Tuesday, October 19, 2010

WHAT SCARES BLM?



Now we know what scares the BLM -- not calls to Congress or revealed payoffs to contractors killing hundreds of American mustangs; it's NEW YORK CITY.
BLM demanded a change of venue for a lawsuit filed by the ASPCA to stop a bloody Colorado round-up. Several horses have died, including a mare roped, choked down, then shot after she tried to return to her colt.
Despite BLM's legal back-flips, a hearing is scheduled for today, in NY Federal Court.



JUDITH KOHLER, Associated Press Writer
DENVER (AP) ― Animal advocacy groups trying to stop the removal of wild horses from northwest Colorado will make their case in court.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said a hearing is scheduled Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York on a lawsuit seeking to halt the roundup that started earlier this week.

The New York-based group, the Colorado-based Cloud Foundation and two Colorado residents have filed a lawsuit claiming the plan by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to remove an estimated 138 horses violates environmental laws and the federal Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act.

The Cloud Foundation also claims a horse was roped, kicked, dragged and then euthanized during the roundup. Makendra Silverman of the foundation said Friday that observers, including a Colorado veterinarian who is among those suing, reported the horse wasn't having problems before it was roped Tuesday.

David Boyd of the Colorado BLM said the 20-year-old horse already had a bad knee and wasn't injured during the roundup. A veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the horse had an enlarged right carpal joint about "the size of a cantaloupe," Boyd said.

The contractors roped the horse when it went around a net fence leading to the corral. The horse then fell and didn't want to get back up, Boyd said. The horse was rolled onto a truck and shot two days later.

"Nobody likes it when this kind of thing happens," Boyd said. He added a domesticated horse with the same kind of condition likely would have been euthanized a while ago.

Two more horses died Friday. Boyd said a 7-month-old colt whose legs were broken when it was roped was euthanized. An examination of a 3-year-old mare that died after it was roped showed it had a weak heart, Boyd said.

The BLM has said the horses being rounded up are outside a 190,000-acre area of public land designated for wild horses. Horses not sold or adopted will be taken to long-term pastures in the Midwest.

Boyd has said the roundups, carried out in Colorado since the 1980s, are the only effective way of controlling the horse population, which typically increases 20 percent each year.

So far, 28 horses have been caught and corralled. A helicopter is used to herd the animals.

Animal advocacy groups have filed lawsuits trying to stop wild horse roundups across the West, calling them inhumane and unnecessary.

The lawsuit claims the Colorado roundup violates the 1971 wild horse act's requirement to preserve the horses in their range and the requirement under federal environmental laws to consider reasonable alternatives.friendly court in either Colorado or Washington D.C.. Today, a Temporary Restraining Order was filed by the case’s plaintiffs against the BLM in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York and a hearing has been ordered in the same venue for October 20th. The BLM will be forced to defend it’s illegal wild horse roundups in New York City.
The well researched suit contends that the BLM uses faulty and out dated data in determining which wild horse herds on U.S. public lands will be completely and totally removed from their lawful homes (zeroing out). This suit focus on the illegal roundup of the Colorado Piceance-North Douglas Herd, one of America’s federally protected wild horse herds. Likewise the finely crafted suit brings to light a variety of federal laws that the BLM knowingly and willing violates as it unleashes it’s “Wild Horse Harvesting Machine” on the tens of millions of public acres in the U.S. western states.

“We are encouraged by the Court’s desire to move forward with a hearing regarding the BLM’s flagrant violation of federal law,” commented R.T. Fitch author and volunteer Executive Director of the suit’s co-funding organization HfH Advisory Council. “Some of the very first U.S. Humane Animal laws originated out of New York so it is only appropriate that this fine state comes to the aide of the American wild horse as these horses and burros belong to every American, not just to the BLM and their special interest cronies.”

The suit is filed in New York because one of the plaintiffs and co-funders for the case is the ASPCA. Over 140 years ago the ASPCA was founded to prevent the negligence and abuse suffered by the carriage horses of New York City.

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 6:25 PM

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Comments: Does this mean if they win the case, the round-ups stop? Do we win the war?

-Kayla
(-Young At Heart)
  sounds very hopeful: I sure hope the Judge hears about HoneyBandit and how HB was rescued from BLM...

Thank God for little honeybandit
he exemplifies where the blm "goes wrong...when they mix and match foals and mares in big pens ! aw
  hi this is HoneyBandits website...

www.Chillypepper.weebly.com

hugs to the HoneyBandit and Patches
  Kayla,
This means that if the judge rules in favor of the ASPCA & other plantiffs and the HORSES, the BLM must set free the Colorado horses that they've already captured.
This also means there's a legal precedent to force BLM to prove that horses are EXCESS. Now, I don't believe there is such a thing :) of course, and BLM uses such random numbers to support their round-ups, I don't believe a THINKING judge will approve what they put out there.
My heart is hoping.
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