BREAKING NEWS: Protect Mustangs & Friends of Animals file lawsuit to stop Pine Nut Mountains roundup

 

Stop the Roundups!

 

For Immediate Release

Jenni Barnes, staff attorney, FoA’s Wildlife Law Program 720.949.7791; jenniferbarnes@friendsofanimals.org

Mike Harris, Director, Wildlife Law Program; 720.949.7791; michaelharris@friendsofanimals.org

Anne Novak, Executive Director, Protect Mustangs; 415.531.8454; anne@protectmustangs.org

Protect Mustangs & Friends of Animals file lawsuit to stop Pine Nut Mountains roundup

Advocates push for NEPA to be upheld when BLM snubs public comment

Reno, NV (Jan. 26, 2015)—Protect Mustangs and Friends of Animals (FoA) have filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to stop the round-up and permanent removal of 200 wild horses in the Pine Nut Herd Management Area (HMA) and the round-up of another 132 wild horses so that an estimated 66 mares would be forcibly drugged with the pesticide known as PZP for fertility control. In addition, the groups plan to file a temporary restraining order—asking the judge for an emergency ruling so that the BLM can’t round up any horses or administer PZP until the court has time to hear FoA’s and Protect Mustangs’ case. The roundup is expected to last for 10 days and is slated for late January/early February.

“The BLM abruptly made a decision in December of 2014 to round-up, permanently remove and forcibly administer fertility control drugs on our wild horses. This decision has long-lasting implications for wild horses,” said Jenni Barnes, attorney for FoA’s wildlife law program. “BLM violated the law by excluding the public from this decision and completely failing to consider its impacts. FoA and Protect Mustangs have filed this lawsuit to ensure that BLM does not destroy Nevada’s last remaining wild horses.”

“The American public is outraged elected officials aren’t doing anything to stop cruel roundups and sterilization experiments on our native wild horses,” said Anne Novak, executive director of Protect Mustangs. “It’s disgusting and shameful. Risky drugs like PZP and other forms of sterilization are a sham at this point because there aren’t any ‘excess’ wild horses on millions of acres of public land.”

“When wild horses don’t seem useful to the BLM, they’re resented. Rounded up. Sterilized. Killed or otherwise displaced,”said Priscilla Feral, FoA’s president. “In contrast, cows and sheep owned by large corporations and hobby ranchers are seen as having a dollar value, so ranchers are relieved from having to compete over water and grasslands with horses. Since horses are not hamburgers, Nevada and the BLM want them gone. People don’t want this madness anymore.”

The lawsuit states that the defendants did not prepare an Environmental Assessment for the proposed roundup and instead relied on the 2010 environmental assessment for the Clan Alpine, Pilot Mountain and Pine Nut HMA Gather Plan, which does not take into consideration science that shows the negative side effects associated with PZP. Furthermore, the BLM did not solicit public comments. In fact, FoA employees traveled to Nevada on Jan. 22 to participate in a BLM public meeting regarding the Carson City Resource Management Plan, which includes the Pine Nut HMA, but the BLM denied the public the ability to comment. When Edita Birnkrant, FoA’s campaigns director, got up and spoke at the microphone anyways, she was silenced—BLM shut off the microphone and ejected her from the meeting, just like BLM removes wild horses from public land.

“I was infuriated that the BLM dared to hold a ‘public’ meeting yet forbid the public from speaking,” said Edita Birnkrant, FoA’s campaign director. “BLM employees specifically said there would be no discussion of the Pine Nut roundup during the intro to the meeting. After the intro, I took over the microphone to call out the sham of a BLM public meeting that shut out the public. I said that FoA was there to oppose the BLM’s extinction plan for wild horses in Nevada.”

FoA and Protect Mustangs oppose all roundups of wild horses and the use of PZP, which destroy family structure within the herds, and believe the Appropriate Management Levels set for the Herd Management Areas in all states are too low, outdated and do not accurately reflect the number of wild horses that are needed to maintain genetic viability to prevent extinction and to create a thriving ecological balance.

The groups are adamant the BLM looks beyond data about PZP provided by the Humane Society of the United States, which has a vested interest in PZP as it is the registrant of the pesticide, and Jay Kirkpatrick, the director of the Science and Conservation Center, which produces the active ingredient in PZP. FoA believes the public needs to know there is a conflict of interest when it comes to PZP and it questions the motives of an animal charity pushing a harmful pesticide on wildlife rather than embracing holistic ways to manage public lands.

Novak pointed out that according to the National Academy of Sciences’ 2013 report, there is “no evidence” of overpopulation.

