Feds want to use 11 million tax dollars to experiment on American Wild Horses and Burros

Note from Protect Mustangs: If you don’t like this then: 1.) Go see your congressional representative this week and ask them to intervene to stop these horrible experiments on America’s wild horses who are being managed to extinction. 2.) Sign and share this petition and email it to everyone you know: https://www.change.org/p/defund-and-stop-the-wild-horse-burro-roundups Groups like The Cloud Foundation and the coalition led by The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign seem to be misleading the public because they have chosen pushing PZP (controlled by The Humane Society of the United States) over championing wild horse freedom on public land. They slip appeals for PZP in the bottom of their online petitions hoping the public won’t notice what they are signing. That was the beginning of this slippery slope towards experimentation and extinction. Why? Follow the money, fear mongering and the seduction to campaign for drugging wild horses and burros with a risky pesticide made from slaughterhouse pig ovaries to block fertility. . . 3.) It’s time to join Protect Mustangs to protect our national treasures. Go to www.ProtectMustangs.org to sign up. 4.) You can donate to the Wild Horse Legal Fund also. The crowd funding link is here: https://www.gofundme.com/MustangLaw2016 or donate by www.PayPal.com to Contact@ProtectMustangs.org and please mark your donation is for the “Legal Fund”. Thank you for taking action today! Together we can turn this around.





The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to use American tax dollars in several cruel experiments to develop methods of wild horse and burro population control–despite the fact that there is no overpopulation of wild horses or burros. The BLM anticipates the total cost of the experiments to be $11 million over 5 years.The research is being conducted by university scientists as well as scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Research with Universities results in experimenting on wild horses and burros

In its 2013 report to the BLM, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that no highly effective, easily delivered and affordable fertility-control methods were currently available for use on wild horses and burros. The most promising birth control, PZP, made from slaughterhouse pig ovaries, is limited in the duration of its effectiveness (1-2 years). At the same time, after multiple applications or if applied to young fillies it permanently sterilizes native wild horses.

The BLM released a solicitation for experimentation to develop new or improve existing population growth suppression methods for wild horses. (http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2015/july/nr_07_07_2015.html)  The following seven research projects were reviewed and recommended by an NAS panel of experts and are consistent with recommendations made to the BLM by its Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board who is biased against wild horses and prefers livestock use public land for cheap grazing.

Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board Meeting in 2013

 

© EquineClinic.comn shared for educational purposes

© EquineClinic.comn shared for educational purposes

1. Evaluation of minimally invasive methods of contraception in wild horse and burro mares: tubal ligation and hysteroscopically-guided oviduct papilla laser ablation. This was pushed by pro-slaughter advocates who want the horses free of fertility control drugs so they can go to slaughter eventually.

Recipient: Oregon State University
Summary: A one-year experiment that will aim to develop a minimally invasive surgical sterilization method for wild horse mares that requires no incisions.
Details: In an effort to develop minimally invasive, low-risk techniques for contraception and population control in female wild horses and burros, the experiment will evaluate two procedures, tubal ligation and hysteroscopically-guided laser ablation of the oviduct papilla in standing sedated females. For tubal ligation, the research team hypothesizes that a flexible endoscope inserted through a small incision in the vaginal vault will allow visualization of each oviduct in mares. Use of a diode laser or cautery instrument will allow effective fulguration followed by bloodless sectioning of the oviduct. This procedure should allow successful sterilization of up to 100% of female wild horses and burros gathered in any particular location as a single event. For the hysteroscopic procedure, the recipients expect to endoscopically visualize each oviduct papilla in standing, sedated, non-pregnant mares. A diode laser will be used to seal the opening between the oviduct and each uterine horn, thus preventing subsequent fertilization. The proposed procedures do not involve major surgery, are expected to have minimal complications while approaching 100% effectiveness, and when applied, are expected to result in a static to decreasing population level. Additionally, tubal ligation is a technique commonly performed in humans. The development of an acceptable sterilization technique will help control the population levels of wild horses and burros.


2. Tubo-ovarian ligation via colpotomy as a method for sterilization in mares

Recipient: University of Kentucky
Summary: A two-year experiment to develop different surgical approaches for tubal ligation in mares.
Details: The overall goal of this experiment is to develop methodology for the safe, economical and effective sterilizationof mares via colpotomy (vaginal incision) to achieve: 1) ovarian necrosis / atrophy via application of a ligature to the ovarian pedicle and 2) simultaneous sterilization via tubal ligation (i.e., tubo-ovarian ligation). The project will help determine the effectiveness of a custom-designed instrument for placement of a polyamide (nylon) cable tie around the ovarian pedicle and oviduct of mares via colpotomy for tubo-ovarian ligation. The procedure, conducted in the standing animal under sedation and local anesthesia, is expected to induce permanent sterilization of treated mares. The researchers will assess any post-operative complications of the procedure in mares and the effects on the health of mares to determine long-term effects on the reproductive tract, the overall health of mares and the fertility of mares undergoing the procedure, and the feasibility of these procedures in pregnant mares.

