Vegan Recipe App
T-Shirts for Activists
Newsletter
Ad-Free Browsing
Cookbooks
Petitions
Product Features
Adopt-a-Pet
Get thousands of vegan, allergy-friendly recipes in the palm of your hands today!
X
Get your favorite articles delivered right to your inbox!
X
6.3K Views
9 years ago
Wild Horses Are Being Forced to Wear Dangerous Collars – Demand These Be Removed (PETITION)
Right now, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is conducting a five-year study on wild mares in the Adobe Town Herd Management Area (ATHMA) of south-central Wyoming with the help of the University of Wyoming’s Department of Ecosystem Science and Management. And like most recent interactions between the BLM and wild horses, this is likely to result in dire consequences for those mares.
Supposedly, the study is meant to “document habitat selection, movement between habitats, seasonal use, and migration patterns of wild horses” within and outside this area in order to understand how horses move across the Colorado-Wyoming border, how the removal of horses from the checkerboard portion of the HMA influences the movement of mares from non-checkerboard portions of ATHMA (i.e. creation of a void), how horses select landscape resources relative to their proportional availability, and how site fidelity of horses is influenced by season.”
But as Carol Walker, Director of Field Documentation for Wild Horse Freedom Federation, explains, “The researchers are seeking to prove that wild horses will ‘move into a void’ created by rounding up and removing horses from the Checkerboard, so they can ‘prove’ that it impossible to remove horses from the Checkerboard and keep them out. They are also hoping to ‘prove’ that wild horses degrade riparian areas.” The reason? It’s because the BLM works hand-in-hand with the cattle ranching industry to allocate more public land for grazing beef and dairy cows in order to collect more livestock grazing tax from those industry interests.
Those interests continue to claim that there is not enough grazing land due to an overpopulation of wild horses that deplete the area of feed, when, in fact, wild horses occupy just 11 percent of BLM-managed land and ranchers’ cows already outnumber wild horses 50 to 1 … and growing.
Meanwhile, using our tax dollars, the BLM and University of Wyoming team have already bait-trapped at least 14 “test subjects” in the ATHMA area, along with a handful of mares who, after being trapped, were deemed too young to participate in the study. It isn’t uncommon for the BLM to turn around and cull wild horses trapped in its holding facilities or send them to slaughter. And since the agency already voted in September 2016 to kill off 44,000 of the nation’s 67,000 total remaining wild horses, this act of trapping is, in and of itself, a very scary step.
So far, these horses have been spared that fate, though their future remains wildly unsure. They are being fitted with radio collars, which can dangerously impact their health and well-being. For example, if they gain weight either by growing naturally or due to pregnancy, the collars will become too tight for comfort or should their collars become caught on brush or the horses’ own hooves, as has happened in previous studies, it could prove disastrous. Plus, these collars ensure the agency will know exactly where to find them should the decision be made to cull this group of horses.
Ten of the collared mares have been re-released into the area so far, although not together. Instead, a couple individuals at a time were let run miles away from each other, which confused the horses further, as they are used to thriving and surviving in herds. In addition, no effort was made to keep horses from the same family together.
Clearly, there is little regard for the welfare of these horses, and this study is simply designed to further empower the industry interests who help fund the BLM at the expense of American taxpayers.
According to a national poll, 72 percent of Americans favor protecting wild horses, 66 percent think the BLM’s approach to wild horse management is an inefficient use of tax dollars, and 62 percent Support the repeal of the law that allows the BLM to sell wild horses for slaughter.
If you’re among them, please take a moment to stand up for the wild mares in the Adobe Town Herd Management Area by signing this petition on Care2 demanding that these collars be removed.
But please don’t stop there. It’s important that we continue to speak out for wild horses in Oregon, Arizona, North Carolina, and other parts of the nation who are being earmarked for extinction, as well.
In addition, the most important action each of us can take to stop these atrocities and protect America’s wild horses is to avoid beef and dairy products at all costs because nothing speaks louder than diminishing demand.
Image source: Care2
ROCK SPRINGS — The Bureau of Land Management, the United States Geological Survey and the University of Wyoming began in earnest Friday their herd migration project, which will utilize global positioning systems on collars to monitor the movement of wild horses in the Adobe Town region.
“The technology’s been around for a long time,” Dr. Derek Scasta, Rangeland Extension Specialist for the University of Wyoming Ecosystem Science and Management Department, said during a public viewing of the corralled wild horses at the Rock Springs Wild Horse Facility on a windy Friday afternoon.
“It’s been used on grizzly bears, wolves, zebra,” he said. “It’s university, state and federal coming together saying ‘we need better information.’”
In a presentation given by Kate Schoenecker, an ecologist with the USGS, the electronic radio collars that are being used to monitor the movement patterns of wild horse herds were demonstrated to a gathering of federal agents and UW personnel.
“We want to be able to track them and find out where they go, because you can learn a lot sometimes by seeing where an animal goes,” Schoenecker said.
She said that the project’s goal is to monitor movement patterns and herd migration for wild horse populations, a project goal that couldn’t be accomplished through simple observation.
Monitoring the horses in a safe manner has been a challenge, with Schoenecker describing how stallions would have trouble with the collars, their size proving difficult to work with the design. Mares, being more slender and with smaller necks, had less trouble wearing the collars than their ornery male counterparts.
“We tried several different changes of collars and several different vendors,” Schoenecker said.
She said that after a year of study and research, they’d found an adequate collar design to suit their purposes. The collars themselves appear simple, but are affixed with a rather large battery, a GPS location device and a means of communicating and transmitting data wirelessly.
That wireless connectivity has more function than just sending information; the collars can actually be triggered to detach themselves from the horse, and in a video to demonstrate this function, Schoenecker showed a collar being triggered to disengage remotely. The collar’s electronic lock simply releases, and the collar falls on its own from the mare’s neck, with no risk to the horse.
The project is currently planned to last about two years. Horses that will be used in the project are caught in bait traps. There have been nine mares thus far captured, though only four are currently collared as the researchers wait for the others to reach the right size.
The collared mares will be held at the facility for 24 to 48 hours after they are collared for observation, a BLM release stated. After the observation period the collared mares would be released back into the Adobe Town Herd Management Area.
This is what unbiased reporting looks like.
Open space is wildlife habitat, not range land. That we consider ourselves moral obligates us to protect these horses and stop eating meat because it is not necessary to sustain human life or health. Meat is murder and I don\’t want my tax money spent on supporting the meat producers.
signed the petition.
Hundreds of citizens opposed the counter-productive, wasteful radio collaring "study," not just "one woman." Among those providing testimony against this absurd plan were a former regional manager of BLM, animal welfare specialists and those who know and visit the wild horse herds. Like many whose interests clash with conservation, CL claims wild horses and burros are ferals with no value to the landscape. In fact, wild horses are a returned native species that is one with the range ecosystem. By law, they are "wild free-roaming" horses and burros, not invaders. They bring ecotourism value to local communities. They are the heritage of the American people, just like the bald eagle.