Tuesday’s Horse

Four horses reported missing from Rochester

The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is asking the public’s help in determining what happened to four horses that were reported missing Monday from a Rochester property.

The owner of the property on the 10000 block of 186th Avenue Southwest was reportedly out of town Sunday morning when the owner’s son last fed the horses, Lt. Chris Mealy said.

The owner went to feed them Monday morning when he saw they were missing. The fencing around the property was not damaged, and the gates were latched.

Authorities have not received reports of loose horses in the area, Mealy said.

The four horses are described as follows:

• 16-year-old mare, 15 hands, an Arabian thoroughbred, worth $1,500

• 9-month-old foal, 13-and-a-half hands, an Arabian thoroughbred named ‘Spirit,’ worth $1,500

• 3-year-old mare, 16 hands, a thoroughbred named ‘Princess,’ worth $2,500

• 3-year-old gelding, 16 hands, a thoroughbred named ‘Beo,’ worth $2,500

A ‘hand’ is a unit of measurement that is equal to four inches. A horse is measured, on level ground, from the ground to the bump that joins the back and the neck (called the withers).

Anyone with information about the horses’ whereabouts is asked to contact Thurston County Crime Stoppers at 360-493-2222. (Location: Just outside Seattle, Wa.)

Source: The Olympian

LINK TO STORY

By RICHARD MARCUS

The late British naturalist and conservationist Gerald Durrell used to talk about what he called the paper protection of animals. By that he meant governments making laws that on paper claimed an animal was protected while in reality the animal was still at high risk from humans. The greatest risk that Durrell saw was the fact that laws preventing animals from being killed did nothing to prevent the land they lived on from being taken away.

The biggest threat to all wildlife, whether it has roots, legs, fins, or crawls on its belly, is the steady encroachment of humanity into its habitat. Humans and their farm animals do not mix with wildlife under any circumstances. Even the smallest amount of contact will cause wild animals to change their habits. Look at the bears in parks like Yellowstone who beg for food, or the ones near human habitation who have taken to foraging in dumps instead of hunting for food as they used to. Of course, minimal contact isn’t going to drive an animal to extinction, so government-run parks or preserves that allow human visitors are, if properly managed, a lesser evil than the complete eradication of habitat.

In Canada a concentrated effort is being made both publicly and privately to preserve habitats where species or unique ecosystems are endangered. Once these areas are established they become off limits to any human intervention, whether habitation, exploitation of natural resources, or, in some cases, even human visitors. If an area is considered too sensitive to withstand even humans camping in tents, then people aren’t allowed to enter the designated area.

The necessity of programs like these was brought home to me again this weekend by the news that a herd of 150 American wild horses is under threat from a lumber company’s plans for the Blackjack Mountain of Oklahoma. The herd was established around 25 years ago by Gilbert Jones. It includes a couple of horses who are direct descendants of those who came to Oklahoma on the “Trail Of Tears” with Choctaws and Cherokees during their forced removal from the Tennessee mountains.

In spite of the fact that American Wild Horses are considered a protected animal by the American government, the Oklahoma Land and Timber Company has been given permission to plant trees for harvesting. To facilitate the growth of this “crop” they need to eliminate all ground cover and foliage that might compete with the trees. The company had signed a contract allowing for a two year waiting period to give the herd a chance to be relocated, but has since reneged and begun spraying the area with pesticides.

The company has given Bryant Rickman of the Medicine Springs Ranch, who manages the herd, until February 29th to remove them from the area. But where can you find room for 150 wild horses to run free anymore? The situation in Blackjack Mountain is a reflection of what faces the wild horse population across the United States as the animals are being squeezed off public land set aside for them by the very agency meant to be protecting them - the Bureau of Land Management.