PM Sick Filly PVC March 25 2014
3. Functional assessment of ovariectomy (spaying) via colpotomy of wild mares as an acceptable method of contraception and wild horse population control

Recipient: Oregon State University
Summary: A six-month experiment that will determine whether an existing accepted surgical sterilization procedure commonly used for domestic mares can be safely conducted on wild horses.
Details: This experiment proposes to conduct a large-scope investigation of the safety and practicality of spaying mares as a tool for wild horse population control. Specifically, the researchers will help determine whether ovariectomy via vaginal colpotomy can be safely and effectively performed on wild mares that have been selected for non-breeding status. Non-breeding horses could then be returned to the range to live out their natural lives without individually contributing to population growth. The proposed research effort is based on recent pilot studies that have suggested the potential for surgery-related health complications from ovariectomy in adult female horses is low (near 1%). When evaluating options for field techniques, spaying (ovariectomizing) mares as a population control method is not recommended unless it can be performed in a safe, practical, and effective manner. The results of this study will provide standardized, baseline outcomes for this surgical procedure which can be directly compared to other less invasive procedures being conducted and evaluated by the same research team.

PM WC11 Lucky 11 Map

Map of Western United States showing 12 current field research/pilot projects.

4. Re-immunization of Free-Ranging Horses with GonaCon Immunological Vaccine: Effects on Reproduction, Safety, and Population Performance

Recipient: Colorado State University
Summary: A two-year experiment will focus on further study of Gonocon, an approved and labeled contraceptive vaccine for equids.

PM PZP Injection
Details: This experiment will focus on the effectiveness of GonaCon as an immunological vaccine, with five objectives: 1) to begin to determine the optimum and most effective re-vaccination schedule with GonaCon vaccine for suppressing reproductive rates in free-ranging horses, the duration of effectiveness, and the return to fertility following treatment; 2) to determine the safety and physiological side-effects (if any) in feral horses following re-vaccination with GonaCon including visual assessment of general health, body condition, injection site reactions, effects on current pregnancy, and neonatal health and survival; 3) to determine the effects of GonaCon vaccination on the behavioral side-effects (if any) in free-ranging horses including quantitative assessment of the effects on daily activity patterns and social interactions; 4) to develop and test a safe and effective dart configuration and injection system for remotely administering GonaCon vaccine to free-ranging horses by means of a syringe dart; and 5) to develop a Bayesian model to forecast the consequences of different GonaCon vaccine treatments on feral horse population dynamics at THRO. [Teddy Roosevelt National Park].


5. The Effect of Immunization against Oocyte Specific Growth Factors in Mares

Recipient: Colorado State University
Summary: A two-year experiment to develop a new, permanent contraceptive vaccine for wild horse mares.
Details: This experiment will focus on vaccination against two key proteins in wild horse and burro females, either alone or in combination, which may result in permanent sterility through premature oocyte depletion. The depletion of oocytes may occur by simply causing them all to become atretic prematurely and/or accelerating the process so that after a single season the mares and jennies have depleted their oocyte reserves. To test this hypothesis, the researchers will vaccinate mares against the proteins and track their sexual behavior, follicular growth, hormonal profile and ultimately total oocyte count over a two-year period. The long-term goal is to develop a vaccine that can cause permanent sterility after a single dose.

PM Burros Wild 2 © Carl Mrozek

Cruel way to drag foal by pulling bailing twine around their neck (Photo © Bo Rodriguez)

Cruel way to drag foal by pulling bailing twine around their neck (Photo © Bo Rodriguez)

6. Electrospun delivery to enhance the effectiveness of immunocontraception strategies in equids

Recipient: Ohio State University
Summary: A four-year experiment that will attempt to develop a new delivery vehicle for porcine zona pellucida (PZP) – a temporary contraceptive currently used in some wild horse herds – that would increase the duration of the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Details: To reduce population on public lands, horse immunocontraception has largely focused on the use of PZP in free-roaming wild populations. The vaccine appears to act by stimulating anti-PZP antibodies that bind to the surface of the ovulated egg, preventing sperm attachment. While performance has been satisfactory, recent results have been associated with contraceptive efficiencies that are considerably less than 100%. The basis for this is unknown but is believed to be in part caused by delivery methods that require substantial heating during polymer vehicle fabrication, expose PZP to enzymatic fluids prior to entry into the bloodstream and allow gradual – not burst – release. Gradual release can potentially desensitize the immune system to the presence of PZP, resulting in inferior production of anti-PZP antibodies. Thus, an ideal delivery method would allow release of PZP in “bursts” at pre-determined intervals to assure constant immune stimulation. This project will seek to develop an electrospun technology that can allow long-term, ‘burst’ delivery of porcine zona pellucida (PZP) vaccines to the intramuscular environment of horses and burros to result in prolonged suppression of reproduction. For large-scale application, free roaming horses could be gathered in the field and processed through stock chutes for aging, at which time the implants will be inserted by trocar. The experiment will also carry out parallel in vitro and in vivo experiments to examine the potential of electrospun vehicles as immunocontraceptive carriers. An electrospun “universal delivery vehicle” will be developed to provide sustained release of effective levels of porcine zona pellucida (PZP) for immunocontraception over periods of at least three years. By careful design, fabrication and testing of two different electrospun designs, the researchers will create a comprehensive evaluation of this novel method of delivery.

