As reported in the Washinton Post:
Madeleine Pickens, the wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who this week offered to rescue more than 30,000 wild horses kept in federal holding pens, said yesterday that she wants to create a permanent retirement ranch for the horses and burros that could be open to the public.
A key to her plan, she said, is federal tax credits to help attract donors. Pickens said she met last week with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to discuss the proposal, which animal rights advocates have long promoted as an incentive for encouraging private individuals to adopt wild horses.
Half of the nation’s wild horse population is in Nevada, and Pickens said Reid told her that he has been concerned about the issue for 25 years. Jon Summers, a spokesman for Reid, said the senator was intrigued by the proposal but did not commit to it.
Bureau officials reluctantly began to consider exercising a legal but controversial option: euthanasia. Their focus was on about 2,000 unwanted horses that had not been adopted despite several tries.
Pickens, a racehorse breeder and lifelong animal lover, said she was horrified when she learned about the problem. “There’s got to be a way to bypass them — why does it have to be Washington to solve the problem?” said Pickens, who, along with her husband, airlifted 800 cats and dogs stranded by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and brought them to California for adoption.
Wheew! That was too close for comfort.
PRESS RELEASE
Bureau of Land Management on Rampage to Destroy Famous Wild Horse Herd
For Immediate Release August 10, 2009
Cloud and the wild horses of Montana’s PryorMountains are world famous but fame it appears is not going to protect the herd from a drastic government round up planned to begin September 1st in their spectacular wilderness home.
There are currently only 190 wild horses (one year and older) living in the PryorMountains. The BLM plans to remove 70 of them, plus foals. According to the foremost equine geneticist, Dr. Gus Cothran, 150-200 adult horses are needed in the herd to ensure their genetic diversity, which is vital to their long term survival.
These 70 horses would be placed in jeopardy. Any horses over 10 years of age can be bought directly by killer buyers and transported over the Northern border to Canadian slaughterhouses or south into Mexico. Younger horses not adopted would be put into government holding with 33,000 others that the BLM has removed from the wild and has proposed killing because they can no longer afford to feed them.
BLM cites poor range condition as the reason to remove the horses but abundant snow and rain for the past two and a half years has produced wonderful range conditions according to all who have visited Cloud and his herd. The Agency is not listening to anyone. They want this herd gutted. Nearly all the mares returned to the range would be given an experimental two-year infertility drug, PZP-22.
This helicopter round up is just one among many that the BLM is trying to complete, perhaps before the Obama Administration can catch up with what is going on.
The PryorMountain wild horses are descendants of the Lewis and Clark horses who were stolen by the Crow Indians in the early 1800’s. They can be traced further back to the horses brought over with the Spanish Conquistadors in 1500 making them one of the most Spanish of all wild horse herds in North America.
Please contact The Cloud Foundation for more information
http://www.thecloudfoundation.org, info@thecloudfoundation.org, 719-633-3842