Press Release from the Cloud Foundation
Humane Observers Need Daily Access to Monitor Horses’ Well-Being
Result of BLM's lack of care - Photo by Laura Leigh
Fallon, NV (May 21, 2010)—On Sunday, May 16th, visitors and humane observers to the government holding pens in Fallon, Nevada found injured wild horses and photographed a starving, emaciated colt among the 2,100 mustangs. The young colt had clearly been struggling for multiple days and was not placed in a hospital pen with his mother. Advocates alerted Bureau of Land Management (BLM) staff to the colt’s poor condition. After the facility closed the only veterinarian, responsible for the care of over 3,000 horses at two BLM facilities, was called in and euthanized the colt. The Washoe County Sheriff is currently investigating multiple incidences of animal abuse at the Fallon Facility.
“We have been saying for months that one veterinarian is not adequate to monitor thousands of wild horses and now more than 300 foals,” states Ginger Kathrens, Director of the Cloud Foundation. “If volunteers were allowed on a regular basis to view these horses the death of this little colt might have been prevented.”
Foals are not counted in BLM records and the deaths are not listed in the BLM daily reports. The emaciated colt’s death is in addition to at least 90 fatalities to date as a result of wintertime Calico roundup in Northwestern Nevada.
The BLM allows only ten people to visit Fallon one time per week, on Sunday, for a couple of hours despite repeated requests for increased access. Tours are currently postponed and may be cancelled permanently despite a clear need to observe recently castrated males, pregnant mares and young foals.
“These horses were taken off the range because BLM claimed they were at risk of dehydration and starvation, the reasons given for destroying this captive foal. These deaths are avoidable. Northern Nevada’s precipitation is 128% of normal,” explains Terri Farley, author of the famed Phantom Stallion Series. “Born in the wild, instead of suffering in a fenced sand box, the foal might have lived.”
Links of interest:
BLM Daily Fallon Reports http://bit.ly/dailyfallon
Humane Observer Reports from Fallon http://humaneobserver.blogspot.com/
CNN Report, Issues with Jane Valez-Mitchell, March 25th http://bit.ly/dvl7NE
Herd-Watch http://bit.ly/9Wvh58
Roundup Schedule- updated May 2010 http://bit.ly/74789s
Wild Horses: Management or Stampede to Extinction? Reno Gazette Sunday Special by Frank X. Mullen. http://bit.ly/9rGFwV
American Herds – “What’s Left?” http://americanherds.blogspot.com/2009/12/whats-left.htmlAmerican
Wild Horse Preservation Campaign http://www.wildhorsepreservation.com/
Disappointment Valley… A Modern Day Western Trailer- excellent sample of interviews regarding the issues http://bit.ly/awFbwm
Photos, video and interviews available from:
The Cloud Foundation
news@thecloudfoundation.org
107 S. 7th St. – Colorado Springs, CO 80905 – 719-633-3842 www.thecloudfoundation.org
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Categories: Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
IF the sheriff’s dept does anything, I will be totally surprised. So sad and un-necessary.
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I’m completely with you on this. I’d be shocked altho it sure would be nice to see the sheriff telling the Feds what to do, or rather to do the right thing.
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Me too, Maggie. I’d probably keel over from the shock. But, we can hope.
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How do they continually get away with breaking the federal laws which require care and medical treatment of the horses and colts in their care. On the range, they would have all been healthy and happy. So much for the President’s concern for the Dept of the Interior and what they are doing both to the horses, the range and the oil spill in the Gulf. Nothing is being done to bring justice to any Interior situation it seems. Salazar needs to go, and maybe so does Obama. I am really disappointed in him. Like most politicians he seems to be have just been hot air, too.
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So the wild horses are taken off public lands where the public can view them 24 hours a day if they want, and placed on private land where only 10 people out of a country of 300 million can view them for 2 hours on any given Sunday? And this same public pays the bill for all the employees and the care of these horses? Do I have that right?
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You got it!