Ranchers scapegoat wild horses because they don’t want to share the public land they lease to graze their livestock. So they bully the Bureau of Land Management to remove wild horses. In Beaver and Iron County, Utah, where wild horses are scapegoated, data shows cows and sheep outnumber wild horses 10.6:1; in Oregon it’s 33:1. And prior to a massive roundup in Wyoming last summer, there were 356,222 cattle, 45,206 sheep, and only 1,912 wild horses. It seems that it’s easier for the BLM to accommodate ranchers and manage wild horses to extinction, than to consider holistic ways to manage our public lands.

“Wild horses need to be protected in Nevada,” said plaintiff Craig Downer, a wildlife ecologist who has studied the Pine Nut herd for decades and author of The Wild Horse Conspiracy. “They restore the ecosystem as a deeply rooted native in North America with a unique niche that helps the other species thrive.”

In his book, Downer, also the director of ecology and conservation for Protect Mustangs, advocates for reserve design , which involves utilizing natural and/or artificial barriers, natural predators, as well as community-involving buffer zones as a better way for BLM to manage public lands. Once available habitat is filled, wild horses, as climax species, would limit their own population as density-dependent controls are triggered.

“The bottom line is the BLM is ignoring the public’s right to be heard about a heinous roundup paid for with tax dollars on public land,” explains Novak. “And that’s just unAmerican.”

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

 Links of interest:

Complaint filed in court January 26, 2015: PM Complaint_As Filed_Pine Nut

Wild-horse activists kicked out of federal meeting in Nevada, (Associated Press) went viral: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/01/24/3458044_wild-horse-activists-kicked-out.html?rh=1

Activists split on US agency”s plans to treat 250 mares with fertility-control drug in Nevada: http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/fd1cd3d9353349ddbffd22edbd1fa3d1/NV–Wild-Horses-Nevada

Wild Horse Conspiracy by Craig Downer: http://amzn.to/1wyxEcZ

EPA Pesticide Fact Sheet for PZP: http://1.usa.gov/1zKMiWy

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

Protect Mustangs on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ProtectMustangs

ProtectMustangs on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProtectMustangs

Anne Novak on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheAnneNovak

Read this press release online here: http://protectmustangs.org/?p=7806

PZP EPA Sterilisant

BREAKING NEWS: Sudden protest against BLM censorship, wild horse roundups and using PZP (pesticide) to manage wild horses to extinction

PM Edita Cat

 

BLM refused to hear public comments at “public” meeting

MINDEN, NV (January 22, 2015)—Edita Birnkrant, Campaigns Director for Friends of Animals (FoA) flew out from New York City with FoA correspondent Nicole Rivard to give public comments at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public meeting about the Carson City District Draft Resource Management Plan which calls to zero out 6 treasured herds of wild horses. After being denied her rights at the public meeting, held at the Carson Valley Inn in Minden, Nevada this afternoon, Birnkrant took over the microphone at the BLM meeting and held up yellow crime scene tape while Rivard filmed the protest against censorship and managing wild horses to extinction. Birnkrant was threatened with arrest by Nevada Sheriffs while holding up her banner. The hotel manager made Rivard stop filming and told the advocates they were being thrown out of the hotel, even though they had booked rooms there that night.

 

Statement from Edita Birnkrant:

“While we were waiting to go into the meeting a man told a BLM staffer “I wanna open up a horse butcher shop”. Then a few other guys started making jokes about how tender horse meat is. The BLM guy just chuckled but didn’t tell them it was inappropriate.

I was outraged that the BLM dared to hold a “public ” meeting and forbid the public from speaking. I took over the microphone to call out the sham of a BLM meeting, that shut out the public, and I said that Friends of Animals was there tonight to oppose the BLM’s extinction plan for wild horses in Nevada. I said the BLM is managing wild horses to extinction through roundups and PZP and we are outraged and demand it stop. I held our banner that said “Stop the BLM’s Criminal Reign of Terror. Protect Wild Horses Under the Endangered Species Act” The sheriffs were surrounding me at that point threatening to arrest me unless I left. I still had the banner and was shouting “the BLM is charged with crimes against wild horses”.

Then the hotel manager at the Carson Valley Inn in Minden, Nevada—Phil Dohrn–started bullying us and got in Nicole’s face. He pushed against her—blocking the camera and told her she had to shut her video off and we were getting thrown out.

Three extremely hostile sheriffs and the Carson Valley Inn manager escorted us to our rooms and waited outside while we packed our bags. They pounded on the door to hurry us or they’d arrest us. They called additional sheriffs to the hotel during all this. We left the hotel shocked that the Carson Valley Inn treats paying guests who exercise their First Amendment rights in their meeting room like this.”

