Calico Roundup (Photo © Cat Kindsfather, all rights reserved)

Dear Mustang Friends,

We have witnessed cruelty as a result of the Calico roundup and join with other wild horse and burro advocates to demand the roundup stop now!

Please sign and share this petition to stop the roundup. We want to see the wild horses and burros returned to their wild land not warehoused in long-term holding.

Rounding up wild horses and burros to warehouse them in captivity is a cruel waste of more than 75 million taxpayer dollars annually. The 2010 Calico helicopter roundup was one of the deadliest in history.

Now, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is doing another helicopter roundup in Calico northeast of Gerlach, Nevada. The roundup will waste taxpayer dollars for 40-50 days.

The BLM is chasing up to 1,300 wild horses and burros over 1,041,000 acres of American range in order to round them up. There have been several documented instances of cruelty. We want this to stop now.

Wild horses and burros are healthy on the range and cost the American taxpayer virtually nothing to be left roaming in freedom. They foster biodiversity and graze on grass that helps to reduce wildfires. Wild horses have natural predators such as mountain lions that are often killed off to protect livestock.

If overpopulation would become a problem then humane solutions exist but another deadly helicopter roundup in winter is not the answer.

Wild horses have been scapegoated for range damage whereas the majority of damage is caused by huge amounts of livestock and “multiple-use” protects such as natural gas complexes and mining—not the few wild horses who are constantly moving across the landscape.

The horse originated in America. Despite being an indigenous species, today less than 19 thousand wild horses roam in the Western United States whereas in 1900, 2 million wild horses existed here.

No sound science justifies the Calico roundup and no accurate head count exists. The National Academy of Science study on wild horses and burros is only beginning but they will have nothing to study if all America’s horses are taken off the range.

Thriving Natural Ecological Balance (TNEB) exists in the Calico Complex today except for some “multiple use” damage from the extractive and livestock industries.

There is no “excess” of wild horses and burros because of the TNEB in the Tri-State Calico Complex. On public land, livestock dominates wild horses at 50 to 1.

If allowed to continue, the Calico roundup will destroy wildlife. Removing the majority of wild horses and burros, giving experimental contraceptives to those released and meddling with the natural balance of equine society by twisting the sex ratios creates a man-made stressful dynamic—aggravated by releasing more stallions than mares.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Free Roaming Wild Horse & Burro Act, we ask you to take action according to the will of American taxpayers and animal loving people around the world. Mr. President and the United States Congress we ask you to stop the cruel and costly Tri-State Calico Complex roundup and return the wild horses and burros to their wild homelands where they can live in freedom and at minimal cost to the taxpayer.

In gratitude,

Anne Novak

Executive Director of Protect Mustangs

I’d like to introduce you to Karen Sussman who is the heroine and Executive Director at Wild Horse Annie’s foundation, The International Society for the Protection of Wild Horses and Burros. For decades she has carried on Velma Johnstons’ work to protect the beloved wild equids in America

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Also I would like to present Ginger Kathrens, Executive Director at The Cloud Foundation. She is the wild horse advocate who has documented Cloud The Stallion (PBS Nature) for more than 16 years. Kathrens is the only person to have documented the life of a mammal from birth through life in the northern hemisphere and is hailed as the Jane Goodall for wild horses. I enjoyed working with Ginger Kathrens for the past two years and want to honor her.

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We are grateful to have so many other heros helping the movement to protect wild horses and burros and want to thank everyone. Together we shall work miracles.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s internal review of a wild horse roundup in Nevada 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, but the agency concluded none of the mistreatment rose to the level of being inhumane.

BLM Director Bob Abbey did, however, determine additional training is needed for the workers and contractors involved.

Abbey, the former BLM state director for Nevada, said the roundup this summer near the Utah line was done correctly for the most part. But he said the review cited some incidents of inappropriate practices, including helicopters jeopardizing the health and safety of horses by following too closely or chasing small bands or individual animals for too long.

“Aggressive and rough handling of wild horses is not acceptable, and we are actively taking steps to ensure that such behavior is not repeated,” Abbey said in a statement announcing a number of procedures intended to improve and further review the BLM’s standard operating procedures for roundups.