In 1971, when Congress and Richard Nixon responded to public pressure and enacted the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was made responsible for the welfare of the remaining wild herds and ensuring that their populations were maintained at current levels. At the time, the BLM claimed there were only 17,000 animals living in the wild. What this claim was based on is unknown, as they didn’t conduct a census of the wild horse population until three years later. The results of that first head count showed them to be off by more than 150%, as the actual total was 42,000.

While the law says that American Wild Horses are a protected species and public lands must be made available to them as sanctuaries for them to range free, less than half the actual population has been given that protection. In its wisdom, instead of amending the original 17,000 figure when they discovered how wrong it was, the BLM decided that the excess horses needed to be “removed” from public lands. The people who were responsible for preserving the horses have instead managed to reduce their population by around 50% since the protective law was enacted.

The real problem is the fact that the BLM is also responsible for issuing grazing licenses to cattle ranchers on the same public lands set aside for the horses. So the agency can replace every horse they can remove from public land with a fee-paying cow that agribusiness gets to graze, subsidized by the American government. According to two General Accounting Office reports the BLM was making removal decisions not on the actual numbers of horses that a range can support, but on the recommendations of advisory groups “largely composed of livestock permittees”.

So the guys who stand to make the most money from having wild horses removed from public land are the ones telling the BLM that horses are the primary cause of overgrazing and degradation of public lands. The truth is that because horses tend to roam and can find forage in areas where cattle and sheep can’t, they cause far less harm to a habitat than any livestock.

When cattle graze they don’t chew the grass, they pull it from the ground; if the soil happens to be wet they will therefore rip it out by the roots. Horses on the other hand have front teeth, allowing them to crop grass as they graze, so they are far less likely to destroy the root system. A horse’s digestive system is actually beneficial to a habitat, because they pass grass seed through their system, thus replanting as they graze.

As to the BLM’s claim that horses are degrading grazing lands, horses aren’t the critters that defecate in their own water supply; cattle are. Horses aren’t the animals who hang out in one area of land until it’s stripped clean of any and all forage, necessitating human intervention to move them on to other pastures. Even without any of that information, the numbers don’t lie; at current levels livestock out number wild horses by 200 to 1 on public lands. You tell me who is going to have the biggest impact on the environment: two hundred head of cattle standing in one place, or one horse wandering around looking for food?

Yet somehow, in spite of all the information available to the government (including Congress) about BLM’s record of mismanagement and history of playing fast and loose with facts and information, the agency’s budget was increased by 50% in 2001 and then another third in 2005 to pay for an aggressive program to remove wild horses from public lands. So if the people charged with protecting the horse population in the wild are being funded to remove the horses from the wild, it really makes you question the validity of the law that supposedly guarantees their safety.

Back in Blackjack Mountain, Oklahoma, concerned people have come together to form the Gilbert Jones Choctaw-Cherokee Conservancy and Historical Land Trust. The Trust’s mmediate goal is to raise $450,000 to purchase the first 524 of the 2,500 acres they need to secure a permanent home for these last-of-their-kind horses. The goal is to preserve the original tribal strains of Choctaw and Cherokee horses, along with America’s Spanish Colonial Mustangs, in viable and healthy wild herds for generations.

Return To Freedom, a 501c3 charitable organization, has joined forces with script writer John Fusco (Hidalgo, Spirit, Stallion Of The Cimarron, and the upcoming Forbidden Kingdom), the Rickman Family, and others in forming the trust. You can find out more about their efforts and what you can do to help by following the link above to the Return To Freedom web site.

In 1971, the single biggest letter campaign outside of protests against war forced Congress and Richard Nixon to enact the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act to ensure the survival of America’s wild horse population and preserve the strains that are unique to our continent. 36 years of mismanagement and conflict of interest have done nothing but reduce the population of horses in the wild by nearly 50%. That’s not wildlife preservation in my book.

Unless otherwise stated, information in this article was provided by the The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign web site.