Pm PZP Darts
7. The use of membrane disrupting peptide / peptoid LHRH conjugates to control wild horse and burro populations

Recipient: Louisiana State University
Summary: A three-year experiment for the development of an injectable agent that would inactivate hormones and decrease female and male gonad viability.
Details: The experiment is a multidisciplinary effort aimed at developing novel drugs to control wild horse and burro populations. Several types of drugs consisting of conjugates of membrane disrupting peptides (such as Phor 21) with luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) currently exist. These drugs (such as LHRH-Phor 21 conjugate) effectively target, bind to and destroy prostate, testicular, breast and ovarian cancer cells, as well as testicular and ovarian cells that control reproduction. LHRH targets the cell and delivers Phor 21 to the cancer cell or the reproductive cell in the testes or ovary and destroys it. Preliminary experiments suggest that administration of this drug by a slow-release delivery system will destroy the cells that control spermatogenesis in the male and follicle growth, oocyte development, ovulation and cyclicity in the female. Preliminaryresults also show that LHRH-Phor 21 targets and destroys gonadotropic cells in the pituitary gland. This indicates that cessation of reproductive activity is the result of both central control at the level of the pituitary gland and on receptor binding cells in both male and female gonads. The experiment will also assess the effect the drugs have on pregnant mares, both in early gestation and late gestation.

PM PZP Syringe Yearling Meme

Additional details about these experiments can be found in the following documents:

Detailed Summary of University-led Experiments for Fertility Control Tools for Wild Horses
Review of Proposals to the BLM on Wild Horse and Burro Sterilization or Contraception: A Letter Report
Research with the U.S. Geological Survey

Through its partnership with U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the BLM is undertaking important research aimed at delivering better methods and tools for managing wild horse and burro herds on public lands. These projects build upon on-going cooperation between the BLM and USGS that is implementing new methods to estimate wild horse and burro population size.

There are nine USGS experiments that have been approved or are on-going:
Collaring & radio marking (1 year): The aim is to develop safe GPS collars for tracking animals to determine habitat selection, movement ecology, population estimation, behavior, etc. GPS tracking might also help locating animals for contraceptive treatments.
Fecal DNA (genetics/population survey) (1.5 years): The experiment involves the collection and analysis of fecal DNA as a noninvasive method to determine genetic diversity and estimate population size.
Carrying capacity modeling (1 year): This experiment’s aim is to develop a coarse model to evaluate changes in animal carrying capacity in response to changes in vegetation production. The resulting model may help BLM to adapt plans in response to climatic change.

PM PZP Syringe FB
Mare Contraception -SpayVac Pen Trial II (5 years): This experiment will help determine the efficacy of alternative SpayVac contraceptive vaccine formulations that are potentially longer acting than conventional PZP vaccines.
Evaluating Behavior of Spayed Free-Roaming Mares (4 years): The experiment will determine the effects of spaying on behavior, interactions, and movement of spayed mares among a breeding herd. The study will also determine the population level effect on herd growth.
Evaluating Behavior of Geldings among a Breeding Herd (4 years): This experiment will determine any effects of gelding on behavior, movement, interactions and changes in habitat selection.
Two Sentinel Horse Herd Management Area (HMA) Demography Studies (2 studies, each of 5 years): These experiments will provide demographic data sets for use in new population models and serve as control HMAs for gelding and spayed mare field studies.
Burro Sentinel HMA Demography Study (5 years): The experiment will involve collecting data on the survival, fertility, fecundity, recruitment, movements, range use, habitat selection and social behavior of wild burros. These data will be used in population modeling.
The BLM has requested or is reviewing proposals for the following projects with USGS:
Evaluate the Use of a Silastic O-Ring Intrauterine Device (IUD) in Mares (4 years): This experiment will determine any effects on mare health resulting from the long-term presence of the silastic O-ring IUD. This IUD has effectively prevented pregnancy in domestic mares during one breeding season.
Burro Population Survey Method Development (2.5 years): This experiment will test two new population survey methods for wild burros. The existing simultaneous double-observer method, when applied to burros, tends to lead to underestimates of true burro population size.
WinEquus II – Population Model with Cost/Benefit Outputs (1.5 years): This experiment will develop a model that compares population modeling outcomes and projects the costs, benefits and expected population growth resulting from management actions that involve PZP, removals, spaying, gelding and other population growth suppression tools.
Testing Efficacy of Contraceptives for Female Burros (3-4 years): Contraceptive vaccines have yet to be used on wild burros due to limited research and unknown effects. This study will examine the efficacy of various existing vaccines.

PM Hazard Foter Public domain Marked Sterilize

© Protect Mustangs, 2016


Sally Jewell confirmation hearing for Interior Secretary today

Sally Jewell, Fortune Live Media / Foter.com / CC BY-ND

Sally Jewell, Fortune Live Media / Foter.com / CC BY-ND

Today at 10 a.m. EST (7 a.m. PST) watch the confirmation hearing for Sally Jewell as next Interior Secretary. The hearing will be live via webcast on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee website: http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/live-webcast

Take notes and post your comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ProtectMustangs

Read Andrew Cohen’s fabulous article in The Atlantic

7 Questions About Wild Horses for Interior Secretary Nominee Sally Jewell

Her predecessor presided over roundups and the sale of horses for slaughter. Without equine or ranching experience, what will this former executive do to right the wrongs?