In addition to prohibiting helicopters from making contact with horses, Abbey said he would order more training for both the agency workers and contractors involved. The review team also recommended the agency develop a system for tracking a variety of incidents, “from the use of electrical prods, to roping, to injuries or reports of animal welfare concerns.”

“The review team believes this will demonstrate that issues like the specific incidents at the Triple B gather are the exception, not the rule,” the report said.

Officials for Sun J Livestock in Vernal, Utah, the contractor for the Triple B Roundup between Elko and Ely, did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment.

About 33,000 wild horses live in 10 Western states, of which about half are in Nevada. Another 40,000 are kept in government-funded facilities.

The government’s wild horse program, created by Congress in 1971, is intended to protect wild horse herds and the rangelands that support them. Under the program, thousands of horses are forced into holding pens, where many are vaccinated or neutered before being placed for adoption or sent to long-term corrals in the Midwest.

Animal rights advocates complain that the roundups are inhumane because some animals are traumatized, injured or killed. But ranchers and other groups say the roundups are needed to protect fragile grazing lands that are used by cattle, Bighorn sheep and other wildlife.

Horse protection advocates said they were encouraged by a series of steps Abbey outlined this week to rein in the airborne cowboys and wranglers on the ground who they say don’t always act in the horses’ best interests.

“This review is a first step in addressing the cruelty that is pervasive in the BLM’s wild horse and burro program, and we commend the BLM review team for its honesty,” said Suzanne Roy, director of the Americas Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, a coalition of more than 40 groups that includes the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

But the groups also expressed concern that the BLM didn’t find some of the more egregious incidents to be “inhumane” treatment.

“What is their definition of inhumane?” asked Anne Novak, founder of the California-based advocacy group Protect Mustangs.

“They are stepping up to the transgressions and treatments that occurred — finally fessing up to some major problems,” added Roy. “But now, what are they going to do about it? How it translates to an agency-wide policy is the big open question.”

The BLM review team was composed of Gus Ward, the BLM’s lead wild horse and burro specialist in Utah; Ken Collum, BLM field manager for the Eagle Lake district in California; Steven Hall, BLM communications director for Colorado; and Dr. Owen Henderson, a veterinarian for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

The review was prompted by videotapes that animal protection activists shot of alleged inhumane treatment at the Triple B roundup in July and August. Some of the footage shot by the Texas-based Wild Horse Freedom Federation was used to secure an emergency court order from U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben in Reno at the time requiring that helicopters be kept a safe distance from the mustangs.

Laura Leigh, the federation’s vice president, remained skeptical that the issues would be resolved.

“This is just words, not action,” said Leigh, who also founded Wild Horse Education, an Internet clearinghouse for information on roundups.

“They say, ‘We found this wrong, but we did nothing wrong,’ which is typical BLM contradictory speech. Nothing has changed,” she told The Associated Press said.

The review team said it analyzed the footage and acknowledged a “small number of videos indicated incidents that did not rise to the level of inhumane treatment but which the team did determine amounted to poor practices that should be improved.”

The incidents included excessive and inappropriate use of electrical prods, as well as wranglers kicking horses, slamming gates against them and twisting their tails to persuade them to load onto trailers.

“Horses were observed being struck in the face and often confused due to aggressive loading procedures and excessive pressure by multiple handlers,” the report said. “Several videos reveal that a few horses were repeatedly shocked with an electrical animal prod, sometimes in the face.”

The report said animal welfare experts told BLM officials during the investigation that electrical prods should be used only as a last resort when human or animal safety is in jeopardy. They said the prods should never be used on a horse’s head.

The review team recommended the videotapes be used to help educate workers about acceptable and unacceptable practices. The report emphasized that the inappropriate treatment constituted “only a small percentage of overall gather operations.”

But Deniz Bolbol, a videographer who observed the roundup on behalf of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign with funding from the ASPCA, questioned whether the practices were more widespread given that activists captured only a small fraction of the overall gather on videotape.

“Without the video, this report wouldn’t have ever been done,” said Bolbol, whose own video is cited extensively in the BLM report.

“This is how this Sun J crew worked knowing that observers were videotaping, knowing that BLM personnel were around,” she told the AP. “So when there are no observers and no cameras, what is happening?”

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Calico Stallions in temporary holding. December 2011 near Gerlach, Nevada.