Dear Supporters of the Pryor Wild Horse Herd;
I want to share the following letter (link below) we received this week from the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area (BCNRA) regarding signage which they have erected along the paved Park Highway. It alerts motorists that there are animals on the road. We appreciate your emails and letters encouraging this action by the BCNRA in response to the hit and run deaths of the band stallion, Admiral, and his yearling son, Climbs High (Kapitan is his BLM name) along the park highway last summer.
As you may recall, the driver of a truck, Adam Finn of Germantown TN, was intoxicated when he ran them down at 2 am on July 24th. His case is being heard in the Lander, WY U.S. District Court and, as yet, no decision has been reached. Mr. Finn drove away from the accident, but his truck broke down about a mile from the crime scene. Authorities found him still drunk in his truck the next morning.
Ginger & Trace in the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness, Colorado. Photo by Ann Evans
Dear Friends of the Wild;
I moved to Colorado nearly 40 years ago, captivated by the wild beauty of this inspiring place. Here I could immerse myself in true wilderness where opportunities existed to glimpse animals I had only seen in pictures — mountain lions, bighorn sheep, mule deer, elk, black bears, golden eagles, mountain goats, and even wild horses.
Much has changed in these last four decades. Colorado has been highly developed on the front range of our magnificent Rockies, but there are still those hauntingly beautiful, undisturbed landscapes I once dreamed about. Linda Hanick, an extraordinary Colorado wild horse advocate, writes about one of them in her report below.
Our state has only a few hundred wild horses remaining and often they live tucked away in secluded country like that visited by Linda last week. She was present on the last day of the largest roundup of the year in Colorado. Over two hundred robust, glowing mustangs were stampeded by a helicopter, losing in an instant what they value most — their freedom and their families. I encourage you to read the account of her journey to Colorado’s western slope.
Monday, October 3, 2011 — Washington, D.C. — Earlier this year, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) was honored to announce the exclusive release of the Rolling Stones’ classic “Wild Horses” – performed and produced by the legendary Willie Nelson and his family members. Now, Willie & The Nelson Family have followed up with the release of a video for the song featuring Willie, his daughter Paula, son Lukas and many others from the Nelson family. The video, filmed and produced by Luck Films, was shot at Willie’s ranch in Luck, Texas and features some of the over 40 horses, both wild and domestic, that Willie has helped rescue from slaughter. Willie & The Nelson Family are donating the proceeds from the sale of the song to AWI’s campaigns on behalf of wild and domestic horses. Willie and the entire Nelson family are long-time supporters of AWI and its efforts to end horse slaughter and preserve the right of wild horses to roam free.
“The BLM has been rounding them up at an alarming rate, supposedly for their own good. Sadly, there are more wild horses in holding pens than in the wild. Something is wrong with that, so we must act now before the BLM has managed these magnificent animals into extinction,” said Willie Nelson. “It’s time for the cowboys to stand up for the horses.”
The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was enacted in 1971 to halt the disappearance of these iconic animals from public lands in the American West. Since then, however, over 21 million acres of land set aside by Congress for wild horses have been removed from their range, even as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – the very agency charged with their protection – claims there is not enough land to support existing herds. The BLM is unnecessarily removing horses based on spurious claims of damage to range and other adverse impacts. The BLM’s mismanagement of America’s wild horses is largely designed to benefit a livestock industry that has, for decades, exploited western public lands while profiting from massive subsidies funded by taxpayer dollars. Willie & The Nelson Family and AWI are calling on the BLM and the Obama administration to immediately halt all wild horse round-ups, restore the land provided by law to wild horses and stop warehousing horses on private lands at even greater expense to the taxpayer.
Two wild horses from the White Mountain herd in southern Wyoming
Dear Friends of our Wild Horses and Burros,
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is accepting comments on their provisional committee members. The study will be reviewing the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program. However, the current provisional committee makeup is vastly unbalanced.
An NAS committee is supposed to be balanced and free of conflicts of interest, as mandated by federal law. But the current committee members chosen for this study do not represent this impartiality. Some of the committee members have strong ties with largely anti-wild horse organizations, such as the Nevada Cattleman’s Association and the Wildlife Society.
The future of America’s wild horses and burros may rest in the hands of this NAS study. The scope of the study itself is expected to take two years to complete and is to include information on total populations, genetic diversity, annual growth rates, population control, immunocontraception, appropriate management level (AML) establishments or adjustments, and managing a portion of a population as non-reproducing.
