http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6001906Oh my.
The spoiled rich kid the grazing primitive.
jgraz (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-06-09 06:01 PM
Original message
Interior Dept plans to slaughter 33,000 wild horses
On this 4th of July, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar officially reopens to the public the Statue of Liberty’s crown, a powerful symbol to the nation and the world of American ideals and hopes.
Meanwhile, in the American West, his Bureau of Land Management is detailing plans for the extermination of a different but equally powerful symbol of the American spirit, the wild horse.
While Secretary Salazar is "inviting the public to celebrate our great nation and the hope and opportunity it symbolizes", 33,000 wild horses are in holding pens, removed from Federal designated Wild Horse Territories, awaiting the completion of BLM plans to send them to a mass slaughter, without the proper consideration of viable and humane alternatives.
Information obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request by the Conquistador Group in Arizona has found that as Secretary Salazar stands before the Statue of Liberty in his white cowboy hat and speaks of the great American experience, he is also presiding over the formal plans to kill 33,000 wild horses and provide stress counseling for the BLM workers who carry out his orders.
A quite different American experience.
Over 19 million acres of BLM Wild Horse Territories have been "zeroed out" of all wild horses, with several more million acres and hundreds of more horses targeted. The BLM has repeatedly claimed that the wild horses are responsible for the destruction of public lands through overgrazing, yet the impact of the less than 30,000 remaining wild horses on public lands are minimal compared to the approximately 400,000 head of cattle (a conservative estimate, based on the 600 million Animal Unit Months quoted by BLM Wild Horse & Burro Bureau Chief, Don Glen), that are on these same public lands,
In addition, the BLM continues to ignore and invert the science behind horse vs cattle grazing and continues to claim horses have a more negative impact on grass conditions, even though cattle, unlike horses, do not have front teeth and actually pull out the grasses by the roots and have a much more adverse effect on range conditions.
The ranching industry has long sought to obfuscate the science and the BLM has often been led by those sympathetic if not indeed part of that industry, much like Secretary Salazar, who hails from a ranching family in Colorado and who as a Senator voted to allow downed and diseased animals into the American families’ food supply.
...
A viable and humane alternative to the wholesale slaughter of the wild horses has existed for 20 years. Dartable Porcine Zona Pellucida (PZP) birth control was developed 20 years ago by Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick. The application of PZP to mares would control the birth rate within wild horse herds, with 90% efficacy per the BLM, whereas round-ups and removals actually result in doubling the birth rate through compensatory reproduction.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/4/749829/-Secr...
Oh dear.
Doug's ex-wife:
EFerrari (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-06-09 06:08 PM
Response to Original message
4. My mum adopted two wild horses on death row about 20 years ago.
I see these @ssholes haven't advanced an inch in their thinking.
Now we learn how much the primitives know about horses.
lindisfarne (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-06-09 06:09 PM
Response to Original message
5. Wouldn't it be cheaper to round up the males and geld them before it gets to this?
newfie11 (940 posts) Mon Jul-06-09 06:18 PM
Response to Reply #5
13. kind of hard to geld mares.
Best to try gelding the stallions.
JVS (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-06-09 06:28 PM
Response to Reply #13
20. Not mares, males
newfie11 (940 posts) Tue Jul-07-09 05:54 AM
Response to Reply #20
49. oops sorry.
Oh my. A historical error, a phenomenon frequently found on Skins's island:
Canuckistanian (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-06-09 06:31 PM
Response to Original message
24. Who's behind this? Ranchers?
Wild horses can't be that environmentally damaging. Didn't wild horses once naturally run free in N. America?
Wild horses ran rampant in North America circa 1550-1850, having been brought here by the evil white macho Christian Europeans. And really, it wasn't as if wild horses were as numerous as, say, bison or rabbits. It's not like the continent was covered with them. Before then, there were no horses in North America. Three hundred years of roaming around is not even a flea-speck in the span of history.
The Good Samaritan primitive, who probably doesn't hate her social security check, furnished courtesy people she hates:
Mari333 (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-06-09 11:26 PM
Response to Original message
45. I hate the human race today.
and I hate Ken Salazar.
and I hate Obama for hiring that scumsucking worm.
