Protect Mustangs.org
“The NAS findings clearly state that the BLM has failed to provide accurate estimates of the nation’s population of wild horses and burros,” states Jessica Johnston, environmental scientist and biologist. “Therefore, the NAS cannot conclude that a state of over-population exists and or provide a recommendation for artificial management considerations such as ‘rigorous fertility controls’ to control populations for which the complex population dynamics are currently unknown.”
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No proof of overpopulation, no need for native wild horse fertility control
WASHINGTON (June 7, 2013)–In light of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on wild horses and burros lacking data for an overpopulation claim, Protect Mustangs calls upon Secretary Jewell for an immediate halt to roundups and to return the 50,000 wild horses in government holding to the more than 30 million acres of herd management areas in the West to reduce costs quickly. The native wild horse conservation group calls on the Department of Interior to acknowledge wild horses are native, implement holistic land management and reserve design thus creating a win-win for wild horses to help the
ecosystem and reverse desertification. Protect Mustangs requests that ‘survival of the fittest’ should be the only form of fertility control considered because indigenous wild horses must not become domesticated on the range. Artificial management such as pesticides and sterilizations should never be used on a native species such as Equus caballus.
According to a press release from NAS released Wednesday, “The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) current practice of removing free-ranging horses from public lands promotes a high population growth rate, and maintaining them in long-term holding facilities is both economically unsustainable and incongruent with public expectations, says a new report by the National Research Council.”
“The Academy is referring to is the principle of compensatory reproduction by heavily-stressed wildlife populations needing to rebound from population declines,” states Carl Mrozek, filmmaker of Saving Ass in America. “Unfortunately, they quickly recommend a different intervention as a better solution without considering the ‘do nothing’ or ‘placebo’ option which is an integral component of every credible field trial for pharmaceutical and other ‘treatment’ plans. Had they searched for examples of herds which have undergone minimal or no culling in the past decade or so, they would have found multiple examples of herds which appear to have achieved homeostasis (equilibrium) or something approaching it, naturally, i.e. without BLM-sponsored roundups or fertility treatments.”
“The NAS findings clearly state that the BLM has failed to provide accurate estimates of the nation’s population of wild horses and burros,” states Jesica Johnston, environmental scientist and biologist. “Therefore, the NAS cannot conclude that a state of over-population exists and or provide a recommendation for artificial management considerations such as ‘rigorous fertility controls’ to control populations for which the complex population dynamics are currently unknown.”
“With the gluttony of roundups and removals, wild horses reproduce at a higher rate to prevent extinction,” explains Anne Novak, executive director of Protect Mustangs. “We need more studies to establish what the normal reproduction rate is and discover truths about alleged overpopulation on the more than 30 million acres of public wildlands designated for their use. Today there is no scientific proof of overpopulation to merit fertility control.”
Recently fertility control, in the form of immunocontraceptives for wild horses, was erroneously passed by the EPA as “restricted use pesticides”. The EPA inaccurately named indigenous wild horses “pests” in order to pass the drug. Pesticides (PZP, GonaCon®, etc.) should never be used on native species such as E. caballus.
“PZP and other fertility control should not be used on non-viable herds either,” states Debbie Coffey, director of wild horse affairs at Wild Horse Freedom Federation. “Most of the remaining herds of wild horses are non-viable. The NAS and any advocacy groups that are pushing PZP and other fertility control have not carefully studied all of the caveats in Dr. Gus Cothran’s genetic analysis reports along with the remaining population of each herd of wild horses.”
Equus caballus originated in North America more than 2 million years ago. Equus survived extinction through migration and E.caballus could have returned to America with the Spanish unless some had remained on the continent the entire time. Today researchers question historical records–written with Inquisition censorship–that claim the Spanish brought the first horses to America. Even so, if no horses remained when the Conquistadors arrived they would not be introducing the species but “returning” E.caballus to its native land.
