Wild Horses: Mica and the Cremello Colts in the Snow
January 25, 2012Wild Horses: National Wild Horse and Burro Protest Day March 1
February 28, 2012
Roundups aren't stressful?
In the most implausible spin yet, the BLM has produced a video about the long term holding facilities where most of the 40,000 wild horses removed from our public lands are housed. The video of healthy horses running through pastures of tall green grass certainly sets an idyllic scene, until you listen to what comes out of narrator Lili Thomas’s mouth. She describes what they are doing by holding these horses as “removing them from stress” – the “stress” they endure in the wild, living in their homes, living with their families, living free. Somehow, being scared to death, driven by helicopters, removed from the only homes they have ever known and being ripped from their families, losing them forever, foals losing their mothers, being injured or killed in the chutes, somehow THAT doesn’t seem to be stressful.
Roundups at their worst
Here is the video, posted on TheHorse.com:
All horses over 10 and now even all horses over the age of 5 are sent to these long term holding facilities, as they are considered to be “unadoptable.” The stallions are castrated, the foals are weaned, and they are sent to facilities with only horses of the same sex, geldings together, and mares together. There is no more chance for a family life and for wild horses, there is nothing more important than family.
Foals as young as 3 months are taken from their mothers
On a more sinister note, all of the horses over 10 are subject to the Burns Amendment, and are able to be sold “without limitation” and can be sold by the truckload for a dollar per horse to any applicant that applies. Many of these horses have and will continue to end up at slaughter.
Adobe Town once a stallion, now a gelding, now in a holding facility in Oklahoma
In 2007 I visited the first long term holding facility, the Hughes Ranch in Oklahoma. There were huge pastures with very tall grass, and it was a beautiful place – but so different from the high desert lands that the Adobe Town horses had just come from. The horses were in very good condition, but there were panels stacked in the grass, a grim reminder of what could happen to them if someone buys some of these horses – they will no longer be “free from stress” but facing a very uncertain future.
13 Comments
This Lili Thomas is an idiot. What a shame, if she truly believes her own statements. Stress? On the range, in their natural habitat, with their family bands, running long distances for forage and water, like they have done for aeons? So, moving these high-desert natives to lush, green grass, and then feeding them alfalfa does not cause their bodies stress? Yep, she’s an idiot. How awful that our once-wild horses have to pay for BLM’s stupidity, inflated egos, and utter greed.
I feel a chill. Agenda 21 for horses.
When are the BLM going to start taking advice from people who really know about horses? Surely they should be consulting equine ethologists on what is good for these horses, not relying on all the tradition and heresay that goes with the mainstream horse industry.
Thanks, Carol! Do you have provable documentation that formerly wild horses have been sold out of a BLM LTH facility for $1 per horse? If so, when did that happen, and from which place?
While the video seems very idyllic, the majority of the horses that are brought in are not kept in these paradise like conditions. Besides the kind of life that she talks about? They had that type of life in the wild when they were with their FAMILIES!
More BLM BS ! Not only the ones over 10 that are sold but many that are adopted end up going to slaughter. The BLM simply wants them all “disappeared”.
The BLM is full of BS! I have seen up close and personal how they “care” for the captured wild horses!BLM just doesnt want to deal with them as they are competing for pasture land of Ranchers. its all bureaucrate BS!!
Enough. Who or what or when will the BLM stop? Shame on our government for not protecting our horses.
Another year they just laugh in our face. Can we change this ? If so how, I have signed every petition for every government agency, the white house too.
All I get is political gobbldguk, and letters that are like form letters they just change topics and mass mail. Then there is the BS email. So they keep changing faces changing places. Who is the cast of characters behind the curtain of shame?
Excellent expose of the hypocrisy and whitewashing going on in the BLM program. I also expose this in my new book The Wild Horse Conspiracy, available through me or via http://www.amazon.com
The BLM should be relieved of Stress by throwing their lying, corrupt asses out into the streets. The BLM is so full of crap that the General Public MUST get involved and gut the BLM of their killing of OUR WILD HORSES. These crooks and liars are just serving the Ken Salazar Agenda and trying to start Horse Slaughtering Plants. The American People need to put a stop to their stripping this beautful icon of the west from their precious Public Lands. Anything the BLM puts out is a lie, they have 0 credibility, and are a bunch of assholes to top it off.
Any horse in LTH can be sold by Sales Authority. I know of a 2 y.o. filly that went to LTH. She had been off the range barely 2 months when she was shipped around to 3 ‘adoption events’. She didn’t show well, but caught my eye. I tried to find a place for her but was new to the adoption events scenario. She went back to MS and then to OK. She is now 3.5 yrs. and is subject to Sales Authority. LTH is not exclusive to old horses.
Good work Carol!!!! I encourage everyone that is interested to get as much hands on experience as possible. Immerse yourself in the topic; like Carol and so many others have done, from Craig Downer to James Kleinert to Ginger Kathrens; get out there and experience it, but in the meantime, listen to their voices. They know what they are talking about.
From my experience what the BLM does is criminal.
Thanks for the heads up on the grazing interests’ ongoing attempt to zero out Salt Wells and Adobe Town. Such expansive country, such beautiful horses. Absolutely criminal, more public lands being treated as private.
Will try to get up there this summer.
Our Spring Creek Basin herd here in SW Colorado was devastated last fall. Brought down to the low end of the AML. So unnecessary. So many dead and gone.
David Glynn