The federal plan for public land in the Reno/Carson area is of interest to all Americans from coast to coast. Citizens care about public land and want federally protected wild horses protected by the law that allows them to roam freely without harassment.

PZP is an EPA approved restricted-use pesticide (http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/pending/fs_PC-176603_01-Jan-12.pdf) that sterilizes wild mares after multiple use. Americans are learning about the dangers of PZP and are outraged the BLM would allow this to be used on wild horses.

Friends of Animals, an international animal protection organization founded in 1957, advocates for the rights of animals, free-living and domestic around the world. www.friendsofanimals.org

# # #

Friends of Animals’ public comments that advocates were not allowed to read and were given to Collen Sievers the BLM BLM Project Manager for Carson City District at the public hearing on the draft resource management plan for Carson City District

Edita Birnkrant, FoA’s campaigns director 917-940-2725

The opinion of the American public, as declared through Congress is clear: “wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people.” BLM has an obligation to consider wild horses as an integral part of the natural system of public lands.

It appears from the Carson City’s Draft Resource Management Plan (RMP) and Environmental Impact Statement that the BLM failed to take into consideration critical information about wild horses and failed to consider any alternatives that promote a free and viable wild horse population.

Friends of Animal is here to urge BLM to reevaluate its Resource Management Plan.

We ask that BLM consider an alternative that: (1) maintains all wild horse herd management areas; (2) prohibits conflicting uses on herd management areas; and (3) prohibits efforts to eradicate wild horses, such as round-ups, fertility control and sterilization. BLM must take into consideration the small population of wild horses and the potential that they will be listed as a threatened or endangered species under the Federal Endangered Species Act. From a scientific perspective, wild horses on our public lands are at risk of extinction if BLM does not change its management plans.

BLM does not provide adequate area for wild horses. Under the current RMP, approximately 4.8 million acres of public lands covered by the plan are open for private ranchers to graze cattle and sheep while only 1.2 million acres are reserved for wild horses. In the preferred alternative the ratio or area available for cattle and sheep grazing is also more than 4 times that available for wild horses.

Moreover, under no alternative, are cattle and sheep prohibited from grazing on wild horse herd management areas. BLM must consider an alternative that provides contiguous habitat for wild horses to roam freely.

Second, all alternatives for the proposed Resource Management Plan allows BLM to continue managing horses at artificially low populations, or appropriate management levels. This results in expensive, and cruel round-ups that tear the wild horses from their homes and families and place them in tax funded holding facilities. This is one of the largest threat to wild horses on U.S. lands. Experts have warned that the “majority of wild equid populations managed by the BLM are kept at population sizes that are small enough for the loss of genetic variation to be a real concern.”

The Equid Specialist Group of IUCN Species Survival Commission recommends minimum populations of 2,500 individuals for the conservation of genetic diversity. Others have warned that populations managed with a target size of fewer than 500 horses are at some risk of losing more than 90 percent of selective neutral genetic variation over a period of 200 years.

There are no herds that have a large enough population to meet the recommendation of the IUCN Species Survival Commission – 2,500 animals—and only 1 out of 17 of the herd management areas in this planning area has an appropriate management level set to 500 or more. Limiting horses to an artificially low number is short-sighted and ineffective because it could prompt short-term population growth.

Finally, Friends of Animals submitted a petition to the US Fish and Wildlife Service asking it to recognize wild horses as threatened or endangered. The Endangered Species Act requires the government to make final determination on the petition within 12 months – which would be this June. The BLM should not undermine this legal process by allowing BLM to round-up and remove wild horses from Carson City herd management areas. Not only would such actions undermine the Endangered Species Act, but they would also put the viability of the horses here at risk. Instead the plan should recommend BLM halt all efforts to remove wild horses, and allow Fish and Wildlife Service to review the law and facts in regards to wild horses.
Nicole Rivard, correspondent, FoA 203-910-1217

As my colleague just pointed out, all but one of the 17 herd management areas in the Carson City District has an appropriate management level set to 500 or more. Everywhere else the loss of genetic viability is a real concern. So additional roundups, which destroy social structure that can lead to population spikes, as well as consideration of administering fertility control, should be removed from this Carson City District Plan immediately if not sooner.
While some wild horse advocates may claim fertility control drugs, such as PZP, is the lesser of two evils, we at FoA believe birth control is equally harmful and inhumane as roundups. In most cases—even the BLM admits this—wild horses would still have to be captured to be treated with the pesticide before being released.

