Tag Archives: wild horses

Once More for Wild Horses

Posted on February 21, 2011 by avatar

This call for action to help the wild houses of the United States is just a little different.

Instead of signing a petition to the Secretary of the Interior, this time the ASPCA wants you to contact your elected house members and senators to support the proposed budget cuts to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The BLM is the government agency that oversees the care of wild horses and burros.  They are also the agency that is in charge of  the round ups which subject the horses and burros to so much cruelty and abuse.

This agency has proven to be tone deaf to the people who live in the area where the wild horse roams. Unless those people are very wealthy or run a big ranch and cattle operation.  Their attitude and thick headed management of the wild horse herds has led to a tremendous drop in the number of wild horses running free and a tremendous rise in the number of penned animals waiting for adoption or slaughter.

Perhaps if we don’t give them so much money they will have to pull back on their aggressive culling and rounding up of the wild herds that are left.  We can only hope.

The ASPCA has made it easy for you to write your email.  It is almost completely automatic.  Please take a minute to go to the ASPCA Advocacy Center and send your comments.

Thank you for all you do for animals and the environment.

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Dog Bless You

Posted on January 18, 2011 by avatar

There are people all over the world who have dedicated their lives to animals and helping them.    Most of the time we don’t even know who these unsung heroes are.  They just go about their work saving as many homeless dogs and cats as they can.

At the same time there are people in India working with little funding or notice to save Tigers, people in China trying to save The Great Pandas, people all over the world trying to save whales and Dolphins, people in the US working tirelessly to save wild horses and burros.

I could go on and on, but the point is that wherever there is a species or in some cases one single animal in trouble, there are good humans who do their best to help them survive.  Why do people try so hard to save animals?  Maybe it is the feeling you get when you look into the eyes of the animal and you feel and see the gratitude that comes from them to you.  Maybe it is just the simple need to know you have done something good for not just yourself but another sentient being and maybe for the entire world because one life can make a big difference.

Whatever reason people have to help, they all deserve our thanks.  But too often these animal angels go through their lives with little or no notice.  That is why I am glad to bring you this video today from Explore.  They document, call attention to and help people who help others.  The attention often brings funding and spreads the good being done.

This particular video is called Dog Bless You  and Explore visits the Animal Shelter of Wood River Valley in Haley, Idaho  which is in The United States.  This is the first no-kill animal shelter in the state and they do great work for the animals of Idaho as well as for the people of the state.  The people receive a lot of help because it is a natural by-product of helping the animals.

Watch the video and you will see what I mean by all of this.

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Wild Horses = Big Business

Posted on September 9, 2010 by avatar

Of all the animals that live in the Western United States, the iconic wild horse is perhaps the most recognized world wide.  To see them running gives one a sense of freedom equaled only by seeing an eagle fly,  a dolphin frolic in the surf or a whale burst forth from the ocean.  These sights are so in tune with what the environment should and so alive with the joy of just being they simply strike you full of awe and leave you breathless.

To learn the people who control the fate of these beautiful horses have been using them in a silly and deadly game in order to enrich a few ranchers makes the skin crawl.  But that is what appears to have been happening for quite a number of years.

Posted here with permission from Luna Canus dot com;

Houston, we have a problem.  In this case the problem can be readily identified as the Federal Bureau of Land Management or BLM.

I’ve no idea who came up with the brilliant scheme to make a big profit for ranchers on the backs of the iconic wild mustang.  I don’t know if they are Republican or Democratic, conservative or liberal.  I do know they and their cronies have gotten away with it for way, way too long and far too many horses have died for their greed.

We have written numerous articles here at lunacanus about the roundup of the wild horses in the states of Nevada and California.  We have talked about how many of these beautiful animals are run to death by the helicopters herding them.  We have discussed their fate, gladly not a dog food or glue factory, and we have voiced our opinion on what we think of removing this symbol of our nation from the open range.

So we round up the herds of mustangs and burros in the states of Nevada and California from public land to control their population and make room for more cattle to graze on that land.  We supposedly do this for their own health and because they will overgraze the land and there is not enough water to go around.  Of course if there were a few less cattle then food and water for the mustangs would not be in such short supply.

After the roundups the horses that survive are offered up for adoption.  However, in these financial hard times like so many other beautiful animals around our nation, not many of them are being adopted.  So what exactly happens to all the captured wild mustangs?  Where do they go?

Our tax dollars pay to ship them to holding areas in the cattle and horse country of the states of Kansas and Oklahoma!  Yes, to make room for more cattle on public land we reduce the number of cattle that can graze on private land in other areas.

Oh, wait!  It gets better!

Not only do we ship them to horse and cattle ranches in the Midwest, we pay the ranchers there to keep the animals on their land and for the loss of cattle that may graze on that land. Win-Win for the cattle ranchers.  Lose-Lose for the wild mustangs and it is all paid for with our taxpayer money.  To play this little game with the cattle ranchers costs the American taxpayer $27 million dollars every single year.

Here are a few ideas.

First, run less cattle on the public land in the Southwest and run more on the private land in the Midwest.

Second, leave the wild mustangs alone.  Let them roam the range and run free as they have for hundreds of years.

Third, take the $27 million and improve the grazing land and watering areas for the wild mustangs.

This is like a big game of three card Monty played with a symbol of our nation.  Round and round the mustangs go, where they stop, nobody knows.

