January 22, 2013 Blondie is allowing the halter on her nose.
Blondie December 29, 2012
Blondie & Brownie at BLM Litchfield corral with Inez & Protect Mustangs Sept. 2012
Blondie is a California wild horse filly from High Rock. She will be 2 years old in the spring. We adopted her when she was a yearling and already had 2 Strikes against her.
We are very grateful to those who donated for Blondie’s transport from Susanville to the Bay Area on December 12, 2012 and are especially grateful to her sponsor.
Tibet earned 2 Strikes from not getting picked at adoptions. (Photo by BLM adoptions)
As of tonight, January 29th we raised $400 from wild horse angels towards the total needed ($920) to bring Tibet out from Wheatland, Wyoming to us in the Bay Area. We need to raise $536 more (includes PayPal fees) by February 2, 2013. Please help and donate what you can to get Tibet to his safe place. Thank you for helping Tibet!
Please donate via PayPal to Contact@ProtectMustangs.org or mail your donations to:
Protect Mustangs, PO Box 5661, Berkeley, Ca. 94705. Make checks payable to Protect Mustangs.
It takes a village ~ Please donate any amount so Tibet can afford to be hauled to his safe place.
WASHINGTON (January 24, 2013)–Wild Horse Freedom Federation (WHFF) released evidence exposing the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) wild horse long-term holding contractor selling wild horses to an alleged “kill buyer”. The BLM appears to be trafficking wild horses to slaughter through holding facilites. Debbie Coffey, volunteer director of Wild Horse Affairs at WHFF, uncovered evidence of the contractor selling at least 34 federally protected wild horses. In short and long-term holding, indigenous wild horses retain their wild status and protections but it appears some are being sold to slaughter.
“This evidence shows that the BLM is not protecting our wild horses and is allowing alleged kill buyers to purchase them,” explains R.T. Fitch, volunteer president of Wild Horse Freedom Federation, “The public wants Congress to enforce the Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act that they unanimously signed into law in 1971. A Congressional Investigation needs to happen now.”
WHFF joins with Protect Mustangs to call for a freeze on roundups, access to document all holding facilities as needed as well as an immediate Congressional investigation into the BLM and their contractors allegedly selling America’s iconic wild horses into the slaughter pipeline.
“It’s time for a deep investigation–done by an entity outside the BLM–to bust these crimes against the American mustang and champion the public who were deceived by officials in charge of protecting our icons of freedom,” states Anne Novak, executive director of Protect Mustangs. “The public is outraged. Protests are being planned as a result of the evidence.”
Coffey, with the assistance of Animal’s Angels, researched and released Wednesday an in-depth article on the activities of a BLM contractor selling 34 BLM wild horses to a kill buyer, while under contract with the BLM and being paid with U.S. taxpayer dollars, to care for iconic wild mustangs on its pastures. Evidence was obtained through South Dakota Brand Board Inspection records and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Information from government and public records show that Jim Reeves and Lyle Anderson own Spur Livestock. They have a contract with the BLM for a wild horse long-term holding pasture on private land within the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, as well as on Indian Trust Lands administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This U.S. taxpayer funded facility is the Whitehorse Wild Horse Long Term Holding Facility.
WHFF received records from the South Dakota Brand Board that reveal on 11/8/2008, while under contract with the BLM, “owner” Spur Livestock sold 34 horses with “BLM tattoos” to JS Farms–owned by alleged kill buyer Joe Simon.
In a telephone conversation with Jim Reeves, Coffey reports that when asked about 72 horses he bought as alleged pack animals, Reeves said “I’m told not to talk about this kind of stuff.” He added “I can’t talk about this” and “That’s BLM business.”
When asked about all the wild horses who disappear from their short-term holding facilities after the roundups, BLM officials inform the public and the media that they will be well taken care of on “grassland pastures”.
“The BLM leads the public to believe that captured wild horses are living out their lives grazing peacefully on long-term holding pastures, and claims they do not sell wild horses to slaughter, but at least one contracted middleman did sell BLM wild horses to an alleged kill buyer and the horses very likely met a horrific fate at a slaughterhouse,” explains Coffey. “We want a freeze on roundups, immediate access to document all long-term holding facilities as needed and a Congressional investigation into all aspects of the BLM’s Wild Horse & Burro Program.”
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Wild Horse Freedom Federation (WHFF) is a registered, Texas non-profit corporation with Federal 501c3 status and registered as a legal non-profit in all 50 states of the Union. WHFF puts people between America’s wild equids and extinction through targeted litigation against governmental agencies whose documented agendas include the eradication of wild horse and burros from public, federal and state lands. WHFF is funded exclusively through the generosity of the American public.
Protect Mustangs is a California-based preservation group whose 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.