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Now I see, in order to cover their behinds, that the BLM has posted on their Daily Report, (which from now on, is going to be the Weekly Report), that they knew about this colt all along and had been watching it, (not what they said last week), and there also seems to be a discrepancy about the age according to the humane observers’ reports. I guess they think that this absolves them of any responsibility??!!
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If I kill the horses on my property by with-holding food/water/vet care I expect to end up in jail–for at least 5 years. Salazar goes free to kill again– and my tax dollar is paying him!! What is happening here? Thank you Ginger Kathrens and the herd observer teams across the west — keep on reporting about this– and I will call the White House again. Every day ……………
Now about the Gulf oil spill…… isn’t that Salazar again?? Why is he in charge??
By the way — The Roberts Company has demonstrated using HAY to absorb the oil–
Mr. Salazar –free the horses–they were fine without you–nature controlled the populations.
Mr. Salazar–put the hay you aren’t feeding the horses into the Gulf to clean up the oil.
I am so disgusted –who’s responsible for these 2 tragedies? Keep them away from me!
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I put in a call to blm about this foal, got one return call with the “promise” it would be looked into and I would get a follow up call. If they were watching this foal wouldn’t there be notations somewhere if nothing else to CYA?
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So the BLM says they were ‘watching’ this foal? what were they watching? watching it die??
such a hopeless feeling the blm gives me, they seem like sadists to the public. Their main man John G. ? says anyone can see the mustangs anytime, He lies as we can see the blm sets up 2 hours a week for limit 10 and has turned back people who came thousands of miles to see the horses.
And then the wild horses the blm neglects, people offer to take them to their Vets and the BLM says NO and shoots them. The blm seem experts in dishing out emotional abuse, speak-up and we will kill the mustang you are trying to help. Speak-up about conditions and we will make the conditions even worse.
my God a single person can inventory 100,000 items a day and the ‘management’ with the horses can’t even look at each horse in their care for a few seconds a DAY?? If they are paid for a full day of care, they better use their eyes and work that 8 hour day! I’d like to see their time-sheet..they better not be paid to watch animals die!
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Good thing they don’t do child care also, we’d be missing an entire generation.
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One more, of the countless, examples of the BLM’s blatant disrespect, indifference, & hatred of other living beings, especially our wild horses. That poor baby never had a chance at life, but, maybe now he or she is running & frolicking, & kicking up it’s hooves, &, forever free & wild in the Heavens, never to be afraid or hurt again !! I am just so sick of constantly hearing how mean & hateful the human race is, & of all the bad news for the animals, our beautiful wild horses!! When will it stop?
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Do we all realize that this precious baby only got to experience a week or so of its precious life? It was treatable. This is wrong on every level. This foal was not ill, it was starving. It was walking the fenceline right up to when the vet took the lazyass way out and euthanized it.
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Maybe this has been asked, but…what ass***e government reg slithering out of the DOI/BLM/USFS/USDA decides that any animal born in holding is not part of the round-up count or population count? As a side note (maybe IDA is listening, but that judge is sucking up WAYYYY, WAYYY too much time doing nothing), how does one effectively plan for food, facility, medical for any population if the authority decides to eliminate a portion of the potential population/real population???
Excuse me, but any real planning authority can’t exclude any possible contingency. I understand fed contracting…the DOI is lying and if IDA of CBD aren’t suing them regarding DOIs obvious failure to follow acquisition law AND regs…then the litigants don’t understand Fed law and regs and wasting time and wildlife lives.
BTW…Shitazar is now sans cowboy hat and sitting shieva re the Gulf wildlife because BP just is NOT listening to him. He is in a baseball cap on Sunday talking head tv. He is the problem.
President Obama. You have many problems. However, you have at least TWO individuals that are hiding resolution and acknowledgement: Rahm Emmanuel and Ken Salazar.
You let Blair go …what a joke! Nepalitano, Salazar and Emmanuel have failed us/US REPEATEDLY!!!!!
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I think this poor baby needs a giant billboard with the simple text.
