Bureau of Land Management (BLM) gaslighting about America's wild horses

[StarryNite]

Our wild horse and burro herds are being destroyed in order to placate welfare ranchers.

Scott Beckstead: Don’t believe BLM’s gaslighting about the Onaqui herd of wild horses
Agency promotes a myth about horses starving as an excuse for removing them from public rangeland.

By Scott Beckstead | Special to The Tribune
| Sep. 30, 2021, 7:30 p.m.


When someone repeats an obviously false statement often enough, people start believing it despite proof to the contrary. The statement takes on a life of its own, and soon people start questioning their own observations. It may even become popular to repeat the false trope, and eventually the misinformation gains momentum and credibility.

It’s called “gaslighting,” and it has infected public discourse over many topics of public concern. Add to those topics the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse program. The BLM hopes that by repeating the “wild horse overpopulation” myth often enough, Congress, the administration and the American public will accept the obvious cruelty of helicopter roundups under the mistaken belief that it’s necessary to protect the rangelands and save horses from starving.

The problem is, it’s working. To the delight of the livestock industry, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland supports the roundups. Congress accepts the BLM’s statements at face value and forks over huge sums of money to continue the helicopter operations and mass incarcerations on private feedlots.

In July, the BLM clearly lied about starving horses and sparse forage in Utah to justify decimating the famed Onaqui herd with a mass roundup and removal, then quietly admitted the horses were in great shape only after the operation was well underway.

Continue at link:

[link:https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2021/09/30/scott-beckstead-dont/|

[Klaralven]

1. Horses are an invasive species and should be eliminated

There were no horses in the Americas before they were imported from Europe.

[StarryNite]

2. Not true.

Horses are native to North America. This is where they began.

Horses are native to North America. Forty-five million-year-old fossils of Eohippus, the modern horse’s ancestor, evolved in North America, survived in Europe and Asia and returned with the Spanish explorers.

[link:https://horseracingsense.com/are-horses-native-to-north-america/|

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. Your post is what I like about DU.

I await the rebuttal. Just the facts, please....

[Phoenix61]

5. A 45 million year old relative isn't a horse is it.

The only grazing animal that was here on the plains in numbers were Buffalo. The should bring them back and let the cattle ranchers go whistle.

[StarryNite]

7. The horse as we know it would not have been here had their evolution

not began in North America. North America is the cradle of the horse.

[Klaralven]

10. Buffalo, like cattle, appear to require long grass to graze.

Like most large ungulates, bison graze on grass and sedges. Since they do not have any front top teeth, bison chew by pressing their bottom teeth against the fleshy pad at the roof of the mouth. Bison have no shortage of food in the winter since they simply shovel snow out of the way with their strong, woolly snouts to get to the grass.

https://critterfacts.com/americanbison/

Horses, having top and bottom incisors, can clip grass very short.

So I guess you can run bison with cattle and horses with sheep?

[StarryNite]

11. Horses get along just fine with cattle, elk and deer.

Cattle tend to stay by water sources and eat all the forage down to nothing. That's why cowboys have to "push" cattle to other areas. Wild horses are on the move. They usually drink and maybe cool off in the water when it's hot two or three times a day. No farriers are needed for wild horses. Their hooves are beautiful and strong because they wear them down naturally. Another thing that cattle do that wild horses do not, cattle urinate and defecate in the water. That's not good for any of the wildlife or people who fish from lakes where cattle are grazed. When cattle graze they wrap their tongue around the forage and tug. If the ground is wet it rips the plant out by the root.

Only 2%-3% of America's cattle are grown on our public lands. The rest are grown on private land. But those public lands cattle cost us a whole lot of money.

The Real Price and Consequences of Livestock Grazing on America’s Public Lands

Excerpt:

Two controversial programs directly remove and kill wildlife that threaten livestock at taxpayer expense. USDA Wildlife Services spends $8 million[4] to kill millions of native predators every year, courtesy of an unknowing public. The BLM’s Wild Horses and Burros program also removes thousands of federally protected horses and burros each year from designated wild horse habitat so that, during the ongoing drought, more water and forage are available for ranchers on public assistance. The cost of that program tops $80 million a year. That’s $380 per rancher to kill predators (wolves, coyotes, bear, cougars, bobcats and eagles) and ten times that much ($3,809) to get rid of wild horses and burros.

