Despite underpopulation, does OSU have the right to experiment on federally protected wild horses and burros or are they breaking the law?

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Protect Mustangs

Is Oregon State University about to embark it their biggest PR nightmare?

© EquineClinic.comn shared for educational purposes

Oregon State University published the Q & A below based on the false premise, when the truth is wild horses are underpopulated in America today:

Frequently asked questions: OSU fertility research involving wild mares and burros

I understand that Oregon State University is involved in research on wild horses and burros. Is this true?

Yes. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) awarded Oregon State University money to help study fertility-control methods for wild horses and burros.

In 2014, the BLM asked for research proposals from a variety of scientific groups across the nation to help address the high population growth rates of wild horses and burros, including veterinarians, scientists, universities, pharmaceutical companies, and other research entities. Additional details can be found here. Since then, the BLM has provided awards to support over 20 projects.

Five universities with college of veterinary medicine programs received awards. Proposals from OSU were selected based on the quality of science, the expertise of the research investigator and the potential impact of the research. Oregon State University faculty were among those that submitted proposals to the BLM to help slow and stabilize the population growth rate of wild horses and burros. The BLM announced its decision on June 27 to proceed with the research to be conducted by Oregon State faculty. Details of that announcement can be found here.

How is Oregon State University involved?

As a research university, Oregon State conducts studies on important topics, and informs public policy-makers and the general public of those research findings.

This research will evaluate minimally invasive, humane, effective, and permanent procedures that would then be reviewed by the BLM as options to maintain sustainable herd levels.

Our role is in conducting research to inform BLM policy. Oregon State University’s role is not to develop policy.

Why did BLM decide that this type of research was necessary?

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) developed the program after receiving a report with recommendations from a National Academy of Sciences committee, which had been tasked with performing a complete review of the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Management Program.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a video summary of that report, “Using Science to Improve the Wild Horse and Burro Program: A Way Forward”.

The NAS reports that the population of wild horses and burros is growing beyond the capacity of federal lands to support the health and welfare of these animals. Animals that are not healthy are susceptible to further suffering from disease, malnutrition, dehydration, and death. The BLM is reviewing a range of options to manage the population of these horses and burros at sustainable levels.

What did the National Academy of Sciences committee find?

The NAS committee emphasized that, on average, the population of wild horses and burros across the west is increasing by 15 – 20% per year, despite ongoing fertility control vaccination programs. The NAS urged the BLM to make wider use of fertility control options that are based on rigorous research.

Why would wild horse and burro populations be a concern?

The population of wild horses and burros on federal lands is growing beyond the capacity of local, state, and federal resources to support the health and welfare of these animals, and maintain healthy range ecosystems.

An illustrated summary of BLM concerns and challenges related to our nation’s wild horses and burros can be found here.

What does Oregon State University have to offer?

OSU faculty who responded to the BLM’s request for additional research felt very strongly that their contributions would benefit and improve the health and welfare of our wild horses and burros.

As a land-grant institution, Oregon State University faculty members often have the expertise needed to address issues that affect Oregon and the nation.

Results from this work will be analyzed and published in peer-reviewed forums, in addition to informing the BLM. In this way, the work performed by OSU faculty will be available to the public.

For more information about how research is conducted at Oregon State University and academic freedom, please click here.

How is animal safety and humane care ensured during research?

University-wide commitment to animal care, safety, and welfare is a top priority. Oregon State University recognizes both the importance of animals in research and teaching, and the scientific and ethical responsibilities inherent in the care of those animals. Research activities undertaken by OSU faculty, staff, and students are reviewed and conducted in accordance with strict ethical principles, federal and state laws and regulations, and in compliance with Oregon State institutional policies.

Oversight of animal activities associated with OSU is provided by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The IACUC’s main functions are to review, approve, and monitor research protocols, and ensure that animals are cared for according to all applicable federal and state laws, regulations, and Oregon State institutional policies.

Oregon State University additionally volunteers to have their animal program reviewed every three years by AAALAC, International, an independent accreditation agency for animal research programs. The accreditation process is very stringent and institutions with AAALAC accreditation are known for their commitment to excellence and humane animal care.

What methods are being studied in this research?

One study will evaluate the removal of both ovaries without the need for any external skin incisions (ovariectomy via colpotomy). Ovariectomies are commonly used by veterinarians to stop egg production and related reproductive (“heat”) cycles in animals.