The widespread use of PZP is really very contrary to the true core intent of the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971, which was to restore wild horses as naturally, integrated, harmonious components of the public land ecosystem who are not overly tampered with. Deciding which animal should give birth or not is a very invasive, unacceptable thing to do to these wild animals.

Studies have revealed adverse effects of PZP— that it sterilizes wild horses after multiple uses and results in risky foal birth out of season and significant behavioral changes that can affect the health of the herd.

BLM’s discussion regarding a population control program in the EIS is inaccurate and unsupported. They claim fertility control limits the stress of pregnancy on mares, and helps stallions as they will not be exerting extra energy fighting to control mares or raising foals.

What about the stress on mares of not being able to get pregnant as nature intended!

We urge the BLM to look beyond data provided by the Humane Society of the United States, which has a vested interest in PZP as it is the registrant of the pesticide, and Jay Kirkpatrick, the director of the Science and Conservation Center, which produces the active ingredient in PZP. For instance a 2009 Princeton University study of the horses on Shackleford Banks in North Carolina, who began getting PZP in 2000, showed that prolonged infertility has significant consequences on social behavior.

Researchers found that females who were receiving contraception were much more likely to change groups. Normally bands are really very stable, said researcher Cassandra Nunez, and mares will stay with males much if not all of their lives. That stability is really important for the health of the group members. Foal mortality increases when there are a bunch of different changes, and parasite load of animals in the group can go up because they are getting more stressed.

In a later study in 2010, Nunez found that recipients of PZP also extend the receptive breeding period into what is normally the non-breeding season, resulting in foal birth out of season.

Normally the winter is spent eating as much as they can, and everyone is more relaxed. Males tend to let females roam farther, which is good because food is patchier. So all of this is changing because of extended cycling.
Nunez also noted it’s taking a while for the contracepted mares, who were taken off PZP in 2009, to respond physiologically. So that flexibility that you think you have with PZP…it’s not really that flexible.”

It is imperative that BLM reduce the number of cattle and sheep allowed to graze on public lands, as well as consider holistic resource management plan, such as reserve design, which is described in detail in Craig Downer’s Book the Wild Horse Conspiracy. Both options would adequately protect these majestic animals so that they can persist for future generations.

Friends of Animals, an international animal protection organization founded in 1957, advocates for the rights of animals, free-living and domestic around the world. www.friendsofanimals.org

# # #

BLM Nevada News
CARSON CITY DISTRICT OFFICE NO. CCDO 2015-11
FOR RELEASE: November 28, 2014
CONTACT: Lisa Ross, 775-885-6107, lross@blm.gov

Draft Resource Management Plan Environmental Impact Statement Available for
BLM Carson City District

Carson City, Nev. – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is asking the public to review and comment on a Draft Resource Management Plan (RMP) and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Carson City District. The draft plan will affect approximately 4.8 million acres of public land. The comment period opened with the publication of a notice of availability in the Federal Register on November 28, 2014. Comments will be accepted during a 120-day period which closes March 27, 2015.

Public meetings to review and comment on the draft EIS will be announced at least 15 days in advance in local newspapers and on the BLM website.

The plan will address: Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, lands and realty, utility corridors, wind energy, travel management, recreation, fish and wildlife, minerals, wild and scenic rivers, public health and safety, and visual resource management.

Public meetings on the Draft RMP/Draft EIS are currently scheduled for 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.; on January 13, at the John Ascuaga’s Nugget (1100 Nugget Ave.) in Sparks, Nev.; on January 15, at the Fallon Convention Center (100 Campus Way) in Fallon, Nev.; on January 20, at the Mineral County Library (First & A Street) in Hawthorne, Nev.; on January 22, at the Carson Valley Inn (1627 US Hwy 395 N) in Minden, Nev.; and on January 29, at the Yerington Elementary School (112 N. California St.) in Yerington, Nev. An additional public meeting will be held from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., on January 24, at the Carson City Plaza Hotel and Event Center (801 South Carson Street) in Carson City, Nev. Additional public meetings are anticipated in coordination with local County Commissions and Boards of Supervisors.

Written comments related to the Carson City District Draft RMP/Draft EIS may be submitted by any of the following methods:
• Website: http://on.doi.gov/1uYBNGT• E-mail: BLM_NV_CCDO_RMP@blm.gov
• Fax: 775-885-6147
• Mail: BLM Carson City District, Attn: CCD RMP, 5665 Morgan Mill Rd., Carson City, NV 89701.

Copies of the Carson City District Draft RMP/Draft EIS are available in the Carson City District Office at the above address or on the following website: http://on.doi.gov/1uYBNGT

Visit The Facebook Forum on PZP for more https://www.facebook.com/groups/ForumPZPWildHorsesBurros

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