Media contacts:
R.T. Fitch, Volunteer President WHFF, 800-974-3684, rtfitch@wildhorsefreedomfederation.org Debbie Coffey, Director Wild Horse Affairs WHFF, 800-974-3684, debbie@wildhorsefreedomfederation.org Anne Novak, Executive Director Protect Mustangs, 415-531-8454, anne@protectmustangs.org
We are very grateful to have helped save Sandy from going to probable slaughter. What a wonderful gift she has been carrying all this time. This has been a wonderful team effort to support Hidden Valley’s rescue.
We send out a special thank you to all our supporters who networked, donated, contacted Governor Sandoval and spread awareness about the wild horse crisis. Keep up the great work everyone!
By Ross MacPhee, PhD, Curator – Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY
It needs to be more widely understood that the horse’s status as a native North American species is beyond serious question.
A “native” species, in evolutionary terms, is defined as one that differentiated or diverged from its immediate ancestor species within a specific geographical locale. The contemporary wild horse in the United States is recently derived from lines domesticated in Europe and Asia. But those lines themselves go much further back in time, and converge on populations that lived in North America during the latter part of the Pleistocene (2.5M to 10k years ago).
The morphological (fossil) evidence and the more recent DNA evidence (although preliminary), points to the same conclusion: the species Equus caballus—the species encompassing all domestic horses and their wild progenitors—arose on this continent.
The evidence thus favors the view that this species is “native” to North America, given any rational understanding of the term “native”. By contrast, there are no paleontological or genetic grounds for concluding that it is native to any other continent.
From a scientific standpoint, it is completely irrelevant that native horses died out in North America 10,000 years ago, or that later populations were domesticated in central Asia 6000 years ago. Such considerations have no bearing on their status as having originated on this continent.
Reintroduction of horses to North America 500 years ago is, biologically, a non-event: horses were merely returned to part of their former native range, where they have since prospered because ecologically they never left.
CLICK HERE for Scientific Assessment of the Wild Mustangs of America – MANAGED TO EXTINCTION, written by Ross MacPhee, Curator, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History.
CLICK HERE to Review Information about Craig Downer’s Book entitled THE WILD HORSE CONSPIRACY.
“Traditional Dakota/Lakota people firmly believe that the aboriginal North American horse did not become extinct after the last Ice Age, and that it was part of their precontact culture.
Scientists know from fossil remains that the horse originated and evolved in North America, and that these small 12 to 13 hand horses or ponys (sic) migrated to Asia across the Bering Strait, then spread throughout Asia and finally reached Europe. The drawings in the French Laseaux caves, dating about 10,000 B.C., are a testimony to their long westward migration. Scientists contend, however, that the aboriginal horse became extinct in North America during what is (known) as the “Pleistocene kill,” in other words, that they disappeared at the same time as the mammoth, the ground sloth, and other Ice Age mammals. This has led anthropologists to assume that Plains Indians only acquired horses after Spaniards accidentally lost some horses in Mexico, in the beginning of the XVIth (16th) century, that these few head multiplied and eventually reached the prairies.
Dakota/Lakota Elders as well as many other Indian nations contest this theory, and contend that according to their oral history, the North American horse survived the Ice Age, and that they had developed a horse culture long before the arrival of Europeans, and, furthermore, that these same distinct ponys (sic) continued to thrive on the prairies until the latter part of the XIXth (19th) century, when the U.S. government ordered them rounded up and destroyed to prevent Indians from leaving the newly-created reservations. Although there is extensive evidence of this massive slaughter, no definitive evidence has yet been found to substantiate the Elders’ other claim, but there are a number of arguments in favour of the Indian position.”
CLICK HERE for Scientific Paper Entitled: The Aboriginal North American Horse.
Good News! Baby Diamond (pictured above) and her Mama were rescued from the auction by our friends at Hidden Valley Wild Horse Protection Fund. The pair has found an adopter.
“Thank you to everyone who protested, networked and donated to help save the 41 Virginia Range wild horses from probable slaughter,” said Anne Novak, executive director of California-based Protect Mustangs.
“It goes to show the love and respect that not only Nevadans have for the Virginia Range horses, but also the people across the country and around the world who contributed money needed to purchase these horses back from the state of Nevada,” said Shannon Windle, director of the Hidden Valley Wild Horse Protection Fund.
Members of the public around the world are encouraged to contact Governor Sandoval and tell him you don’t want native wild horses sold at auctions where kill buyers shop. Ask him to give the horses to local advocacy groups rather than sell them into the slaughter pipeline.
BREAKING NEWS: Bay Area Residents Protest Killing Wild Horses near Reno
Barbie Hardrock stands up for American mustangs from Europe
OAKLAND, Ca. (January 4, 2013)–Protect Mustangs, the Bay Area-based wild horse preservation group is organizing a peaceful protest during rush hour tonight outside the Rockridge BART Station (College Ave. in Oakland) from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Members of the public of all ages are gathering to show they want the cruelty & slaughter of indigenous wild horses to stop now. The preservation group recently learned of Nevada’s interest in opening a horse slaughterhouse to kill wild horses on tribal land near Reno. Many protests are being held in conjunction with the Carson City Protest, organized by the Wild Horse Preservation League, where the protestors are marching at midday to deliver Governor Sandoval letters from around the world asking him to stop the cruelty and let the advocates help the horses find homes or sanctuary.
