Mostly insiders knew about the tour in advance of the general public

RENO, Nev. —The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is offering a rare public tour of the Indian Lakes Off-Range Corral in Fallon, Nevada, March 7 without adequate public notice for all stakeholders. This is one of three facilities in Nevada that keep and process wild horses and burros removed from the range, including horses recently rounded up from the Fish Creek Herd Management Area in Eastern Nevada.

The tour is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time and last approximately two hours. The tour will accommodate only 20 people. Space will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. The public can sign up to attend and get driving directions to the facility by calling the BLM at 775-475-2222. You may also call Jason Lutterman, 775-861-6614 to get a spot or email him at jlutterman@blm.gov or Brenda Beasley Cell: 775-315-5391
bbeasley@blm.gov

About a 90-minute drive east of Reno, the Indian Lakes Corral is located at 5676 Indian Lakes Road, Fallon, and is privately owned and operated. Tour attendees will be corralled in a wagon and taken around the facility hear BLM’s spin on the failing Wild Horse and Burro Program and the wild horses at Indian Lakes.

The few attendees will have the opportunity to observe 102 wild mares from the recent Fish Creek roundup. The native mares have been forcibly drugged with an EPA restricted-use pesticide made from slaughterhouse pig ovaries called PZP for Porcine Zona Pellucida. Their release was stopped by an Interior Board of Land Appeal filed by a disgruntled rancher and the Eureka Country commissioners. Now drugged with the pesticide that sterilizes after multiple use, the Fish Creek mares wait in limbo.

The public is becoming aware that PZP is part of the BLM’s final solution to manage wild horses to extinction.  Roundups will increase with PZP programs and evidently puts more wild horses at risk of never being “released”.

“The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is holding off on plans to return 186 wild horses to the range in central Nevada pending the review of an appeal filed by a rancher and rural county opposed to the move. . . Rancher Kevin Borba and Eureka County commissioners, who filed the appeal with the Interior Board of Land Appeals on Friday, oppose the return of any of the 424 horses to the range,” according to the Associated Press article from February 22nd.

With outrageously short notice, the Nevada BLM is hosting a public tour where only insiders have more than a few days notice.

The Indian Lakes Corral can hold up to 3,200 wild horses or burros who have been chased by helicopters, ripped from their families and removed from their native lands. The facility contains 43 large holding pens. Touted as a feedlot setting to fatten up wild horses “as fat as butterballs” the BLM proclaims they “don’t sell wild horses to slaughter”. Despite the public dis-information campaign, BLM has sold truckloads to slaughter middlemen such as the infamous Tom Davis who received more than 1,700 American wild horses–delivered at tax-payer expense.

Every time a wild horse is offered for adoption but is not picked they acquire a strike against them. With 3-Strikes they lose their federal protection and can legally be sold by the truckload according to the Burns Amendment to the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act.

The BLM claims to the press and to congressional aides that they want to place wild horses into good, private homes yet they are notorious for making it hard to adopt wild horses. The Indian Lakes Corral is a prime example. It’s a private facility that is “closed to the public” with maybe two or three public access days a year open to only a small amount of people even though the contractor is paid with public tax dollars. The captives are funneled out to off-site adoptions where their chances of adoption are slim due to BLM’s poor marketing and rotten customer service. Every time wild horses aren’t picked at an adoption event they get another strike towards becoming wild horse sashimi abroad.

Links of interest™

BLM holds off on plan to return 186 mustangs to range in NV http://www.idahostatejournal.com/news/state/blm-holds-off-on-plan-to-return-mustangs-to-range/article_5eaf59ac-008c-5977-8f3a-491f9e9dad06.html

Tour announcement published March 5th in the Nevada Appeal: http://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/lahontanvalley/15305301-113/blm-schedules-tour-of-off-range-horse-corral