BLM KILLS ANOTHER ONE. BLM 4.8 million wild horses killed and only 15,000 more to go!
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I’m with you on this Laura.
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I am having a hard time with this matter; I remember in the 1980’s I had gone to the Palomino Valley holding pens (much smaller facility then) and was able to adopt a total of 8 leppies (the orphan foals that don’t count), and was charged just a mere $2.00 (two dollars) per foal. I had brought home 6 fillies, and two stud colts at the time. I had been told by a BLM worker that the mortality rate for the foals then was about 97% and if I was lucky to have any more than one in the first 6 months survive it would be a miracle, mainly when it was winter time; and it would do me no good to give them a name until after the six months had passed. I had real faith in what I was doing and gave each one a name as it entered the squeeze shoot to be haltered.
On the way home I noticed that one of the stud colts (Sparks of Fire, a beautiful black colt with just a white arrowhead on each hind heel) had been laying down, and was refusing to get to his feet. I could not go into the trailer to check on him because none of them could have a drag line placed on them at the time of loading them at the facility. I was concerned that he may get hurt by being stepped on by one of the other foals that were in the trailer with him. It was a two hour ride for a human with one rest stop, but with the little ones in the trailer we stopped three times for a matter of at least 20 minutes each time. So it took about four hours get them home.
Once we arrived I backed the trailer up to the grassy third of an acre holding pen that they would be in with the stalls for shelter, shavings for bedding, a feeder filled with a bale and a half of alfalfa hay, and fresh running water. This was their new home where they would have the time to acclimate and to adjust to having humans around. After about one week of just going in and cleaning around them, calling each of them by the name given the day they had been adopted. it was not much longer until I would open the feed room door and sit there with a flake of hay in my lap (sit feeding) to allow more of a trust building exercise with them. It was not but a total of three weeks that I had the chance to touch each one on his or her ear and had them with a drag line on that would allow me to begin to work with each one daily.
In the first two months I had lost one of the fillies Lil Miss Phit she was about three or four month old bay filly at the time of her adoption, she could not have been more than six months according to the vet which came out to sign the death certificate and to validate the freeze brand on her neck, so that it could be reported to the BLM office in Sacramento County where I lived. Another two weeks had passed and another filly Bound and Determined (BD for short my solid sorrel) had been found down in the stall area of the pen. She did not even try to get up, I knew then that something was wrong, her legs were getting cold, I had to do something. I went to work getting the shaving from around her, grabbed an electric blanket to put on her. I still could not get her on her feet.
I was in a panic at this time, and my brother came out to help me get the trailer out to the pen without spooking the others. Then we set out to get her pulled into the trailer to head off to the vets office. I had found out that there was nothing other than colic that had been her trouble. She was treated and we (my brother and I) brought her home. The next day she was down once more, and in a matter of a few hours passed away. I had a necropsy done on her at the ranch, when the vet had opened her up he had found frothing in her traikia he was shocked, he then opened up her stomach and found a five gallon bucket of fine sand in her gut. Come to find out my herd had sand colic!!! Sparks of Fire was the next to come down with it, then York’s Ambition was next. By this time I had been in touch with the vet that had done the necropsy on BD, and he was willing to treat these animals free of charge! He believed in what I was doing and seen that I was willing to ANYTHING for them.
With the love from my family, friends, and the vet Playboy Bunny, Sparks of Fire, York’s Ambition, Daniel’s Doll, Freedom Gal, and Pal’s Rescue where all saved.
This was a long time ago, and since then they had a long happy life with me and my family. They had a long life with us and each died of old age. There are still some of their foals in the family from that foundation herd, each one reminds us of the grand sires and dams with the personality. The BLM officer from the office in Sacramento was amazed that I had just the two pass away from the eight. He had told me that was almost unheard of back then.
I do still hold the BLM facility responsible for the condition of thes foals and their meaningless death that could have been prevented with having a better feeding system so that they would not eat the sand as they ate the hay from the ground, and a much better veterinarian staffing.
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