Lesson 1: Kearns and West hired for the Salazar Plan

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THE CLOUD FOUNDATION PRESS RELEASE

BLM uses MMS’s PR and Public Affairs agency to facilitate Salazar’s agenda at June 14th public workshop in Denver—Protest on June 15th

Denver, CO (June 14, 2010)—The Cloud Foundation has learned that the San Francisco based public relations and public affairs firm, Kearns and West, with ties to big energy and offices across the country, has been hired to push the Salazar Plan for Wild Horses and Burros through Congress in Fall 2010—despite public outrage. Kearns and West has expertise in crisis management as well as accomplishing policy and regulatory goals. Their clients range from Mineral Management Services (MMS) and PG&E to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The Department of Interior (DOI) has enlisted the firm using the Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (ECR) as the go between.

Senior mediator of Kearns and West, J. Michael Harty will facilitate an unprecedented public workshop in Denver, Colorado at the Magnolia Hotel, 818 17th Street, on June 14th followed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Public Advisory Board Meeting on June 15th. Both days will be live-streamed and viewing available onwww.thecloudfoundation.org. The public and members of Congress are encouraged to watch.

The public will protest on June 15th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. with a press conference at noon.

BLM’s recently announced and highly polished but unsubstantial, “Strategy Plan” as well as their association with PR firm Kearns and West, appears designed to manipulate the public and marginalize the opposition to the Salazar Plan for wild horses and burros. The plan calls for the purchase of Eastern and Midwestern “preserves” populated by sterilized wild horses, captured from their Western ranges.

“This is ALL about manipulating public opinion. And ramming ONE thing – Salazar’s Plan – through,” states author R.T. Fitch.

The Kearns and West Salazar Plan Executive Summary states, “The U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (‘Institute’) is assisting BLM in assessing stakeholder interests and developing an effective stakeholder engagement plan for the Strategy.” Disturbingly, BLM often does not include the public as a stakeholder in their planning documents regarding the management of wild horses and burros.

“Who is the biggest stakeholder in the discussion of the public’s land and its wild horses if not the public?” asks Terri Farley, author of the Phantom Stallion series, adding “A public agency must represent the public and utilize taxpayer dollars responsibly—not spend excessively on another private contractor.”

According to their website, Kearns and West offers their clients (in this case the BLM) “A compelling credible, resonant case. True, high-impact support for your position.” Advocates support a new direction that abandons the endless, expensive cycle of roundup, removal, and warehousing. BLM must adopt a far less expensive path that is kinder to the land and the wild horses legally living there, one that contains truly transparent solutions, not a slick, taxpayer-funded PR campaign.

“By hiring a high powered PR and Public Affairs firm, it seems that BLM is aiming to extinguish the opposition rather than solve the controversy over their management of our wild herds,” explains Ginger Kathrens, Volunteer Executive Director of the Cloud Foundation. “The public by the thousands has shared their opposition to the Salazar Plan. I hope we can sit down at this public forum and seriously talk about a moratorium on roundups while we work to reinstate protections that are consistent with the intent of the 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act.”

According to The Holmes Report, “Kearns & West recognizes the important value of collaborating both with our clients and their stakeholders. For more than 20 years, the firm has employed its unique brand of stakeholder-centric strategic communications and collaboration processes to design innovative, but pragmatic programs, achieving superior results for clients in the federal, state and local government, private and nonprofit sectors. Kearns & West works with tough issues and big ideas.”

Besides specializing in “accomplishing policy and regulatory goals” Kearns and West also represents PG&E—a primary customer in the Ruby Pipeline natural gas project threatening public lands and five public herds with environmental devastation from Wyoming to Oregon. Kearns and West also represents Duke Energy, the Association of Western Governors and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, among others.

While Secretary Salazar vowed to restore the Interior Department’s “respect for scientific integrity” he has failed to consider science, reason, or even the law when it comes to managing our wild herds. Kearns and West has been known to gather scientific experts and build a movement of common interest “stakeholders” to crush public outcry and true environmentalism. Wild horse advocates feel the Kearns and West prepared Salazar report for Congress will be biased in favor of big energy ties with DOI at the expense of federally protected wild horses who somehow are in the way of “The New Energy Frontier”.