On Thursday on Capitol Hill, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a confirmation hearing to consider the nomination of Sally Jewell for the position of Secretary of the Interior. She comes to the room offering some measure of comfort to two of the primary constituencies that care most about the post. Big oil? Check — she worked for years for Mobil Oil, out in the oil and gas fields of Oklahoma. Environmentalists? Check — she comes to Washington, D.C., from R.E.I., the “outdoor recreation” company, where she was a longtime advocate for conservation.

But Jewell is mostly a blank slate when it comes to two key areas of the Interior Department’s portfolio which are in famous and direct conflict with one another. The first relates to the federal government’s complicated relationship with the ranching and livestock industries. Jewell does not appear to have much of a public record when it comes to her views on the concept of welfare ranching — the age-old, under-reported pork-barrel policy by which the federal government practically gives away the use of our public land to private ranching and farming interests by means of well-below-market lease rates.

The second unknown area of Jewell’s resume involves the fate of nation’s wild horses, which roam public lands and which have suffered greatly over the past few years as a result of the ruinous policies of Jewell’s would-be predecessor, Ken Salazar. For wild horse advocates, the good news is that Jewell doesn’t come from a longtime ranching family, as Salazar did, or have a long record of hostility to the nation’s herds, as he does.

The bad news is that Jewell may today know so little about the legal status of the horses, and so little about the political and economic background of their current predicament. that she may not be able to quickly focus on their situation. And that, these advocates fear, could be catastrophic to the herds.

Despite Jewell’s background with Mobil, she will likely be tagged on Thursday by Republicans for being too much of an conservationist. And despite her history of work on conservation causes, she may be tagged by Democrats for her career in oil — and also for her benefactor’s disappointing record of conservation during his first term in the White House. In either instance, the topic of wild horses isn’t likely to be raised at all. The ranching and livestock lobby certainly doesn’t want to bring attention to their recent success in ridding the range lands of the horses. And the horse lobby isn’t now strong enough to force a senator, a committee — or Congress as a whole — to yet raise a ruckus.

With all this in mind, here are the seven horse-related issues Jewell should have to address before she is confirmed for the post.

1. The slaughter of wild horses. Under the direction of Secretary Salazar, and at the behest of the powerful ranching, livestock, oil and gas lobbies, the Bureau of Land Management in the past few years has rounded up approximately 37,000 of the nation’s wild horses from public lands. These roundups are cruel, often deadly, and always hazardous to the health and safety of the animals. Madame Secretary-designate, please take a few minutes to watch this video:

The federal government now holds these horses in cramped pens at significant expense to taxpayers. In the meantime, the BLM has allowed known advocates of horse slaughter to buy thousands of these horses. As secretary, are you prepared to stop these harsh roundups, to unequivocally protect wild horses from slaughter, and to impose a zero-tolerance enforcement policy against those individuals who seek to buy them for slaughter as well as against those BLM employees who knowingly sell them to these individuals? If so, how exactly?

2. The care of captured wild horses. In addition to the economic burden to taxpayers of the roundup and corralling of all these horses, horse advocates are growing increasingly concerned about the conditions many of the captured horses live in. The situation has gotten consistently worse over the years as federal and state budgets have been tightened. For example, in 2011, abused horses were removed from such conditions in Utah. Please watch this video, Madame Secretary-designate, and tell us specifically what you plan to do to better ensure that these federally protected horses are more humanely treated:

3. The long-term solution. We all know that the current situation with the corralled wild horses is unsustainable as an economic or political policy. Approximately 50,000 of them are now so housed, which means that more are currently in pens than roaming free as intended under federal law. Some advocates believe that the horses should be returned to public lands — the tiny fraction of those lands from where they came, where they still would be overwhelmed by the numbers of sheep and cattle which graze there (at below-market lease fees). Other advocates believe the Bureau of Land Management should aggressively pursue birth control methods in the herds to reduce population growth while sustaining the viability of the herds.

Many say that if the current situation continues, and if the BLM cannot find habitats where most of these horses can be repatriated, thousands of them will inevitably be euthanized or sold for slaughter. (Indeed, in Oklahoma, where the BLM held a public meeting earlier this week, state officials again want to legalize horse slaughter.) As Secretary of the Interior, how will you solve this long-term problem of what to do with these horses which now are essentially “wards of the state” thanks to Obama Administration policies? Do you support finding new public-land habitats for them? Do you support their repatriation to former grazing areas?

4. Transparency at the Bureau of Land Management. In theory, the Interior Department is supposed to be an honest broker between private and public interests competing for the management and use of public lands. In practice, when it comes to wild horses anyway, the BLM has for generations been little less than an instrument for the business interests it is supposed to regulate. For example, the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, which is supposed to give the public a meaningful voice in wild horse policy, is stacked with individuals with long ties to livestock and ranching interests. One of these members, in fact the newest “public” member to join the Board, is vocally supportive of horse slaughter.

Are you prepared as secretary to ensure that horse advocates, who may be more openly critical of current BLM policies than their counterparts in the ranching and livestock industries, are more invested in the process by which wild horse policies are created? If so, how? Earlier this week, at the Oklahoma meeting, members of the public were given only three minutes each to publicly express their views about the BLM’s wild-horse policies. And under Secretary Salazar (as noted below), the BLM has been consistently unwilling to publicly respond to public comment and criticism about wild horse policy. Will you be willing to ensure more transparency and public participation in this regulatory process? If so, how?