Another study will evaluate two surgical methods that will interrupt fertilization. Animals undergoing these procedures will still have heat cycles but they will not conceive. Tubal ligation is one method, and the other is oviduct ablation. The use of these methods also avoids the need for external skin incisions.

I have concerns about the management of our nation’s wild horses and burros, and I don’t think Oregon State University should be involved.

As a research institution, work at Oregon State sometimes involves controversial issues. In this case, research team members have offered their areas of expertise in designing a study whose results will be used to inform policy decisions by the BLM in the management of wild horse and burro populations.

Research data provided by Oregon State researchers will be part of the larger group of studies that BLM will consider as it reviews policies and procedures to respond to the 2013 NAS report.

More information on BLM management of wild horses and burros can be found here.

Who will perform this research?

The studies will be conducted by teams of licensed, highly qualified and experienced veterinary surgeons.

Are Oregon State students involved in this research?

No. Students are not involved in these projects.

When was this proposal submitted?

Proposals were submitted to the BLM in 2014.

How long will this research take to be completed?

The research will take place over the next two – five years.

How much will be spent on this research? Who will fund this proposed research?

The BLM has approved two grants to OSU totaling $348,000.

Where will this research be conducted?

The research will be conducted at the BLM’s wild horse and burro facility in Hines, OR.

How and with whom will these research findings be shared with?

Oregon State researchers will report their results to the BLM; will publish findings in other peer-reviewed forums and share the results with the public.

Who decides to accept or reject these findings? Or implement them as a standard of future practice?

The BLM will make any decisions on future policies and practices. For more information click here.

Cross-posted for discussion from: http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/blm-research-faq

Stay tuned for the backlash

Protect Mustangs is an organization who protects and preserves native and wild horses.

Emergency roundup that’s been planned since 2014 starts Monday

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Protect Mustangs

More wild horses will be removed forever

ELY, Nevada – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Ely District is scheduled on Monday to begin a helicopter roundup to wipe out approximately 100 wild horses from public and private lands adjacent to U.S. Highway 93 and State Route 322 in and outside the Caliente Herd Areas Complex and Eagle Herd Management Area in eastern Nevada. This issue could be resolved with fencing but they would rather spend the taxpayers money for the next 20 years to warehouse wild horses or send them to slaughter after the American taxpayer has fattened them up with hay.

The District will remove up to 50 wild horses from between Pioche and Eagle Valley that have moved outside the Eagle HMA in search of forage during last years drought. Now that the area is getting enough precipitation the BLM could simply push them back onto the HMA to save the taxpayers money. The Arbitrary Management Level (AML) for the Eagle HMA is 100-210 wild horses. The current population is 1,370 wild horses.

The District will remove up to 50 wild horses from Oak Spring Summit west of Caliente that have moved outside the Caliente Complex in search of forage. Why is the Caliente Complex managed for zero wild horses? The current population is 796 wild horses.

The roundup is expected to take four to six days to complete. A veterinarian will be on site during roundup operations, which will be conducted by a contractor.

The native wild horses will be removed forever, transported to the Axtell Contract Off-Range Corrals in Axtell, Utah, where they will be offered for adoption to qualified individuals if the BLM’s customer service improves. Un-adopted wild horses will be at risk of being sold to slaughter middlemen after 3 strikes in BLM’s failed adoption system or placed in long-term pastures where they will be humanely cared for and treated, and retain their “wild” status and protection under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act until they are over ten years old and then they legally can be sold by the truckload to a slaughterhouse in Canada or Mexico according to the Burn Amendment to dispose of wild horses and burros.
The BLM claims they do not sell or send any wild horses to slaughter. They sell them to the middlemen who then sell wild horses to slaughter. This way the BLM’s hands don’t get dirty.

The Eagle-Caliente Complex Emergency Gather is no emergency as it’s been planned to appease ranchers and county commissioners with greased palms since 2014. The impacts are described and analyzed in the Ely District Public Safety and Nuisance Gather Environmental Assessment available at http://1.usa.gov/23ws5je but almost no maps or data appears there. This is the bulk of the information

Have you wondered why no well funded group is challenging the roundup in court or mediating for alternative holistic management solutions? Is the BLM using fertility control or just removing all the wild horses?

Follow the money . . . Know what resources (renewable energy, tracking mining, etc.) are about to erupt in that area. Keep in mind this is the same BLM office and cast of shady characters who are involved in the Water Canyon GONACON™ EXPERIMENT.