Add in the USDA’s livestock assistance program, under which payments are made directly to ranchers due to natural disasters, like droughts. And don’t forget all the various agencies indirectly involved with federal grazing issues and consequences: The US Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, the USDA, and Dept. of Justice. What does it equal? Special interest welfare estimated between $500 million and $1 billion a year.

Here’s where the cattlemen’s claim to be great stewards of public grassland and forest preserve gets exposed — just like their disavowal of receiving welfare payments.

[link:https://www.westernwatersheds.org/sustainable-cowboys-welfare-ranchers-american-west/|

[Klaralven]

8. Were horses in North America prior to the Late Pleistocene extinction the same species as domestics?

Sugar maples are a native species. Norway maples are an invasive species, even though they are also maples.

[NickB79]

16. What native predators were reintroduced with them?

They used to have American lions, American cheetahs, dire wolves, and sabertooth cats to keep their numbers in check. Now all we have are sparse populations of mountain lions, grizzlies and grey wolves, which currently have minimal impact on their numbers.

Were any of these other predators also released by Europeans to maintain a balanced ecosystem? Or are we going to let them repopulate unchecked by any serious predation pressure?

Personally, I'd love to see suitable replacement megafauna introduced. Lions roaming Utah to feed on the horses.

[StarryNite]

17. The horses have natural predators but they are being killed off

by the US Dept of Agriculture Wildlife Services.

USDA’s Wildlife Services continued its reckless slaughter of coyotes, bears, and wolves in 2020
While overall less native wildlife was killed by Wildlife Services in 2020, native carnivore killing remained rampant

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s in-house wildlife killing program just released its 2020 annual program report, clearly demonstrating its continued preference for lethal “management” of native carnivores like coyotes, wolves, bears, and cougars.

Last year, Wildlife Services—a notoriously secretive program housed within the USDA—killed 433,192 native wild animals. While this represents a decrease in the overall number of native species killed compared with 2019, the report also revealed no significant decrease in kill statistics for historically persecuted native carnivores such as gray wolves, coyotes, foxes, black bears, and cougars; as well as beavers.

In 2020, Wildlife Services killed 62,537 coyotes, 25,400 beavers, 2,527 foxes, 703 bobcats, 434 black bears, 381 gray wolves, 276 cougars and 6 endangered grizzly bears. These numbers remained mostly consistent from 2019, demonstrating that lethal management of most native species did not meaningfully decrease in the past year. In fact, the large overall decrease is almost solely the result of significant decreases in the killing of three avian species: red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, and grackles. These three species alone account for approximately 795,000 less native species killed in 2019 versus 2020.

“While at first glance, the overall decrease in number of native species killed by Wildlife Services is cause for optimism, digging deeper into the report reveals no progress for some of the most persecuted species across the country, including coyotes, black bears, wolves, foxes, and cougars,” explained Samantha Bruegger, WildEarth Guardians wildlife coexistence campaigner. “We are hopeful; however, that this 2020 report demonstrates some shift in the culture at Wildlife Services from reckless and indiscriminate slaughter to prioritizing non-lethal wildlife management practices, at least with respect to certain species. This shift now must carry over to coyotes, bears, wolves, cougars, foxes, and beavers.”

[link:https://wildearthguardians.org/press-releases/usdas-wildlife-services-continued-its-reckless-slaughter-of-coyotes-bears-and-wolves-in-2020/|

[StarryNite]

19. The Cerbat wild horse herd in northern Arizona is a small herd due to

mountain lion predation. To say wild horses have no natural predators is incorrect. But then that's part of the gaslighting by the BLM.

[StarryNite]

4. Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife

This is a really good article if you're interested.