5. Political give-and-take. In southern Wyoming, urged on by BLM officials, a ranching and livestock group, aided by other corporate interests, has sued the federal government to “zero out” most of the wild horses living on a vast 2-million-acre swatch of public and private land that includes several local herd management areas. Now, having encouraged the very lawsuit filed against it, the BLM agrees with the plaintiffs that the horses should be removed from these lands even though there is strong evidence that the existing herds are doing no more damage to these lands than the livestock which outnumber them by many orders of magnitude.

Are you prepared, as Secretary of the Interior, to extract from the ranching, livestock, and energy industries explicit promises to protect the herds in exchange for their continued push to extract natural resources (oil, natural gas, etc.) from public lands at below-market costs? In other words, what fair and reasonable price are you going to impose on these industries for ridding public lands of federally protected horses? What are you going to say to these corporate officials when they continue to ask the BLM to remove wild horses from public lands for their own commercial benefit? Are you prepared to call for nationwide market rates for federal leases on public grazing lands?

6. Personal outreach. A lifelong Colorado rancher, your would-be predecessor was singularly unresponsive to public requests from wild horse advocates. He repeatedly refused to meet with them as he authorized the round ups of tens of thousands of horses. Salazar refused even to respond to a petition signed by 25,000 citizens and by 20 members of Congress seeking information about the BLM’s sale of approximately 1,700 wild horses to a known horse slaughter advocate. And last fall he threatened to punch out a reporter who asked him to comment on the sale of these horses.

What, specifically, are you going to do to reach out, personally, to wild horse advocates so that you can better educate yourself about the plight of the herds? Are you prepared to meet privately with such advocates on a regular basis — say, four times a year — to ensure they have more direct input into the policies affecting the horses? Given the federal laws and regulations designed to govern the preservation and management of the wild horses, do you see it as part of the core responsibilities of the Interior Secretary to engage in such meetings?

7. Conservation. Opponents of wild horses say that the herds do great damage to public lands and that they draw down precious natural resources. But empirical evidence — and common sense — tell us that the relatively small number of wild horses on public lands do far less damage to the environment than do the relatively large number of cattle and sheep which also graze those lands. In other words, a million sheep and cattle destroy more public grazing lands in America than do a few thousand horses. And the remaining herds live on only a tiny fraction of federal public lands to begin with.

As a dedicated conservationist, are you prepared to view the economic conflict over wild horses in those terms and to implement policies which take a broader view of the causes of environmental harm to public lands? In other words, as a conservationist, are you prepared to consider the scientific possibility that cattle and sheep pose a far larger problem to the environment than do wild horses? And, if that’s the case, what specifically do you propose to do about it to save America’s protected wild horses from extinction while better protecting our public lands and better distributing the economic price of such protection?

Ben Nelson Goes Cow (Fees) Tipping

by Andrew Cohen as published in The Atlantic

Federal grazing fees are not a hot issue. But the Nebraska senator’s new bill to bring them up to market rates is an astute political move.

(Photo © Anne Novak)

When outgoing Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced last month that he was pushing to reduce America’s national deficit by reducing “welfare ranching” in America’s heartland, so quiet was the political response in Washington that you could practically hear the crickets chirping along the Potomac. Undaunted, Sen. Nelson last Wednesday went one step further, announcing that he has introduced an eminently level-headed “Fair Grazing Fee” bill, designed to require the various agencies of the executive branch to charge market-level grazing fees for private ranchers who are running livestock on public land.

More crickets in Washington. But not on the ranches and farms of the nation’s vast ranch lands. And certainly not in Nebraska. There, Sen. Nelson’s new initiative is a very big deal for many different reasons. After all, it’s not every day when an elected official, in the selfless pursuit of a common good, bucks up against the power of entrenched special interests and … wait, wait, what’s that? Sen. Nelson pitched his plan not just out of pure deficit-minded selflessness but because Republican nominee Deb Fischer, running this fall for the seat he is vacating, is herself a current beneficiary of “welfare ranching?”

Here’s how the Omaha World-Herald Leader put it last month: “The family of Republican Senate nominee Deb Fischer leases 11,724 acres of federal land in north-central Nebraska for about $4,700 for seven months — by some estimates about $110,000 less than the market rate for leasing private land in Cherry County.” Combine such a sweetheart deal with a GOP candidate whose campaign so far has focused upon deficit reduction and wasteful Washington spending and, presto! The Democrats have themselves a campaign theme with some measure of traction.

Sen. Nelson puts it another way. It’s not a story about Washington picking on the ranching industry, you see; it’s about inequality within that industry itself. Sen. Nelson says he isn’t just sticking up for the hundreds of millions of Americans who would like to see their public land leased at market rates. He says he is also sticking up for the vast majority of ranchers who for one reason or another do not receive the benefit of federally subsidized ranching fees. Last week, the senator explained it this way to local journalists:

I have offered an Amendment to help pay for the Jobs Bill, an Amendment that will bring fairness to America’s ranchers and all taxpayers. My Amendment will require the US Forest Service and the Federal Bureau of Land Management to charge market value to those who graze livestock on public lands. As you probably know, an elite group of ranchers, I call them the ‘two-percenters,’ they currently receive about $140 million a year in federal subsidies to graze livestock on publicly-owned land. In these hard economic times, taxpayers shouldn’t be padding the pocketbooks of the elite two-percent who get a special deal that 98% of ranchers don’t.

