Media and Public Advisory from The Cloud Foundation
Taxpayers continue to foot the bill for wild horse removals
Salt Lake City, UT (June 8, 2010)—On June 9, 2010 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will hold a public meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah to discuss the use of helicopters and motorized vehicles during massive wild horse roundups scheduled to begin throughout the state in August. Advocates are encouraged to attend this meeting at the West Desert District office at 6:30 p.m., 2370 South 2300 West, Salt Lake City, Utah.
This meeting will impact pending roundups of Utah wild horse herds including those in the Winter Ridge area of NE Utah (slated for complete removal this summer) and the Confusion and Conger (where a planned spring roundup was successfully delayed) as well as the famous Sulphur herd, all of Western Utah, among others. Additional herds in danger of removal include North Hills (Iron and Washington Counties), and Chokecherry and Mt. Elinor (Beaver and Iron Counties).
“Surface natural gas lines crisscross much of these areas, particularly Winter Ridge and Hill Creek,” said Herd-Watch Project Manager Laura Leigh, who visited the area recently, noting steep drop-offs and canyons, which could be deadly in a helicopter roundup. “Yesterday in Texas we had a buried line apparently hit by a piece of equipment and three people are presumed dead. The lines in Winter Ridge lay on the surface. Not just one line, but many, that in places are hidden from immediate view by vegetation. A roundup in this area could be devastating.”
The Winter Ridge and Hill Creek Herd Areas are slated for removal of 450 horses beginning July 18, 2010 and concluding July 31 despite thousands of public comments urging BLM to cancel the roundups in the West before all the horses are gone. Nearly 12,000 wild free-roaming mustangs and burros are to be permanently removed at a cost of over $30 million in 2010 alone.
The interested public is asked to attend the meeting and raise concerns about the natural gas lines and the current protocol utilized for roundups in Utah, characteristic of those across the West.
“The majority of Utah’s iconic mustangs will be warehoused for life at an enormous expense to the American taxpayer,” states filmmaker and director of the Cloud Foundation, Ginger Kathrens. “At the same time, taxpayers will continue to shell out their tax dollars for the thousands of head of cattle that will remain on Utah’s legally designated wild horse ranges. In addition we have an expanding extraction industry on our public lands. When does management for multiple use cross the line into management that has nothing to do with wild horses?”
Information on attending the meeting is posted online at http://bit.ly/UtahRoundupMtg
Links of interest:
‘Herd-Watch: Public Eyes for Public Horses’ http://bit.ly/9Wvh58
Roundup Schedule- updated May 2010 http://bit.ly/a0xcq7
Dead foal triggers passion about mustang roundup in Nevada: Reno Gazette Journal http://bit.ly/aQdLv2
Wild Horses: Management or Stampede to Extinction? Reno Gazette Special http://bit.ly/stampede2ext
CNN Report, Issues with Jane Valez-Mitchell, March 25th http://bit.ly/dvl7NE
Disappointment Valley… A Modern Day Western Trailer- excellent sample of interviews regarding the issues http://bit.ly/awFbwm
Fact Sheet on Wild Herds & The Salazar Plan http://bit.ly/bfdX1y
Informative Wild Horse Blog American Herds http://americanherds.blogspot.com/
For Further Information Regarding Herd-Watch please contact:
Laura Leigh, Project Manager
CalicoHorses@gmail.com
Photos, video and interviews available from:
The Cloud Foundation
makendra@thecloudfoundation.org
Categories: Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
This is even worse than usual. If the BLM uses a helicopter under these circumstances, I think we can take Abbey’s claptrap about a “new day” and shove it……
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Sorry, to be boring. But I feel compleled to repost these thoughts after absorbing the realities of overbreeding caused by roundups:
Excerpts from Wikipedia: “Perpetuity…a stream of cash payments that continues forever…there is no present value for the principal…”
The next thing that comes to mind – SCAM: A confidence trick or confidence game (also known as a bunko, con, flim flam, gaffle, grift, hustle, scam, scheme, swindle or bamboozle) is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. The victim is known as the mark, the trickster is called a confidence man, con man, confidence trickster, or con artist, and any accomplices are known as shills. Confidence men or women exploit human characteristics such as greed and dishonesty, and have victimized individuals from all walks of life.”
I would change the last sentence: “Confidence men or women exploit human characteristics ‘not only limited to greed and dishonesty, but also including care and compassion, and entire taxpaying societies’, and have victimized individuals from all walks of life.”
Hold onto your hats if there is a natural gas incident – it will be blamed on the wild horses! Then there will be even more roundups (but they will leave just few).
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