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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