BLM Continues To Push Spaying Wild Horses as Entire Program Flounders
(Reno, NV) Today the Bureau of Land Management sent a revised Environmental Assessment (EA) out for public comment until September 2nd on their proposal to move forward with an experimental procedure on wild horses in the Warm Springs Herd Management Area (HMA) in Oregon.
On August 8th Colorado State University backed out of their participation in this highly dangerous study proposed by BLM. Colorado State did not release a reason for terminating their participation.
“BLM continues to mix messages as they push an expensive experimental procedure,” state Laura Leigh, President of Wild Horse Education. “They are pushing a highly dangerous and scientifically unjustified procedure under the guise of a need to manage populations at Warm Springs. Managing populations at Warm Springs is not reliant on tearing out the ovaries of wild horses.”
The proposed procedure is one only performed on domestic horses in a sterile environment. Most veterinarians will only perform the procedure if there is an underlying medical condition that warrants it due to risks. This procedure is one most Americans reject for their own horses and are outraged it is being proposed for wild horses.
“BLM likes to pretend it has all kinds of data to justify it’s actions and that advocates simply do not understand,” continued Leigh, “We understand. We are seeing BLM move massive mining projects forward with no more analysis than an outline of an HMA boundary and a population estimate as their analysis on massive devastating impacts to wild horses and their habitat. BLM has no more data based justification to perform a dangerous experiment pushed by pro-slaughter politicians than it has to rip up the earth wild horses need to thrive. BLM has management options. BLM refuses to use them because they prefer to whine that it’s just too hard.”
Wild horses throughout the West are dealing with fire, drought, failures in data and range monitoring. An understaffed BLM is spending way too much time on continuing to try to ram spaying down the public’s throat. Wild horses are not dogs and cats in homes, they are wild horses on the range. BLM should be spending more time addressing the severe deficits of data outlined by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report of 2013. Until they do that the program is simply continuing to create actions without justification.
Wild Horse Education and it’s members will continue to push back against this unjustified action.
The amended EA can be found here: https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-