And here’s more from his website:

… The State of Nebraska charges over $20 dollars a head of calf to graze on state land. Why should the federal government charge $1.35?… Let’s go through some numbers. All the grazing fees on federal lands add up to about $21 million dollars. But it costs the federal government $140-some million dollars to take care of those lands. In other words, there is a shortfall of $120 million dollars coming from two percent of ranchers. If I’m one of the 98 percent, I’m going to say ‘that’s not fair.” That’s why this is a matter of tax fairness.

In this day and age, who could be against “tax fairness”? Certainly not Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator and governor who is running (against Fischer) for Nelson’s soon-to-be-empty seat. “I believe the free market should set the prices for grazing on federal land,” Kerrey said last month in a press release after Nelson first announced his pitch. “Giving generous subsidies to a small number of ranchers isn’t fair to the vast majority of ranchers who don’t have this grazing privilege. Further, it isn’t fair to the taxpayers who are subsidizing this form of welfare.

What do Fischer and her fellow Republicans think of Sen. Nelson’s bright idea? I’ll let the Lincoln Journal Star pick up the story from here:

The Nebraska Democratic Party launched a new TV ad campaign Monday accusing Republican Senate nominee Deb Fischer of accepting millions of dollars in “taxpayer subsidies”;at the same time, she calls for reduced federal spending. “Think you know Deb Fischer?” the attack ad asks. “Well, behind her rhetoric is a lot of bull. Tell welfare rancher Deb Fischer to cut wasteful spending, not profit from it.”

Democrats clearly have decided Fischer’s participation in a federal livestock grazing rights program that benefits her own family ranch may be a chink in her conservative, cost-cutting armor they might be able to exploit. Sen. Ben Nelson and Bob Kerrey, her Democratic Senate opponent, already have questioned Fischer’s acceptance of what they describe as federal subsidies that result from charging below-market fees for cattle grazing rights on U.S. Forest Service land.

“Ranchers are required to pay for additional maintenance costs and abide by strict federal regulations in exchange for leasing the land,” Fischer campaign spokesman Daniel Keylin said. Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, a former U.S. secretary of agriculture, already has said it was misleading to describe the program as a subsidy, Keylin pointed out. Johanns said the lease requires substantial activity by a rancher in return for limited use of the land. Republican state Chairman Mark Fahleson branded the ads an act of desperation.

An act of desperation, perhaps. But that doesn’t make Sen. Nelson’s plan bad national policy. Indeed, regardless of its local-political overtones, and regardless of the senator’s motives in promoting it, making federal grazing fees at least match the market rate is sound and equitable policy that deserves serious consideration on Capitol Hill. The fact is, for the past 75 years, “welfare ranching” has eroded public resources for the benefit of an industry that gladly accepts the federal dole at the same time it is blasting Washington for its largesse.

Just ask the folks at the Center for Biological Diversity, a group dedicated (among other things) to the conservation of public lands. The Center’s Public Land Campaigns Director, Taylor McKinnon, quickly praised the Nelson plan. “The grazing subsidy is America’s upside-down public-lands policy,” McKinnon told me last Friday. “Each year it costs the public hundreds of millions of dollars while enabling public-lands grazing that erodes soil and destroys wildlife habitat. Reform makes perfect economic and environmental sense. It’s long overdue.”

Overdue — and clearly not a priority so far for the Obama Administration, which has stubbornly refused to expend any political capital on this issue. Here’s what McKinnon had to say about the executive branch’s contemporary approach to the problem of “welfare ranching” and its insidious subsidization:

We’ve both petitioned and sued the Obama Administration seeking a significantly fairer fee, but they resist change. So after years of their skulking and cowering, it’s refreshing to see someone with guts enough to tell the truth and demand a discussion about real reform.

“Real reform” can come from many different places and for many different reasons. Maybe Sen Nelson is, as McKinnon suggests, just being gutsy for pitching his plan now. Maybe he is, as Nebraska’s Republicans contend, just being ballsy on his way out. Either way, and whomever wins or loses the Senate race for his seat in Nebraska, fair grazing fees and the end of “welfare ranching” is a good idea whose time, finally, has come. As the senator himself put it, “$1.35 per cow is too darn low.” Darn right it is.

Andrew Cohen reports for The Atlantic about the pro-slaughter appointment to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board

The Lasso Tightens Around America’s Wild Horses

FEB 13 2012 –With 45,000 or so wild horses in federal control, the Bureau of Land Management selects a “pro-slaughter cattlewoman” to be the public’s voice on its advisory board.

To wild horse advocates, the ones who fret daily over the worsening plight of the American mustang, Montana’s Republican former senator Conrad Burns holds a special spot in the pantheon of enablers, cynics, scoundrels and villains who have conspired for generations to endanger the health and safety of the herds. In November 2004, at the last minute, it was then-Senator Burns who inserted into a 3,300-page budget appropriations bill a single-paged rider that amended the 1971 Wild Horse Protection Act so it was legal, once again, to slaughter wild horses.