About the Author:

Richard Marcus is a long-haired Canadian iconoclast who writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees it at Leap In The Dark and Epic India.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

Protected Wild Burros In Danger of Extinction

Jamie Gray, who is under investigation for animal cruelty, is still dealing in horses.

A meat trader who is under investigation over allegations of animal cruelty at his farm is still dealing in horses.

More than 100 emaciated horses and donkeys were discovered at Jamie Gray’s farm last month.

Animal experts who found another 32 dead animals and had to destroy three more described the scene as an “equine Belsen”.

But only weeks later, the Daily Mail has discovered that the 44-year-old trader has brought a new batch of horses on to his farm in Hyde Heath, Buckinghamshire, keeping them hidden in a barn away from roads and public footpaths.

However, a member of the public spotted the horses apparently being mistreated by Gray, and the RSPCA and numerous police officers raided the farm last Friday.

Several horses were taken away to animal sanctuaries.

Gray buys unwanted animals for as little as £1 before transporting them abroad for slaughter.

After last month’s raid, he appeared at Aylesbury Magistrates Court on February 4 charged with criminal damage and assaulting a police officer.

However he has not been charged with any animal welfare offences and is still under investigation.

Source: THE DAILY MAIL, 19 Feb 2008

KAREN WOODMANSEE, Nevada Appeal Staff Writer filed this report:

Thirty-seven of 55 wild horses rounded up in the Virginia Range are now grazing in a new home - the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.

The horses had been kept at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center after being rounded up in Virginia City, Mound House, Dayton and the Virginia City Highlands, but the state could no longer afford to feed them.

Wild horse advocates and state Department of Agriculture program manager Mike Holmes came up with a plan that would allow the horses to remain free, while they would be given birth control and the range conditions monitored.

Country singer Lacy J. Dalton, founder of the Let ‘em Run Foundation, contacted Lance Gilman, exclusive broker for TRI and developer Roger Norman, and urged them to try to save the horses.

Gilman offered to buy them and set them free to live in the massive 104,000-acre TRIC, but the state decided to just turn over the animals without charge.

“What Lance and Roger are doing is a marvelous humane act,” said Dalton, who was on hand to see the horses released. “These horses most certainly would have wound up in a slaughterhouse and now they can run free in the vast expanse of this industrial development and join the other wild horses that call TRI their home.”

As the horses were loaded into trailers, each family band was kept together. There was an old gray stallion and some pintos from Stagecoach; a group of bays from Virginia City; another band from Mound House; and one from the outskirts of Reno.

Before the release, Dr. David Thain from the University of Nevada, Reno treated the mares with temporary birth control that should last about two years, and gave the animals a clean bill of health.

Willis Lamm, of the Least Resistance Training Concepts advocacy group, said the horses were rounded up because they had come into conflict with an expanding human population and would now get to live on a portion of the range where there still was room for them.

Other groups involved in the plan and release were members of the Virginia Range Wildlife Protection Agency, Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue and Wild Horses in Need.

The horses released were yearlings and adults, horses that had grown up on the range and that had developed appropriate survival skills. LRTC volunteers agreed to take several weanlings that had spent most or all of their lives in the holding corrals. The young horses are now available for adoption in Dayton.

The volume of horses being trapped and brought into the state corrals have been a concern to the volunteers.

“It’s frustrating,” said Jeanne Gribbin, president of VRWPA. “People think it’s a kind thing to feed the wild horses but they just turn wild horses into horse-puppies. Once they have been taught to show up for handouts, it’s hard to keep them out of the neighborhoods.”

Lamm said suburban planning also was a problem.

“An unfenced California-style development in the horse range that surrounds the only available water and has wide boulevards with grass medians and shoulders is going to attract horses and other wildlife,” he said.

Eighteen more horses will be released sometime this week in a more southern area of the industrial park.

A second group of wild horses is released onto the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center in Storey County. The horses are kept together in family groups, with herds being released at different times.
PHOTO: Sharon Lamm/Special to the Nevada Appeal