Buffalo Hills Wild Horse in facility
Screen shot from video on WildHorseEducation.org
Roundups Begin With More Abuse, The end of FY2022 roundup season begins at Buffalo Hills.
Over the last 7 years the agency has failed to train employees, revise the policy to make it meaningful and routinely violates the terms of the policy. They care?”
— Laura Leigh, founder of Wild Horse Education
GERLACH, NEVADA, UNITED STATES, July 5, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began a roundup of 383 wild horses at the Buffalo Hills Herd Management Area (HMA) in Nevada on July 1, 2022. Since the beginning of the operation Wild Horse Education observers have documented a crash into barbed wire, long and chaotic drives of bands that include small foals and a roped foal slammed to the ground and then loaded onto the back of an ATV.
In 2015 the agency added the Comprehensive Animal Welfare Policy (CAWP) into planning and gather contracts. It took until 2021 for the BLM to begin to assess capture performance on a sporadic and inconsistent basis.
“BLM like to tell the public they care,” stated Laura Leigh, President of Wild Horse Education, “But it took 5 years of relentless litigation to gain the beginning of a handling policy. Over the last 7 years the agency has failed to train employees, revise the policy to make it meaningful and routinely violates the terms of the policy. They care?”
Management of wild horses and burros on public lands remains a contentious issue. The agency continues to skirt management planning for HMAs and simply creates removal plans to suit planning for private profit exploitative interests.
“No matter your stand on how, or even if, wild horses should be managed,” stated Leigh, “One thing we should all agree on is that abuse, cruelty and neglect are simply not acceptable.”
Wild Horse Education carries litigation against multiple removal plans, the creation of additional facilities that deny public access and plans to increase livestock and mining.
“It is a heartbreaking absurdity that in 2022 in the U.S. that we may also need to take abuse back into a courtroom to make our federal government take it seriously.” ~ Leigh
The U.S. House Committee on Appropriations just approved a funding bill for fiscal 2023 (beginning in October) that essentially gives non-enforceable lip service to areas of extreme concern, like abusive conduct, and continue to amp up the status quo. Leadership at the BLM remain committed to getting populations down to absurdly low “Appropriate Management Levels” (the number BLM says the land can sustain) and implementing various combinations of fertility control, including sterilization. (AML of today nearly that equals the number Congress stated were “fast disappearing” in the text of the 1971 Wild Free-Romaing Horses and Burros Act).
BLM designated 42 million acres for use by wild horses and burros. The agency has chosen to only manage wild horses on about 26 million acres. Repatriating land taken from wild horses and burros would be a good beginning for real reform.
We remain committed to the fight to reform the program in truth, not words.
Wild Horse Education is the only organization to walk BLM into a courtroom in the fight against abuse.
You can follow the roundup in our daily reports.
Laura Leigh
Wild Horse Education
+1 2062454984
email us here
