Photo: Divide Basin band.

Dear Friends:

Not everything we do here at the Cloud Foundation is in the limelight, but it is crucial in our fight to keep our wild horse families living in precious freedom on their home ranges.  Our legal efforts to do this are costly. Some go on for years, like our commitment to preventing the cruel sterilization of the entire Saylor Creek Herd in Idaho.

Our fight to prevent the removal of all the wild horses in Utah’s Beaver County continues as does our work to keep wild horses living wild and free on the vast checkerboard lands of southern Wyoming.

Preventing wild horse families from losing their freedom on lands in the checkerboard along the I-80 corridor is a real challenge. The powerful Rock Springs Grazing Association covets all these lands for their cattle and sheep. They want the wild horses gone, removed, and locked up!

Bottom line, we have to keep as many horses out of holding as we possibly can! This is a critical time and legal action is one of the only ways to keep them safe on their homes on the range.

As most of you know, my colleagues on BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board voted to destroy the wild horses in holding. I was the only dissenting voice. The door the Advisory Board cracked open last fall could swing wide if the Secretary of the Interior supports the “humane euthanasia” of thousands of healthy wild horses in holding. This is a very real possibility.

Please consider a special donation to support our legal efforts. We had two precedent-setting wins in Federal District Court last year which will help protect wild horses in the future. To continue our legal battles, your generous support is essential!

Click here to donate to the TCF Mustang Legal Fund.

Thanks,
Ginger Kathrens

The Cloud Foundation
107 South 7th St
Colorado Springs, CO 80905
www.thecloudfoundation.org

Please Comment by April 17 on the Planning Expansion of the Gold Bar Mine. Nevada wild horse herds threatened!

Dear Friends of our Wild Horses:

Comments for an Environmental Impact Statement are due April 17th, 2017 regarding the massive expansion of the Gold Bar Mine north of Eureka, Nevada.

If this expansion moves forward it will threaten three wild horse herds areas: Roberts Mountain, Fish Creek, and Whistler Herd Management Areas (HMAs).

Please take a few minutes and comment on this destructive mining project using your own words.

Here are a few key points we suggest you make to the Bureau of Land Management:

1. Open pit gold mining is the most destructive use of the land with little ability to mitigate the damage.
2. The project would expand to 44,000 acres or 62.5 square miles.
3. The project would consume approximately 2 billion gallons of water over a ten-year period, depleting both surface and ground water.
4. Nevada is the driest state in the Union.
5. Lack of water is regularly the reason BLM/Nevada gives for conducting emergency removals of wild horses from the range. 14 herds were zeroed out in 2009 based on the prediction of little available water!
6. Wild horses and other wildlife will suffer from the environmental destruction and lack of water. Sage Grouse occupy the area and are a species of critical environment concern.
7. The mining expansion is based on out-of-date mining plans from 1992.
8. Gold mining is highly speculative. The previous mine owners, Atlas Corporation, filed for bankruptcy and abandoned the land in an unreclaimed condition in 1999.

Read TCF full comments here:  EISCommentsGoldBarMineNV. Tell BLM to select the NO ACTION ALTERNATIVE.

Send your comments to Christine Gabriel, Project Manager, Subject: DEIS MMI Gold Bar Mine Project, Email: blm_nv_bmdo_mlfo_gold_bar_project_eis@blm.gov.

Thanks very much for helping our Nevada wild herds!

Happy Trails!
Ginger Kathrens

The Cloud Foundation
107 South 7th St
Colorado Springs, CO 80905
www.thecloudfoundation.org

Photo – Ann Evans.

In October, Ann Evans and I visited the northernmost point of the Outer Banks Islands off the coast of North Carolina. I have wanted to see the wild horses there for a long time.

The island might seem inhospitable for wild horses but, for nearly 500 years, it has been home to a wild herd. Named for the Island on which they live, the Corolla Wild Horses are survivors of shipwrecks on a turbulent coastline called the Graveyard of the Atlantic.  Now, however, the horses are severely endangered. Recent, rampant development of their tiny island threatens to destroy the herd. Fewer than 100 animals remain.

DNA work on the herd by Dr. E. Gus Cothran of Texas A&M University confirms their unique Spanish heritage and also their vulnerability to inbreeding. The herd has only one matrilineal line remaining. Plans for captive breeding are underway but uncontrolled development could leave the herd with no room to roam.

If you want to help these tough, little survivors, we urge you to contact the Corolla Wild Horse Fund – www.corollawildhorsefund.org. Ask the Fund what you can do to help.