The roundup Hotline has been established at 775-861-6700. A recorded message will provide updated roundup activities. Roundup reports will be posted on the BLM Ely District website at http://on.doi.gov/1lGnDYC.

Please go to the roundup if you can at your own risk, document and now that it’s 2016 be sure to report animal cruelty to the FBI if you see it. But be careful because this part of the country is run by wild horse hating scoundrels pretending to be otherwise.

For more information from a BLM employee, contact:

Ben Noyes, wild horse and burro specialist
BLM Ely District office
702 North Industrial Way
Ely, NV 89301
(775) 289-1800

www.ProtectMustangs.org
Protect Mustangs is a nonprofit organization who protects and preserves native and wild horses.

Huge disinformation campaign against native wild horses in rural Utah and elsewhere to pitch slaughter

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Protect Mustangs

Today wild horses are underpopulated on public land. The BLM’s roundups and removals have caused the herds to have an increased birthrate because they fear extinction and the social structure is unstable.

The ISPMB Study shows wild horse herds with functional social structures contribute to low herd growth compared to BLM managed herds. Click here to read the study: http://protectmustangs.org/?p=6057

We request a 10 year moratorium on roundups for recovery and scientific studies before wild horses are managed to extinction.

What has changed?

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Protect Mustangs

Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada to remove all wild horses, burros within 5 years

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Protect Mustangs

Cross-posted from The Republic

MARTIN GRIFFITH Associated Press
September 02, 2012 – 8:04 pm EDT

RENO, Nev. — Federal officials have approved a final management plan for the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Nevada that calls for the removal of all wild horses and burros from it within five years.

The move is being made because the refuge was created for pronghorn antelope and other native wildlife, and horses and burros have a negative effect on habitat, said Joan Jewett, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland, Ore.

“They trample the habitat and overgraze and disturb the water sources,” she told The Associated Press. “We’re required by law to manage our refuges in accordance with the purposes for which they were established, and Sheldon was primarily for pronghorn antelope.”

Horse advocacy groups sharply criticized the refuge’s comprehensive conservation plan, which will guide its management over the next 15 years. It was publicly released late last month.

They say horses and burros lived in the area long before the refuge was created in 1931, and the animals actually heal the land and help prevent wildfires through grazing.

“We are extremely disappointed that the federal government has chosen to eradicate wild horses and burros from the lands where their ancestors have lived for more than a century and a half,” Suzanne Roy, director of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, said in a statement.

An aerial survey in July showed the 575,000-acre refuge along the Oregon border is home to at least 2,508 antelope, 973 mustangs and 182 wild burros, said Aaron Collins, a park ranger at Sheldon.

“We’re recording the highest numbers of pronghorn antelope since we began counting them in 1950,” he said.

Federal officials began the planning process on the refuge’s management plan in 2008, and received several thousand comments from individuals, organizations and government agencies during it, Collins said.

The final plan will be signed sometime after Sept. 24 by the regional director of the Fish and Wildlife Agency, he added.

Under federal law, only horses and burros removed from lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are protected from slaughterhouses if they can’t be adopted.

“Rounding up indigenous wild horses is wrong — especially when they can be sold to the meat buyers at auctions,” said Anne Novak of California-based Protect Mustangs. “These horses are vulnerable to ending up going to slaughter … The Sheldon plan to wipe out wild horses is nuts and goes against the public’s wishes.”

Activists said the final management plan rejected a more humane alternative to phase out horses and burros over 15 years using fertility control, an option that would have allowed unadoptable animals to live out their lives at the refuge.

(Story distributed by The Associated Press)

Link to the original article: http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/9d2599146ac04731ae3b93a918db2c59/NV–Refuge-Wild-Horses

BLM humanewashing goes viral

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Protect Mustangs

Similar to greenwashing to make something appear green that is far from it, Humanewashing tries to make a cruel and inhumane situation seem “humane”.

One can observe radical spin doctoring in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) refusal to take full responsibility regarding their inhumane roundups that traumatize, injure and kill American wild horses and burros–our living treasures of the West. Keep in mind the BLM is paying PR people to invent spin to fool the public, government and lawmakers . . . How do you feel knowing that BLM spin is paid for with your tax dollars?

Find the BLM’s humanewashing in the Washington Post article below and we will post your comments. We are very thankful the Associated Press reported on the issue.

BLM: Nev. horse roundup included use of electric prods, whips, but treatment was not inhumane

What has happened to government accountability and transparency?

Protect Mustangs™

Forever wild and free™

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