“We hope Monday’s workshop will be a productive one rather than a demonstration of BLM’s inability to change,” concludes Kathrens.

# # #

Makendra Silverman
Makendra@TheCloudFoundation.org
Tel: 719-351-8187

Anne Novak
Anne@TheCloudFoundation.org
Tel: 415-531-8454

Legally BLM can sell wild horses by the truckloads

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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has the legal right–under the 2004 Burns Amendment passed by Congress–to dispose of America’s legendary wild horses through “unlimited sales”. People buying truckloads of wild horses generally sell them to slaughter. In August 2011 one such truckload was busted on it’s way to slaughter.

BLM claims it does not sell wild horses to slaughter directly at this time. . . In effect, the middle man buys the truckloads of wild horses and sells them to the slaughterhouse.

It’s time for more eyes on roundups and more eyes on wild horses in holding.

The public wants to re-protect America’s wild horses especially with horse slaughter plants scheduled to reopen in the U.S.A.

Ask Congress to STOP the roundup$ now.

Mr President

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OBAMA poster © Lise Stampfli 2009

Thank you Lise Stampfli for creating the popular poster for the Stop the Roundups! launch of nationwide and international protests, conceived of and organized by Anne Novak, in San Francisco, December 2009, outside of Senator Feinstein’s office.

Wild horse supporters may use this poster at peaceful protests.

 

Helicopter chasing young wild horses

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Young wild horses are getting injured or killed after being rounded up. Stop the Roundup$.

Share the video, write letters to your senators and representatives to ask for what you want and make a donation so we can save some Calico Complex wild horses.

Let’s end this tragedy and have a Happy 2012!

AP: BLM chief in NV wants more eyes on roundups

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By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press – 12/26/11

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The head of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Nevada is appealing to agency employees to step up and blow the whistle on any abuse of mustangs.

Amy Lueders said that’s the best way to stop horse protection advocates from undermining the agency’s roundup policies with video footage of the mistreatment of the animals and making it harder for federal land managers to win the public’s trust.

“Regardless of title, whether you are a contractor or law enforcement or public affairs, that’s everyone’s responsibility,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

In the past year, BLM has been taken to task by its own internal auditors, independent reviews, a U.S. district judge and camera-toting horse advocates.

A BLM task force that reviewed a roundup near the Nevada-Utah line in July found some mustangs were whipped in the face, kicked in the head, dragged by a rope around the neck and repeatedly shocked with electrical prods.

Twice this year, BLM has issued reports or statements pledging reforms to ensure humane treatment only to have videos of new incidents of mistreatment surface within days.

In the most recent case, this month, Ginger Kathrens was pointing her camera at the wranglers who appeared to be repeatedly shocking several burros with an electric prod.

The practice, called “hot-shotting,” is used to help move them into a pen or trailer and it was being employed the same day BLM chief Bob Abbey issued a report pledging more changes.

Among other things, the report said electrical prods should be used only as a last resort when human or animal safety is in jeopardy, and that they should never be used on a horse’s head or genitals.

“I thought it was ironic that while Bob Abbey was announcing the reforms I was filming the hot-shotting of the burros,” said Kathrens, an Emmy-award winning filmmaker who is the executive director of the Colorado-based Cloud Foundation, a nonprofit horse advocacy group.

Kathrens said she was about the length of two football fields away when, zooming in with her professional lenses, she captured the footage. The video showed the end points on the prods producing a shock when a wrangler lifted it into the air.

Most disturbing to Kathrens was that officials for the U.S. Agriculture Department and BLM were standing near the wranglers and witnessed the shocks but did nothing to interfere.

Kathrens said BLM officials told her privately they shared her concerns in that regard.

That’s where Lueders said agency workers have to do a better job.