You can read more about this at The New York Times.

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Wolves in EXTREME Danger

Posted on August 25, 2010 by avatar

I told you that I would be posting wildlife and environmental actions to my new blog bleedingearth.com which is focused on environmental issues.  But fluffy feet is all about animals and wolves are animals.

Besides, I know how much the readers of this site love wolves.  So I am posting this very special alert here as well as at bleeding earth. So here is the problem and I guarantee you are not going to like it.

Yellowstone Wolves were just returned to the endangered species list by the court system.  However, it seems the Wildlife Services Agents in the government do not agree with the decision.  They plan to work with Idaho officials to kill up to 80% of the wolves in North-Central Idaho by land and from the air.  Their plan even includes gassing wolf puppies in their dens and sterilizing the alpha pairs in wolf packs.

These government employees are totally out of control.  We must stop the slaughter of these animals and we must do it now.  If they do not want to follow the will of the people who pay them (that is us, by the way) then they should be dismissed from their employment because their services are no longer needed.

People like Forest Rangers and other who care for the environment on a daily and up close basis have explained again and again to these die hard wolf murderers that the wolves actually enhance and help the environment by restoring balance between predator and prey.  In fact, prey animals herds grow stronger and bigger with wolf predators around.

But these people seem to be so beholden to a few big ranchers and state officials on their payrolls, they have lost their sense of reason.  It all boils down to the same thing as it does with wild horses.  The horses take too much food and the wolves supposedly kill cattle and sheep.

Well, I have news for these ranchers,  the land you are renting to graze your cattle belongs to the people of The United States and polls show very clearly we do not want the wild horses cruelly rounded up and we do not want the wolves wantonly murdered.

You get the grazing land you use for a pittance and you get money for the cattle you lose.  How about we charge fair market price for the grazing land you use and we add the provision that no horses will be rounded up nor wolves killed on our lands.  How would you like that?  You pay a whole lot more plus the wild horses and wolves cannot be removed or disturbed.  Then we will use the extra you pay to set aside lands you cannot touch.

We could do that, or we could just tell Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to get his people under control or he is out of there.  His agency is to protect the lands, animals and environment for the American people.  If he can’t do it, I can think of some environmentalists I know who can.

In case you haven’t noticed, I am beyond angry at all of this.  I am furious and I intend to use what small resources I can to stop the insanity.  It is cruel to gas wolf puppies and perhaps even more cruel to sterilize the alpha pair in a pack.  By these actions alone these people show they are not trying to control the wolf population.  They are trying to eradicate them.

Defenders of Wildlife has a petition to stop this unacceptable plan.  We need a lot of signatures in order to impress upon these nimrods that we are serious.  The more of us there are, the closer they will listen.  Please add your name to the petition here and help save the iconic grey wolves from this slaughter.

Be sure to read the letter you are signing, it is well thought out and accurate about the situation.  It will give you more understanding of what the big fight is all about.

Sign the Defenders of Wildlife letter at the link.

https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=1871&autologin=true&s_src=3WDE10001DXXH&s_subsrc=082510_act&JServSessionIdr004=980d3s5xp1.app220a

Thank you for every action you take to help animals and the environment.

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Misty Childhood Memories

Posted on August 24, 2010 by avatar

Chincoteague_pony_swim_2007

I think we all have childhood memories that make us feel good and some that make us feel sad.  I must be truly blessed because almost all of my childhood memories are happy ones and in one way or another these memories all involve animals.

I have always loved to read.  So combining the memories of both animals and reading, the books of Marguerite Henry stand out like a bright beacon in a storm for me.  I spent so many hours pouring over every one of this authors books that combined I probably spent a year of my young life just reading her writings.  I would read the series of books about the great pony Misty and the islands of Chincoteague and Assateague.  At the end of the series, I would go back to the beginning and read them all once again.

As a little background  let me tell you that the islands  Chincoteague and Assateague are located off the coast of Maryland and Virginia.  Many years ago ships that were wrecked along this coastline had horses aboard.  Some of the horses made it to the islands and lived there for many years, having foals and doing the things that ponies do. The horses from the ship wrecks were the ancestors of the wild horses who live on Assateague today.

When the herds became too large, rather than kill off the animals, the good people on the islands came up with an idea.  They would cull the herd, not by killing, but by sending them into the water and guiding their swim to the mainland.  After the horses arrived they would be cared for, gentled and auctioned.

So that is what these good people did and the swims go on every year on until this day.  Marguerite Henry wrote about these beautiful horses and one in particular that was named Misty by the young girl who managed to get her at the auction.  The stories continued on through successive generations of the ponies, but you must forgive me because I don’t remember all the names.  After all, I am over sixty and I read these books before I was even a teenager. I do remember Misty’s foal was named Stormy.  By the way, FYI Misty was a real mare and Stormy really was her foal.

Anyway, for all you parents, be sure to buy these books or check them out of the library for your kids.  I am sure they will love them as much as I did.  For kids who read this site, check out these books, you will love them and you will also learn a lot about the close bond a person can have with an animal.  I would suggest you start with the book ‘Misty of Chincoteague’.

Please, everyone remember, you are never lonely if a pet is around so give them special attention.  Now as a treat for you readers, here is a video about the Assateague Island ponies being taken to corrals after the round up and swim.  Please enjoy it and please read books because it is good for you to learn no matter how old you are.

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