Tag Archives: AWHPC

Conversation about fertility control with Brett Hass, retired biologist previously with NSA (part 1)

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Don’t let pesticides like Gonacon™, PZP or SpayVac® manage native wild horses to extinction. The Spin Dr.’s and some ignorant horse advocates are pushing fertility control on underpopulated wild horses. Know the truth and expose those spewing the spin.

PM Gonacon Pesticide Fact Sheet

Read the entire Gonacon™ Pesticide Fact Sheet

Interview

John Cox: Brett, you’re a retired biologist, previously with the NSA for how many years?

Brett Hass: 46 long years John. We met in Vietnam, when we a lot younger my friend (smiles). We were doing wildlife and vegetation studies in your AO (area of operations). That was my first assignment with the NSA, as a matter of fact.

John Cox: Let’s cut through all of that. What do you think of Gonacon™ and some of the other fertility controls BLM is using?

Brett Hass: As usual, and as government agencies do and BLM and DOI are extremely guilty, they pretend that science guides its wild horse and burro management strategies. So the agencies involved go forth and resolve issues, supposedly, with experimental drugs–in this case GonaCon™. The question is, in reality, does it resolve anything at all, or is it simply to further experimentations with this drug and the wild horses the most expendable of situations currently?

The problem is very obvious, with the first-time use of an experimental drug, they act like children with a new toy–but this toy is extremely dangerous, to not only the horses and actually lead them to extinction, but the environmental consequences are apparently neglected entirely? (shakes his head negatively). . .

But let’s get real, the very absence of science contradicts any time of sound reasoning for its use whatsoever. So once again we have a government agency, using a Nazi-Type experimental fertility drug on horses and other wildlife–without knowing, or even acknowledging for that matter, what the long-term consequences are–or in perception–the problems that will arise in its actual use.

There is no resolution, as I reviewed the population situation and see first hand there is no over-population if wild horses just within the BLM numbers alone; but livestock, that is a completely different matter, in reality.

John Cox: In your appraisal of the information you’ve read, would you, as a tenured Wildlife Biologist for over 50 years, use this drug?

Brett Hass: Absolutely not! There is no pertinent reasoning to use it right now and especially on wild horses or much of anything else for that matter. Our wildlife and environment is simply too important to be so frivolous with such activity, especially an unknown situation, as fertility drugs used in our natural environment. But as you say, ignorance is quite something, and our government seems to portray ignorance quite well, and frankly the only situation they seem to be competent to accomplish.

Much more on this discussion with Brett Hass later . . .

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Below is the original PZP Pesticide Fact Sheet before HSUS seems to have lobbied the EPA to make changes to the chemical class. It’s still only approved as a pesticide to manage pests. PZP is made from slaughterhouse pig ovaries mixed with modified freund’s complete adjuvant.

PM PZP Test mares

(American wild horses used in fertility control experiments)

© John Cox, printed with permission

John Cox is a Vietnam Vet, living in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest who writes about the environment. He’s passionate about saving America’s wild horse herds and wolves. 

Read John Cox’s blog at: https://prophoto7journal.wordpress.com

Have you read about the Gonacon™ Experiment on the Water Canyon herd and the UNLUCKY 11 orphans? It all started as a PZP proposal and went down the slippery slope. . .  Read about it here: http://protectmustangs.org/?p=8488





PZP Pushers are misleading the public as there is no evidence of overpopulation

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PM PZP Auto-immune disease

PZP = Slow Extinction

While touted as a “vaccine,” porcine zona pellucida — PZP — is actually a perversion of a vaccine — an anti-vaccine — whose mode-of-action is to cause auto-immune disease. PZP tricks the immune system into producing antibodies that attack the ovaries, inducing ovarian dystrophy, oophoritis (inflammation of the ovaries), and ovarian cysts. Worse yet, per radioimmunoassay, the PZP antibodies are transferred from mother to young via the placenta and milk. The antibodies cross-react with and bind to the zonae pellucidae of female offspring. Although hyped as a “non-hormonal” method of birth-control, PZP causes estrogen-levels to plummet as the ovaries degenerate. Despite the manufacturer’s claim that PZP is “reversible,” its effects wear off unpredictably. In herds under PZP “management,” the birthing season extends to nearly year-round, putting the life of the foals and mares at risk. Because PZP messes with the immune system, it “works” best on the healthiest fillies and mares — those with strong immunity — ironically, rendering them sterile even with just a few treatments. Filles injected with PZP before they have reached puberty are particularly vulnerable to immediate sterilization. Conversely, PZP has little-to-no effect on fillies and mares with a weak immune system — they continue to become pregnant. Thus, a herd being treated with PZP is undergoing selective breeding for low immunity, which puts the population at risk for disease — and ultimately, extinction. ~Marybeth Devlin, member of The Facebook Forum on PZP for Wild Horses and Burros.

PZP = Slow Extinction

WARNING: Slaughter Fear-mongering pushes forced drugging with PZP on wild horses!

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PM HSUS Roundup

Helicopter roundups will increase to administer PZP

95% of the herds can’t be shot with darts in the field

Does the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) want to take over the Wild Horse and Burro Program, pushing forced drugging with PZP (pesticide made from slaughterhouse pig ovaries http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/pending/fs_PC-176603_01-Jan-12.pdf) for management on underpopulated herds? PZP is a “tool” to manage wild horses to extinction. Science proves PZP (native, 22, etc.) sterilizes after multiple use.