“We stand together to demand a STOP to the crimes against America’s indigenous wild horses,” explains Anne Novak, executive director of Protect Mustangs. “We enjoy photographing the very horses they want to slaughter when we go to Reno/Tahoe. These horses are on the edge of Reno. Did you know horses evolved in America and wild horses are a reintroduced native species?”
“We have been working with The Hidden Valley Wild Horse Protection Fund and other groups to bring awareness to the crisis,” continues Novak. “The public around the world is outraged. Some people even refuse to travel to Nevada because of this. Citizens have requested Governor Sandoval stop trapping native wild horses and selling them off at auctions–where kill-buyers go to pick up horses. He has done nothing–only turned a deaf ear.”
Other protests are being held such as the primary one in Carson City, one in Mill Valley tonight at The Depot Plaza sponsored by Wild horse Protection Act as well as protests held in Phoenix, on the East Coast, Europe and elsewhere.
“We are sharing out posts of people protesting today from around the world. Our first photo came in from Barbie Hardrock’s band, Roquette, in Europe,” says Kerry Becklund, director of outreach for Protect Mustangs. “Join the movement to protect wild horses on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ProtectMustangs.”
“American mustangs are so beautiful to watch living in freedom but now they are hard to find because there aren’t many left,” explains Hardrock who enjoys visiting the American West to take photos of wild horses.
“Native wild horses create biodiversity and reverse desertification when managed using reserve design,” states Novak. “Roundups and removals are cruel–slaughtering them is a heinous idea. We want to make sure they are protected.”
Sponsored by Protect Mustangs www.ProtectMustangs.org where you can find a lot of information on the wild horse crisis.
Protect Mustangs is the California-based preservation group whose 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.
Today was amazing. Blondie seems to know the sound of our car. We pulled up and she looked at us from the other side of the corral to say “Hi.”
Without a round pen the gentling process is unusual but fun. It’s my first time to gentle a wild horse fresh from the holding facility and it’s really cool. I’m working in a team with my mom and Inez.
Before Blondie came up to me, Inez was scratching her face up to her ears and under her chin. Blondie enjoyed it. She understands we all love wild horses. They know who the nice people are.
Later Blondie came up to me. We started connecting nose to nose when Inez reached out and touched her back for the first time.
Inez said, “Look! She doesn’t mind this.”
Later Mom was scratching Blondie’s hindquarters for the first time and Blondie was loving it!
I think things are moving along well with the gentling because we are taking our time. These 4 California wild horses have lost their families and their freedom. They deserve compassion.
Sadly we can’t give them back their previous lives and I wish we could . . . We can offer them the best lives in captivity–filled with love, respect and partnership.
I dream of a day when we can have a large space for the wild horses we work with so they can run in a herd, work with us, then go back to the herd for sleep time.
You can make the hauling easier on your new friends.
Tips for Happy Hauling
1. Send the BLM pickup facility a photo of your trailer before you leave, so they sign off that it’s suitable. They don’t want ramps or dividers, etc.
2. Make sure your truck and trailer are in the best working condition and your bearings are greased.
3. Let the BLM know you want to be there while they load so you aren’t distracted with paperwork. Then you can oversee the BLM employees loading your adopted wild horses. If something feels wrong express yourself politely and advocate for your wild horses. You will be responsible if the horses in your care are injured once you drive off.
4. Having the BLM wranglers take their tags off when they are in the chute has worked for us.
5. We don’t let the BLM wranglers halter them because we want the first haltering to be out of love and trust–not force, fear and domination. We don’t halter the wild ones in the trailer as it causes A LOT of stress before loading. They cannot be tied as they are not trained to tie. They are wild.
6. We don’t feed during short trailering as hay nets could be something that could cause trouble.
7. We did not bed the last trailer we used for a 6 hour ride. It had a rubber floor and they traveled well.
8. Upon arrival at our destination, we back the trailer up to the gate and open the gate to create a barrier between the paddock and the trailer. Then we carefully open the trailer door and stand aside.
9. Whips aren’t necessary but patience is. We have witnessed the BLM employees use a whip to get a young wild horse out of a trailer. This terrified the horse and caused him to bash around in the metal trailer and fall down. Using horse psychology and taking your time makes the experience safe and easy.
10. If the wild horses are hesitant to come out of the trailer then we give them some hay just outside the trailer and wait patiently. They are extremely sensitive to pressure so we give them their space. We give them time and they always unload. We never stand in front of their exit path as that puts pressure on them and makes it scary to come out. They have been known to bolt out so watch out!
Have someone there to film the unloading because it’s a moment you will never forget. Here is a short clip of Sol and Val, our Discover Mustangs project horses, unloading after getting out of the BLM’s facility.
Disclaimer: Horses, wild or domesticated, are inherently dangerous and can be unpredictable. Use the information and advice in this article at your own risk.