“It’s time for land managers to come out of the dark ages–use native wild horses to heal the land and reverse desertification,” states Novak. “We’d like to see the BLM manage the land using wild horses as a resource in partnership with the New Energy Frontier–at virtually no cost to the taxpayer.”
In 1900 there were 2 million wild horses roaming in freedom in America. Today native wild horses are underpopulated on the range. Advocates estimate there are less than 18,000 left in the ten western states combined.
Protect Mustangs is a conservation group devoted to protecting native wild horses. Their mission is to educate the public about the indigenous wild horse, protect and research American wild horses on the range and help those who have lost their freedom.
# # #
Media Contacts:
Anne Novak 415.531.8454 Anne@ProtectMustangs.org
Kerry Becklund, 510-502-1913 Kerry@ProtectMustangs.org
Links of interest:
Washington Post: Independent panel: Wild horse roundups don’t work; use fertility drugs, let nature cull herds
Information on native wild horses:
NAS Press release June 5, 2013:
NAS Report: Using Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse & Burro Program: A Way Forward
Sacramento Bee, Panel: Sterilize wild horses to cut population Read more here:
GonaCon press release spins wild horse overpopulation myths:
ZonaStat-H EPA Pesticide Fact Sheet: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/pending/fs_PC-176603_01-Jan-12.pdf
Princeton University: Wildlife and cows can be partners, not enemies, in the search for food
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S32/93/41K10/index.xml?section=featured
Gone viral~ The Associated Press, March 24, 2013: Budget axe nicks BLM wild-horse adoption center http://www.denverpost.com/colorado/ci_22862206
US property exposed to wildfire valued at $136 billion says report: http://www.artemis.bm/blog/2012/09/17/u-s-property-exposed-to-wildfire-valued-at-136-billion-says-report/
KQED Horse fossil found in Caldecott Tunnel: http://science.kqed.org/quest/2011/05/26/new-fossils-from-the-caldecott-tunnel/
Horseback Magazine: Group takes umbridge at use of the word “feral” http://horsebackmagazine.com/hb/archives/19392
Protect Mustangs in the news: http://protectmustangs.org/?page_id=218
Protect Mustangs’ press releases: http://protectmustangs.org/?page_id=125
The PPJ Gazette 
Jun 09, 2013 @ 03:32:44
Contraceptives For Wild Horses Are Just What The Government Ordered
(Excerpts)
Vickery Eckhoff
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vickeryeckhoff/2012/02/28/contraceptives-for-wild-horses-are-just-what-the-government-ordered/3/
But the BLM devotes only 5% of its entire budget to actual on-range management, and it spends only 1.25% on data gathering or analysis to determine horse populations, according to BLM figures.
This gets me back to the true beneficiaries of the BLM’s Wild Horses and Burros program: not horses and burros, not taxpayers, but companies seeking public land on the cheap, government contractors and their partners within the U.S. government.
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Jun 08, 2013 @ 22:25:27
I see you are hot on the trail!
________________________________
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Jun 08, 2013 @ 22:01:47
“The BLM’s current aggressive fertility control methods are aimed toward the extinction of the wild horses”
EDITORIAL | Midwest Ranchers Find Gold In
Nevada’s Wild Horses
by Valerie James-Patton
November 19, 2010
Midwest Ranchers Find Gold In Nevada’s Wild Horses
Click to access Feral_Horse_Committee_VJP_FINAL.pdf
Fertility control would need to be addressed. The BLM’s current aggressive fertility control methods are aimed toward the extinction of the wild horses. New drugs the BLM has been using such as SpayVac and Gonacon is believed to have the ability to cause permanent sterilization in mares. The BLM’s effort to create non-reproducing herds by administering long lasting or permanent sterilization drugs to mares, capturing stallions and returning gelded males to the herds, adjusting herd ratios to favor males, and reducing herd numbers to below genetic viability and unsustainable numbers, is a violation of the WFRHBA, 43 CFR 4700.0-6 (a), which states:
“Wild horses and burros shall be managed as self-sustaining populations of healthy animals in balance with other uses and the productive capacity of their habitat.”