I encourage everyone to make their own comments (which are only being accepted electronically here) on these tentatively selected committee members. Below are some talking points you can make in your comments.
You can submit your comments here no later than September 26th.
Madeleine Pickens, the Founder of Saving America’s Mustangs, will be a keynote speaker at this year’s Equine Welfare Conference in Alexandria, VA on September 28th, 2011.
Other distinguished speakers include: Congressman Jim Moran, Senator Landrieu’s Aide, State Senator Dave Wanzenried, Congressman Burton’s Aide, Paula Bacon the former mayor of Kaufman, TX, Ann Marini, Ph.D., M.D., Ginger Kathrens of The Cloud Foundation, Michael Blowen of Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Facility, Keith Dane with The Humane Society of the U.S., Lonita Stewart with Canadian Horse Defence Coalition, Katie Fite with Western Watersheds Project, and authors Deanne Stillman and Alex Brown.
Event Location: Marriott Residence Inn
1456 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
CONFERENCE AGENDA Registration Fees:
All 3 days, includes Tuesday night banquet $150
Individual Day $75
Student: All 3 days, includes Tuesday night banquet $75
Student: Individual
Day $40
note: banquet is only included with 3 day registration
The Women’s Horse Industry Network has announced that Madeleine Pickens has been selected to receive a WHINNY award. The awards dinner will be held on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at the Radisson Hotel Opryland. It will be videotaped as part of a one hour special on HRTV.
“We are very happy to present this award to Madeleine. This woman not only works hard to help animals and horses but has put her money where her boots are and where her passion lives. People like Madeleine deserve to be recognized and applauded for their efforts. We will do everything we can to help promote her and her efforts. It definitely will be my pleasure to hand her this award,” states WHIN’s Executive Director, Catherine Masters.
Animal rights advocate Madeleine Pickens started her career in horse racing in 1983, a passion she shared with her late husband and Gulfstream Aerospace founder, Allen E. Paulson. They achieved enormous success in racing and had a total of 800 horses, including breeding and racing World Champion and U.S. Hall of Fame inductee, Cigar. They achieved much esteem for their successes racing many champion Thoroughbreds, breeding many brood mares, and creating three successful farms from the ground up. Together, they owned a breaking and training farm at Ocala and a breeding farm at Brookside North in Kentucky where many of their champions were raised. They also had one more facility in California. Madeleine managed all the business aspects, farm decisions, and race decisions for the entire operation. The Paulsons owned more than 115 winners of graded stakes races. To this day, they still hold the record for the leader of the most ‘Breeder’s Cup’ champion horses and earnings.
Today, she is still breeding a few racehorses, but adamantly opposes horse slaughter and the use of the drugs in these animals. Until that is cleared up, she won’t ever participate in the race world like she had once been.
Chicago (EWA) – A coalition of animal welfare groups including the Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA) and the Animal Law Coalition has announced the first International Equine Conference (IEC) to be held September 26-28 at the Marriott Residence Inn, Old Town Alexandria, Va.
The three day event will feature renowned experts on the welfare and preservation of both domestic and wild equines, legislators and medical experts. Presentations will address many aspects of the field ranging from horse slaughter to wild equine preservation and will include related human and animal health concerns.
“Few subjects have been clouded by so much misinformation as these,” says John Holland of the Equine Welfare Alliance. “We intend to provide a forum where attendees can get a documented, factual understanding of these complex issues.”
Among the many distinguished speakers will be Madeleine Pickens of Saving America’s Mustangs, Senator Mary Landrieu, Congressman Jim Moran, State Senator Dave Wanzenried, Paula Bacon the former mayor of Kaufman, TX, Ann Marini, Ph.D., M.D., Ginger Kathrens of The Cloud Foundation, Michael Blowen of Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Facility, Keith Dane with The Humane Society of the U.S., Lonita Stewart with Canadian Horse Defence Coalition, Katie Fite with Western Watersheds Project and authors Deanne Stillman and Alex Brown. A complete list of the presenters can be viewed at http://www.equinewelfarealliance.org/Int_l_Equine_Conference.html.
Lynx, in Cloud's band, could be removed next year as a yearling.