Excerpt:

The fact that horses were domesticated before they were reintroduced matters little from a biological viewpoint. They are the same species that originated here, and whether or not they were domesticated is quite irrelevant. Domestication altered little biology, and we can see that in the phenomenon called “going wild,” where wild horses revert to ancient behavioral patterns. Feist and McCullough (1976) dubbed this “social conservation” in his paper on behavior patterns and communication in the Pryor Mountain wild horses. The reemergence of primitive behaviors, resembling those of the plains zebra, indicated to him the shallowness of domestication in horses.

[link:https://awionline.org/content/wild-horses-native-north-american-wildlife|

[StarryNite]

6. Cattle on the other hand...

Grazing Cattle: The New ‘Invasive Species’

Grazing has its place in just about every agricultural system that involves livestock. This includes cows bred to produce “organic” dairy products, or those set to become “grass-fed beef,” who will graze for two to three years before slaughter, or cows bred for their flesh or milk in the factory farming system who will graze for up to one year before being transported to feedlots.

However the particular breeding, feeding and killing operation is conducted, humans are introducing large numbers of grazing cattle into areas where cows were not previously found. This has an enormous impact on native ecosystems – so much so that grazing cattle now have the character of an invasive species.

After habitat loss, which is caused by clearing and consuming natural resources for human use, invasive species are listed as the second largest threat to biodiversity in North America. In the continental United States, 41 percent of all land is currently grazed by livestock.

Operations that seek to protect the interests of the cattle industry are responsible for the mass extermination of wolves, the roundup of wild horses, deforestation, and shocking loss of biodiversity, while the act of grazing itself contributes to desertification and erosion of soil and land. Let’s take a look for a moment at the many ways the introduction and proliferation of grazing cattle has earned them the title of “invasive species.”

More at link:

[link:https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/grazing-cattle-the-new-invasive-species/#:~:text=This%20has%20an%20enormous%20impact,to%20biodiversity%20in%20North%20America.|

[Coventina]

9. Thank you. I wonder how many of the people who claim horses should be "eradicated"

eat beef?

[StarryNite]

12. Probably a lot of them. Particularly the public lands ranchers.

They want the horses gone so they can put more cattle out on our land. Many of the welfare ranchers are extremely wealthy. You will know many of these names:

Some of America’s biggest welfare ranchers:

David and Charles Koch (Koch Industries)

J.R. Simplot Corp.

Bruce McCaw (McCaw Cellular)

Barrick Gold

Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA)

W. Barron Hilton (Hilton Hotels)

Mary Hewlett-Jaffe (Hewlett-Packard)

James Barta (Sav-Rx.com)

T. Wright Dickinson

Stan Kroenke (Kroenke Group) & Ann Walton Kroenke (Walmart)

Family of Robert Earl Holding (Sinclair Oil and hotels)

Ted Turner

The list is from a very informative article:

SOURCE WATCH
Forbes Billionaires Top US Welfare Ranchers List

[link:http://dailypitchfork.org/?p=698|

[Trueblue1968]

14. what an awful comment

[StarryNite]

15. Comments like that are just more proof that gaslighting works.

And that is a huge problem, not only when it comes to wild horses but we're seeing it used in so many other instances.

[crickets]

13. K&R for the post and the discussion.

[NickB79]

18. So, the author is with Animal Wellness Action

They're the same group that opposed the Grand Canyon bison hunt, even though bison were never native to the Grand Canyon, having been introduced 100 yr ago by a farmer, and were destroying Native American artifacts.

It makes me question his objectivity, if even that more clearcut situation was opposed by them.

https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/nature/bison-reduction-faqs.htm

[StarryNite]

20. There is numerous information available to support the fact that America's wild horses

and burros are under attack by the two government agencies that are supposed to be protecting them. Of course you're not going to see articles written by the welfare ranchers in support of the wild horses and burros.


THE WILD FREE-ROAMING HORSES AND BURROS ACT OF 1971
(PUBLIC LAW 92-195)

§1331. Congressional findings and declaration of policy

Congress finds and declares that wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West; that they contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people; and that these horses and burros are fast disappearing from the American scene. It is the policy of Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.