information. I wish you could get a hold of MPickens and Senator Landrieu and shake them a little to make sure they are still breathing.

Why in the he double hockey sticks are they supporting Salazar?

Help!

Lucille

Anonymous said...

Thanks Kathleen Wattle -- there are several people this a.m. grappling with the difficult links/lack thereof/google document issues.

Also thanks You C.R. McDonald but who are you?

Me and Google do not share any DNA I think it is awful. . . sorry.

Preserve The Herds said...

Thanks Kathleen for the heads up and feedback on the problems with this post. I would have addressed them sooner but went out of town immediately after posting it and couldn't take care of it till now.

Per you suggestion, the link has now been highlighted in green, a reference to the link has now been added at the bottom AND a new link to a pdf format report has replaced the Google doc link.

Google has been mixing things up with pdf files/links and because of it, have been having trouble getting doc.'s up in an easy format. However, think this may do the trick and all the bugs are out. If not, let me know and will try to fix.

Sorry everyone for the difficulties and thanks for your patience.

Dario T. W. said...

hello,
good work!
thanks for the pdf - very interesting read. It is making me want to go back to the environmental law.. especially after seeing the charts # 5-12. Is BLM protecting the animals or the corporate interests?
By the way, do you know if BLM has done or will do EIS for all the Herd Management Areas prior to removal - as I recall I think they are required do do so by the WH&B Act, unless Bush amendment changed that. Their reports must be some fine examples of governmental rhetoric, big on fallacies.

So perhaps in this instance messer Salazar is speaking out of a governmental 'duffel bag,' or was very impressed by the prior administration scary-them-all tactics and rule by decree approach, and so he does not want to be seconded. What about the democratic process, Constitution etc, gone already?
I thought this was a new, democratic administration trying to make America beautiful again. I guess the mustang & burro example amply shows they are not any different from dear big man from Texas ridding his Cheynneyesque tractor.
By the way the Pryor roundup in September was done during the Labor Day weekend and I am certain the workers got paid royally - overtime and holiday pay et all - our taxpayer money to destroy our heritage. Is this extra pay for BLM workers a novel approach to curtailing government waste? What it does though it definitely makes them want to roundup more horse herds because of nice profit they make...

habio said...

link exchange?

RAHALL & GRIJALVA ASK FOR ANSWERS!

www.wildhorsesneedyou.com

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