Dear Friends of Cloud, his family, and herd;
The time is rapidly drawing to a close for you to be submit your letter to help prevent another removal in Cloud’s herd in 2012. I know you all care deeply for Cloud and his family, just as I do, and it is of vital importance that we all stand together to help the Pryor herd. It is therefore of the upmost importance that you submit a letter in your own writing to the BLM Billings Field Office postmarked by August 30th.
We’ve written our letter, which you can read here. I encourage you to take a look at it, and use it to help you with your own letter if you haven’t written yours already. You can also read over some talking points to help you get started. A reminder that BLM is not accepting emailed comments (we crashed their server last time!), so you can mail them yourself to the address below or you can email them to us at info@thecloudfoundation.org and we will mail them for you. You can also fax your comments to (406) 896-5281. Although we are all frustrated that this unique little herd is continually being threatened, please remember to be polite.
I hope you will all take a moment to help Cloud and the Pryor herd. Thanks so much!
Happy Trails! Ginger
You can mail your letters to:
Jim Sparks, Field Manager
BLM Billings Field Office
5001 Southgate Drive
Billings, MT 59101
Dear Friends of Cloud, his family, and herd;
The BLM Billings Field Office mailed a Scoping Letter to interested parties on July 28th, stating their intent to reach an “Appropriate” Management Level (AML) of 90-120 adult wild horses, one year of age and older in the Pryor Mountains. If they carry out this plan 45 to as many as 75 horses would be removed in 2012. We cannot allow this to happen.
Our position is clear — there is absolutely no need for any removals.
It is important that you respond to an action which would threaten the continued existence of the Pryor Wild Horse Herd. Please write a factual letter to the BLM using some of the information provided here. Remember that BLM will not consider your response unless it is clearly your message — no copying of the list supplied here. Please use your own words to communicate your polite outrage at such an unwarranted proposal.
You will note in our list of recommended response topics, the support of PZP, the one-year infertility drug. This comes as a departure for TCF. However, the remotely delivered drug given at the correct time of year has reduced the foal population and it has given us a good argument to fight for no removals. We still strongly believe in the long-range goal of natural management without helicopters or bait traps or drugs. We see PZP as a means to an end, and that end is a hands off strategy in which Mother Nature calls the shots as much as possible.
August 9, 2011 – Chicago (EWA) – The Progressive Rancher Magazine has issued a response to the article in Time Magazine on the Madeleine Pickens proposed wild horse sanctuary. It is ironic that the response accuses equine advocates of “misrepresentations and distortions” of truth but is full of the authors’ own misrepresentations and distorted truth.
The story, which was not available online, was immediately distributed in a press release by Sue Wallis of United Horsemen LLC., a staunch horse slaughter supporter and opponent of wild equine preservation.
Many western ranchers are licensed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to graze cattle on public lands for token fees well below the government’s administrative costs, leading opponents of the practice to refer to them as “welfare ranchers”. Since welfare ranchers on public lands are one of the driving forces behind the removals of America’s wild horses and burros, it came as no surprise that such a magazine would distort the truth to further their agenda for more removals.
Such is the widespread sense of entitlement in this community that they exhibit outright anger at having to share public lands they feel should be solely for the use of their privately owned livestock that currently outnumber mustangs by at least 50 to 1.
The article quotes long-time equine advocate, Willis Lamm, in an attempt to discredit all information from equine advocates. In response, Lamm commented, “It’s ironic that Sue Wallis, who along with her group that I have long considered to be included among those Hysteria Corps, laptop experts and self-promoters, would be so careless as to publish my criticisms of their very actions in her press release.”
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Monday, October 3, 2011 — Washington, D.C. — Earlier this year, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) was honored to announce the exclusive release of the Rolling Stones’ classic 
Madeleine Pickens, the Founder of Saving America’s Mustangs, will be a keynote speaker at this year’s Equine Welfare Conference in Alexandria, VA on September 28th, 2011.
The Women’s Horse Industry Network has announced that Madeleine Pickens has been selected to receive a WHINNY award. The awards dinner will be held on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at the Radisson Hotel Opryland. It will be videotaped as part of a one hour special on HRTV.
Chicago (EWA) – A coalition of animal welfare groups including the Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA) and the Animal Law Coalition has announced the first International Equine Conference (IEC) to be held September 26-28 at the Marriott Residence Inn, Old Town Alexandria, Va.