Lueders delivered that message to several dozen employees in a video teleconference involving all of Nevada’s BLM offices last week, saying there’s no excuse for turning the other way if they get wind of any inhumane treatment of animals.

Lueders said, however, that it may be easier said than done when it comes to persuading workers to step up in what is often a controversial, and emotionally charged, situation.

But she said she believes her message got through.

“I made it very clear that is my expectation,” she said. “We have a lot of committed, passionate people here who care very much about the resource and the animals themselves. You can tell by that passion and professionalism that everyone takes it very seriously.”

Lisa Ross, a public affairs specialist for the BLM in Winnemucca, said Lueders’ words have been well received and will be taken seriously.

“It’s a very important message to hear,” Ross said. “It doesn’t mean that everything was wrong and now we are making it right. It’s just that it is important and everybody needs to be on the same page on this.”

About 33,000 wild horses freely roam 10 Western states — about half in Nevada. Another 41,000 are kept in government-funded facilities, including one in Herriman, Utah, that came under fire as a result of more video footage taken by horse protection advocates last spring.

A BLM task force asked to investigate issued a report in September confirming “unacceptable” conditions at the overcrowded facility where horses were forced to stand in a 4- to 8-inch deep mixture of mud and manure. BLM has since moved those animals elsewhere.

It was videotape of a helicopter either nudging or getting extremely close to a mustang in August during a roundup in northeast Nevada near the Utah line that prompted U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben to give BLM a stern lecture.

McKibben granted a temporary restraining order requiring helicopters to keep their distance from the galloping mustangs.

Lueders said it is important to remain open to criticism.

“I think we all learn more from each gather,” she said. “Each gather gives us another opportunity to improve what we do.”

Kathrens is among those who believe BLM officials are sincere and is optimistic real reform may soon follow on the range.

But Anne Novak, executive director of Protect Mustangs, based in Berkeley, Calif., isn’t so sure. She said there should be a moratorium on roundups until the agency proves they have mechanisms in place to guarantee safe and humane treatment of the horses.

“The BLM must take responsibility to train their contractors before turning wranglers loose with whips and cattle prods,” she said.

Holiday Wish

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Holiday Wish to Protect America's Horses (Photo © Irma Novak, all rights reserved.)

Our Holiday wish is to protect all of America’s horses–wild and domestic. Please sign and share the petition to ban horse slaughter in the U.S.A.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-usa-horse-slaughter

Thank you for taking action in compassion. Have a blessed holiday season.

Honor the Wild War Horse

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Wild War Horse (Photo © Cynthia Smalley, all rights reserved.)

California is home to some wild horses blended with ancestors of WW1 cavalry remounts. These treasured herds are found east of the Sierra Mountains, between Susanville and the Nevada border.

“We want to see horses treated humanely–they have carried us in battle and helped us plow the fields–just like in the movie WAR HORSE,” explains Anne Novak, Executive Director of California-based Protect Mustangs. “American wild horses deserve humane treatment. BLM needs to revamp their protocol to ensure the horses’ safety as well as create transparency within the Wild Horse and Burro Program. Right now too many bad things are funded with taxpayer dollars.”

Protect Mustangs’ mission is to educate the public about the American wild horse, protect and research wild horses on the range and help those who have lost their freedom.

Evidence

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Studs at Short Term Holding (Photo © Cynthia Smalley, all rights reserved.)

I will confess, I did not attend the public vigil for the 40th Anniversary of the Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act because I am heartbroken. Someone contacted me more than five weeks ago who had evidence proving the cattle–not the wild horses–are damaging the range in the Calico Complex but they are holding back.

Most of the majestic Calico wild horses have been rounded up and torn from their families but they have not all been processed and shipped out to long-term holding . . . not yet.

I lit a candle on December 15th praying that the person with the evidence would come forward so we could prove this roundup was conducted under false pretenses and return the Calico wild horses and burros to their wild homes.

Please join me to light candle for their freedom.

In gratitude,

Anne Novak

Executive Director of Protect Mustangs