Our thanks go out to Karen McCalpin, Executive Director of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, and Meg Puckett, Herd Manager, for guiding and educating us. It was an unforgettable trip as you can see from this video!

Happy Trails,
Ginger

The Cloud Foundation
info@thecloudfoundation.org

Can Wild Horses and Burros Survive the 2016 Election?

There has been a move afoot for several years to privatize our public lands, turning over millions of acres owned by the American public to states or corporations or even individuals. Take the Bundy family for instance. They have refused to pay their grazing fees for decades, claiming that public lands belong to them because they live next door. Never mind they didn’t buy the land. They believe they are entitled.

This isn’t the first time a movement such as this reared its rapacious head. In the 1980s a Secretary of the Interior named James Watt supported a similar movement. It was called the Sagebrush Rebellion. Thankfully, he and the movement faded away, but guess what? They’re baaaaaack.

If you think wild horses and burros have had it tough in the past 20 years (and they have!) consider how much worse it would get if the state of Utah or Nevada for instance had the ability to make decisions on whether to allow wild horses and burros to roam free.

Without the protections afforded in the Wild Horse and Burro Act, the wild horses and burros would be history. Consider this when you vote next week. Where do your candidates stand on this issue?

The Cloud Foundation
info@thecloudfoundation.org

Points to TCF/AWHPC Lawsuit as Reason for Halting Wild Mare Sterilization

The BLM announced that it was not accepting the recommendation from their National Advisory board to destroy the horses in holding and offering the horses that had not been adopted after three adoption events for sale without limitation.  This recommendation met a firestorm of outrage across the country and caused our phones to ring off the hook.  I voted “no” on this recommendation.

Most of you know that in March of this year I was chosen by the Secretary of the Interior to serve as the Humane Advocate on this nine-member board. Just last week I flew to Elko Nevada for my second BLM National Advisory Board meeting.  It was eventful to say the least.

Before the meeting began, I learned that BLM decided to drop all three sterilization research projects that were to be conducted on wild mares (and fillies as young as 8 months).  In announcing that the horses in holding would not be killed, BLM Director Neil Kornze referenced our lawsuit (TCF and AWHPC), requesting to be present to view and record the sterilization procedures, as the reason the experiments in Oregon were cancelled. Others lawsuits and the thousands of letters, emails and phone calls from concerned Americans certainly played a part as well. Great job, advocates!

But, this celebration was short lived. On the second day of the meeting, my colleagues on the Resources Working Group (we have five working groups) recommended to the entire Board that the horses in holding be destroyed and those offered for adoption three-times unsuccessfully, should be sold without limitation (i.e. buy as many as you want).  The Board then voted on this recommendation. I was the only dissenting vote. In fact, I said, “Absolutely not, no.” It was an easy decision.

We learned that BLM voted “no” as well. This does not mean the horses in holding and on the range are out of trouble. I remember the documents that came to my office in late 2008 revealing secret BLM meetings in which the agency discussed how many horses could be killed each year and how many psychologists would be needed to counsel BLM employees asked to kill healthy wild horses.

In June, I was asked to speak before the House Sub-Committee on Federal Lands. It was clear that the Western congressional representatives had no interest in hearing what I had to say. They wanted the horses gone, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming purred that euthanasia of thousands of captive wild horses would be such “a lovely way to die.” See our press release.

So where do we go from here? It is imperative that we continue to speak up, encouraging BLM to use humane tools to limit births in our wild horse herds. TCF board member, Sandra Sell-Lee, in collaboration with BLM, has developed an On the Range Management Guide, in which volunteers get out on the range and apply infertility vaccines to wild mares as recommended by the National Academies of Science in their 2013 report to BLM. The ultimate goal is limiting reproduction to natural mortality. And to reduce the number of wild horses held in short term corrals, we should return these non-reproducing geldings and mares to available BLM lands designated for wild horse use, but where no wild horses currently live.

I hope you will join us and support this effort. It will be hard. It will take time. It will take a lot of energy and tremendous persistence. But it is ultimately a way to keep our wild horses where they belong… in their homes, with their families, living in precious freedom!

Lawsuits like the one to stop the sterilization of wild mares are not cheap. I hope you will consider making a contribution to our organization to cover the costs of fighting legally for the rights of our wild horses — those in the wild and those held captive. Thanks for your help.

Happy Trails!
Ginger

The Cloud Foundation
info@thecloudfoundation.org