With the subsequent stroke of President George W. Bush’s pen, Burns thus achieved (without any legislative debate) what Wild Horse Annie‘s Act had specifically sought to prevent. By re-authorizing slaughter, Burns had nurtured the political incentive for the feds to capture and control more wild horses. The economics of that, in turn, helped free up more public/private land for more use by the livestock, oil and mining industries. The free market, in other words, was unleashed upon the horses. They never stood a chance. And they still don’t.

 The answers come easier not because they are wiser, but because of the absence of any meaningful dissent or discussion about alternatives.

In November 2006, Kurt Brungardt wrote an important essay in Vanity Fair chronicling most of this story. Back then, rather than undertake a meaningful revision to the Wild Horse Act that would restore some spine to the federal legislation, Congress instead effectively banned the slaughter of all horses on American soil. The legislation didn’t end the slaughter business that Burns had stimulated, of course. It just outsourced it to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada. Last fall, Congress conceded defeat; now, U.S. slaughterhouses are re-opening.No one knows how many wild horses have been slaughtered since 2004. Today, for now, the Bureau of Land Management is prohibited from selling wild horses to those who would then “knowingly” sell them to slaughter. As slender a reed of protection as that is for the horses, it’s actually an improvement from the way it was after Burns first struck. But the current status on slaughter doesn’t even purport to answer the bigger question here: What will now happen now, if not eventual slaughter, to the wild horses under federal control?

According to their own figures, the feds now control in pens or fenced pastures at least 45,000 wild horses. Last year, they rounded up over 10,000 wild horses, about the same as the year before . At the same time, however, the government says the number of wild horses roaming free is approximately the same as it was in 2004. Horse advocates believe this latter number is far less than the feds acknowledge but no one knows for sure, which is one reason why the National Academy of Science is currently reviewing the BLM’s wild horse policies.

THE BLM AND THE ADVISORY BOARD

Once dubbed one of the five worst senators by Time, Burns is gone from political office. In 2008, after he was tainted by the Jack Abramoff scandal, he lost his reelection bid. What’s significant here about his career, however, came before he went to Congress. Wikipedia tells us that Burns was a cattle auctioneer before becoming manager of a livestock expo. He was a farm guy; another farm guy, economically and philosophically opposed to wild horses on public land, who was dictating harmful policy about the horses under color and cover of law.

Burns may be Public Enemy Number One to the wild horse folks. But the Bureau of Land Management (the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” as it has been called) is not far behind. And here is one reason why. Last Monday, for example, the BLM announced that it had “made selections for three positions on the National Wild Horse and Bureau Advisory Board,” a group designed under the 1971 Wild Horse Act to advise the bureaucrats on wild horse policies. One of the BLM’s choices for a “public” spot on the Board was Callie Hendrickson.

Here’s how the feds described her:

Ms. Hendrickson is Executive Director, White River and Douglas Creek Conservation Districts, and owner and consultant for E-Z Communications. As executive director of the conservation districts, Ms. Hendrickson has extensive experience in addressing public rangeland health concerns for the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts. Her career is focused on natural resource policy development and education. She has served on the Colorado Foundation for Water Education, Mesa County 4-H Foundation, Mesa County Farm Bureau, and the Mesa County Cattlewomen. Ms. Hendrickson replaces Janet M. Jankura.

Could it be? Yet another farm and livestock soul, purportedly the “public’s” voice on the Horse Board, getting a chance for input into wild horse policy? And not just a cattlewoman with an evidently open mind, mind you, but one who seems already to have expressed a great deal of hostility toward the horses? The Cloud Foundation, for example, a leading horse advocacy group, immediately noted that Hendrickson was part of a group which had intervened against it in a lawsuit brought to better protect a free-roaming herd on Colorado’s Western Slope.

And the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, another one of the nation’s leading horse advocacy groups, formally protested the BLM’s inclusion onto the Board of what the AWHPC called a “pro-slaughter cattlewoman.” To the BLM, the advocates wrote:

Particularly objectionable is the recent appointment of Callie Hendrickson, an outspoken advocate for horse slaughter and lethal management of America’s wild horses, to the “Public Interest” position on the board. At a time when public opinion surveys have reconfirmed the American public’s strong opposition to horse slaughter, Ms. Hendrickson’s appointment to represent “general public interest” is, frankly, appalling.

Ms. Hendrickson… has a history of anti-mustang positions and in favor of slaughter. In fact, she will be a featured speaker at the United Horsemen summit in Oklahoma, which is being organized to plan strategy for resumption of horse slaughter in the U.S. She has also lobbied for removal of wild horses from public lands; endorsed the destruction of “excess” wild horses and the unlimited sale of captured mustangs for slaughter; testified in favor of anti-wild-horse legislation; criticized wild horse advocates [and] supported legislation to block environmental and animal protection organizations from filing lawsuits (internal links omitted by me).

This kind of political and bureaucratic deck-stacking — the BLM truly couldn’t find a neutral new member for the Board? — is a recurring theme in the story of these horses. The people who are responsible for their protection and management typically have enormous conflicts of interest against them. The Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, is a Colorado rancher. The governor of Wyoming, Matt Mead, is a rancher. And the beleaguered, old Wild Horse Protection Act is only as sound as the men and women who interpret and implement it.