Isn’t the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) the wild horse mouthpiece for HSUS? Doesn’t their pledge to “keep them in the wild” written up in the Huffington Post include forced drugging with PZP as their cornerstone management tool? Does HSUS want to create zoo-like settings to “keep them in the wild”? HSUS endorsed the former Secretary of Interior’s Plan, aka the Salazar Plan, in 2009. Now the plan is entering the final wipe-out phase with the help of PZP pushers.

For decades native wild horses have been used by the pharmaceutical industry as lab rats for birth control “research” at huge taxpayer expense. This involves killing wild horses to research drug damage on ovaries and other organs. PZP = Roundups = Cruel Animal Experiments

 

Links of interest™:

Salazar presents ambits plan to manage West’s wild horses (Washington Post, October 2009) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/07/AR2009100703237.html  “Some animal advocates, including Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society, praised the plan, but others decried it.”

Experimenting on wild horses creates cheap R & D for drug makers http://protectmustangs.org/?p=7993

Facebook Forum on PZP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ForumPZPWildHorsesBurros/

 

Federal Court Forces Interior Department to Consider Scientific Evidence Regarding Wild Horse Management

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cross-posted from The Cloud Foundation

Judge Rejects Gov’t Attempt to Ignore Expert Declarations on Negative Impacts of Plan to Castrate Wild Nevada Stallions 

Washington, DC – May 10, 2012 – The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has rejected an attempt by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to withhold and ignore critical scientific evidence in its decision-making process for the implementation of a precedent-setting plan to castrate wild stallions. At issue were expert declarations submitted to the BLM from leading experts in wild horse behavior and biology outlining the devastating impacts of castration on the health and natural behaviors of wild free-roaming stallions and wild horse herds.

The ruling is part of litigation filed in December 2011 by the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC),Western Watersheds Project and The Cloud Foundation challenging the BLM’s  illegal plan to castrate hundreds of wild stallions in eastern Nevada’s Pancake Complex, as well as to eliminate wild horses from the Jake’s Wash Herd Management Area, which lies within the Complex. The ruling on this case will have widespread implication for thousands of the remaining wild horses living free and wild on public lands.

The Honorable U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell stated in her 23-page opinion that the agency “may not simply remainstudiously ignorant of material scientific evidence well known to the agency and brought directly to its attention in timely-filed comments.” She decisively rejected the BLM’s attempt to exclude the expert declarations from the agency’s decision-making process and affirmed that the Court would consider the “material scientific evidence” contained in the declarations as in future rulings in the case.

“The BLM went to great lengths to avoid considering scientific information provided by leading wild horse experts,” said Suzanne Roy, director of AWHPC. “The agency is not interested in science, it’s only interest is clearing our public lands of wild horses to make room for livestock grazing and other commercial interests.”

“This is yet another example of the agency’s epidemic refusal to incorporate science in its management of wild horse and burros herds,” said Ginger Kathrens, executive director of The Cloud Foundation. “We commend Judge Howell for seeing through the BLM’s thinly veiled excuses and standing up for science and the right of the public to have input into government management decisions.”

The scientific evidence submitted by Plaintiffs that the BLM attempted to ignore included a declaration from Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, the Director of Science and Conservation Biology at Zoo Montana and a foremost authority on wildlife reproductive biology. He stated:

“The very essence of the wild horse, that is, what makes it a wild horse, is the social organization and social behaviors. Geldings (castrated male horses) no longer exhibit the natural behaviors of non-castrated stallions. We know this to be true from hundreds of years experience with gelded domestic horses. Furthermore, gelded stallions will not keep their bands together, which is an integral part of a viable herd. These social dynamics were molded by millions of years of evolution, and will be destroyed if the BLM returns castrated horses to the HMAs. . . . Castrating horses will effectively remove the biological and physiological controls that prompt these stallions to behave like wild horses. This will negatively impact the place of the horse in the social order of the band and the herd.

The other declarations, submitted by Dr. Allen Rutberg of the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine; Dr. Anne Perkins of Carroll College in Montana;  and Dr. Bruce Nock, a faculty member at Washington University School of Medicine provided further scientific information about the impacts of castration on wild stallions and wild horse herds.

Other plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit challenging aspects of the Pancake roundup include wildlife ecologist Craig Downer and photographer Arla Ruggles, who enjoy wild horse viewing in the HMAs and whose professional and aesthetic interests will be harmed if the BLM moves forward with its plan. The plaintiffs are being represented by the Washington D.C. public interest law firm Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal. A previous lawsuit filed in July 2011 by the firm prompted the BLM to withdraw a similar plan to release hundreds of castrated wild stallions in two HMAs in Wyoming.

The complaint alleges that the BLM’s plan for the Pancake Complex violates the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act. The complaint can be read here.

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About the Plaintiffs

The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) is a coalition of more than 45 horse advocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage.

Western Watersheds Project is a non-profit conservation group dedicated to protecting and restoring western watersheds and wildlife through education, public policy initiatives and litigation. The group works to influence and improve public lands management in 8 western states with a primary focus on the negative impacts of livestock grazing on 250,000,000 acres of western public lands.

The Cloud Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of wild horses and burros on our Western public lands with a focus on protecting Cloud’s herd in the Pryor Mountains of Montana.

Media Contacts:

Lauryn Wachs

617-894-6939

lauryn@thecloudfoundation.org

Deniz Bolbol

650-248-4489

deniz@wildhorsepreservation.org