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Jun 08, 2013 @ 14:43:31
Thank you, Grandma Gregg for this valuable information. It needs to be shared. Here’s popualtion information.
http://americanherds.blogspot.com/2009/12/whats-left.html
What’s Left?
As the united call to stop BLMs unchecked assault on the American mustang & burro continues to gain momentum, with over 180 organizations and celebrities now supporting a moratorium to halt any further removals until key issues can be resolved, here’s one more reason to demand a “cease and desist” until a full scale investigation can be conducted on the Wild Horse & Burro Program to determine what’s really left out on the range.
Today, American Herds presents the updated numbers of what may be all that’s really left of America’s free-roaming herds as of September 30, 2009, now hovering between 22,000 to 26,000 less than BLM continues to publicly report.
In addition to graphically illustrating the annual population declines, at least 52 Herd Management Areas have been found to have extreme jumps in annual population reports that were key in supporting BLMs national “excess” with 25 of these occurring between 2007/2008 and 16 between 2008/2009. To learn more, Click Here.
Until Congress demands an independent count of the populations BLM has been reporting, both on and off the range, the evidence continues to mount that “What’s Left?” has reached critical levels of concern.
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Jun 08, 2013 @ 03:21:43
Making decisions to apply a fertility drug to wild horse herd mares would put wild horse herds in danger of a die-off if any natural or man made disaster struck the herd management area – be it wild fire or an extreme winter or mass predation or other. If a majority of the mares are non-reproducing and thus zero or even just a few births, then it is easy to see that the entire herd would be in jeopardy – both genetically and physically – and would diminish their ability to survive into the future. We then have a herd that is not safe on its own range. The horses must to be protected as the law states they shall be.
Over management to create zero population growth in the wild is insensitive to natural forces which will then create a negative population growth where foals will not be born to replace those horses that die of natural and environmental causes. They have no need of this interference and this dangerously low reproductive rate could be and likely will be catastrophic.
PZP is acknowledged by BLM and the Department of Agriculture as a three-year effect contraceptive drug. In a recent U.S. Dept. of Ag. study, “All mares in the (PZP) SpayVac group were infertile during the first breeding season. In Year 2, 80% (10/12) of the (PZP) SpayVac-treated mares were infertile. In Year 3, (again) 80% (10/12) of the (PZP) SpayVac were infertile.
Click to access miller062.pdf
I quote excerpts below from Dr. C. DeCarlo, who has a background in equine reproductive immunology and wildlife conservation.
“There is a recent Princeton University study on PZP effects. Consecutive PZP applications … showed that mares gave birth later in the season, and were cycling into the fall months (Nunez et al. 2010). … This can have serious and long term effects on foal survivorship. Any form of PZP contraception is not completely reversible in mares depending on the length of use of PZP. Contraception can only be reversed when the antibody titer decreases to 50-60% of the positive reference sera (Liu et al. 2005). Mares treated for 7 consecutive years do not return to viable fertility (Kirkpatrick and Turner 2002; Kirkpatrick et al. 2009). The issue of reversible contraception is very important to be able to maintain wild equines in the United States. Long term treatment with PZP has inherent negative potential …”
Current studies are not conclusive on the impacts of fertility controls of the Porcine Zona Pellucide (PZP). These methods will restrict the growth of the herd, but the long term indirect effect to the reproductive health and genetic viability and impact on the herds are scientifically uncertain. For BLM to continue on this massive PZP plan is nothing more than the future genetic destruction of wild horse and burro herds. Wide spread PZP application to wild horses and burros cannot lead to a scientifically accepted population size for healthy reproducing herds and thus there can be no healthy wild horse and burro herds for future generations. This is completely unacceptable – per the law and per the wishes of the American people as well as the laws of nature.
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