THE PROBLEM

Late last week, I asked the BLM to comment on the Hendrickson controversy. Here is the initial response I got back via email from Tom Gorey, a BLM spokesman:

The attempt by activists to discredit the new appointees to the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is a typical tactic employed by anti-BLM partisans to push their anti-management agenda by any means possible. Their apocalypse-now, sky-is-falling rhetoric is flagrantly dishonest and is clearly aimed at preventing the BLM from gathering horses from overpopulated herds on the range. The BLM is not ‘managing for extinction.’ There is no conspiracy to put down healthy horses that are in off-the-range holding facilities. Members on our board are qualified based on their knowledge of the law, current program actions, and their commitment to ensuring that healthy horses thrive in balance with other public rangeland resources and uses.

The next day, Gorey sent me another email. Citing the language of the 1971 statute, he wrote that Hendrickson “was found to meet all of the requirements for the General Public appointee. Requirements include a special knowledge about protection of wild horses and burros, management of wildlife, animal husbandry, or natural resource management.” Gorey told me that both the Secretary of the Interior — that would-be rancher Salazar — and the Secretary of Agriculture had signed off on Hendrickson’s appointment.

To Suzanne Roy, of the Horse Preservation Campaign, Hendrickson’s new role is only half the bad news delivered by the BLM last week. The other half was the removal from the Advisory Board of Janet Jankura, whom Hendrickson replaced. According to Roy, Jankura had applied to continue in her “public” spot on the Board but was replaced. Why? Roy suggests it is because Jankura during her tenure pressed “the BLM to document and consider public comments” about the wild horses. Roy also offered some perspective about the board itself:

Last year, the BLM reconfigured the board membership. Previously, there were two slots for livestock/ranching interests. One of those slots was converted to public interest with equine knowledge, meaning that there are now 2 representatives of the public and 1 livestock representative on the board. BLM embraced this change as evidence of their commitment to reforming the program. With the appointment of Hendrickson, the BLM is, in essence, taking back the livestock slot, providing more evidence (as if we needed any more!) that the BLM talks about reform while continuing the same old business as usual.

“Business at usual” at the BLM is not good news for the horses. First, the horses got the shaft during the Reagan Administration, from the brush-clearing California cowboy himself. Next, their situation became materially worse during the administration of George W. Bush, the Connecticut oilman with the cowboy hat. And things look even worse now after three years of President Barack Obama, the politician who campaigned against horse slaughter, but who nevertheless signed last fall’s slaughter bill.

THE SOLUTION

So what is America going to do with all the wild horses it has rounded up to keep America’s public lands available for cattle and sheep? How is the BLM going to continue to justify the continuing costs of keeping the horses penned or pastured? The concern, for wild horse lovers, isn’t just that no one in Washington seems to have a good answer to those questions. The concern is that when the answers finally do come from government they’ll come from folks like Hendrickson, who evidently believe that large-scale slaughter is a valid option.There is no conspiracy, the BLM’s Gorey says, but there doesn’t have to be one to doom the horses. You get enough like-minded people into a bureaucracy, or onto an advisory board, and pretty soon everyone agrees about what ought to be done. The answers come easier not because they are wiser, or because they purport to follow the spirit of the law, but because of the absence of any meaningful dissent or discussion about alternatives. That’s how bad policy gets made, how it sustains itself, and how, eventually, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

From the BLM’s newly-constituted Advisory Board to the number of hooves now penned in; from the Interior Secretary’s ranching interests to complaints about the taxpayer costs of keeping so many public horses in captivity; from the resumption of horse slaughter on American soil to the heightened pace of yearly round-ups, there is little that advocates can point to today as a sign that things are going to get better, and not much worse, for the wild horses (who, as I’ve written before, constitute a tiny fraction of all animals ranging public land).

It would take a great many acts of political courage on Capitol Hill to restore some sense of balance to the policy argument over the fate of the horses. It would take an amendment to the 1971 law — a revision that would go against the interests of the powerful livestock and ranching lobbies and their tribunes in state and federal government. And it would take a change in personnel and policy at the Interior Department, and its Bureau of Land Management, to make the executive branch the honest broker that wild horse advocates want it to be.

It would take, in other words, an honest and meaningful national discussion about whether we want to continue to protect our wild horses and precisely how we want our BLM bureaucrats to “manage” them. It’s a debate which horse advocates would welcome — the polling looks good — but which isn’t likely to ever happen. Instead, the spirit of the federal law which protects the wild horses will continue to be whittled away, one Hendrickson or Burns at a time. For the nation’s symbolic horses, their friends are close — but their enemies are closer.

© The Atlantic.

The article is here http://bit.ly/ydKDkD Please share this far and wide so the public knows what’s going on with their tax dollars.

BLM Cancels Wyoming Castration Plan

Thanks to Mr. Cohen who is following the story. He writes about Wyoming wild horses no longer facing castration in The Atlantic article Whoa There: BLM Cancels Wyoming Wild Horse Roundup Plan Luckily due to massive public outcry–the BLM got the message: Don’t snip the studs.