Source: Wild Horse Freedom Federation
Letter from USDA’s Forest Service informing us that they had no records of the Devil’s Garden wild horses for almost a 4 month period of time (Click on each page to enlarge or print)
by Debbie Coffey, V.P. & Dir. of Wild Horse Affairs, Wild Horse Freedom Federation
Wild Horse Freedom Federation has been working diligently, over many years, trying to find out the truth about what is happening to America’s wild horses & burros.
We currently have 9 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits filed for violations of FOIA law by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
We have completed 8 other FOIA lawsuits for violations of FOIA law by the BLM in the past few years.
The Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Department of the Interior, continues to lack transparency. We file these FOIA requests to obtain records for YOU. As we review FOIA records, we are continually finding out new information that the BLM has not shared with the public on their BLM website, or even at National Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board meetings.
We currently have about 17 FOIA requests filed with multiple government agencies.
Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s Directors have spent many hours reviewing tens of thousands of pages of records. We have shared these records with members of Congress, with the media, with other advocacy groups and organizations, and with the public. You can find some of the records on Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s documentation page in a series called THE TRUTH.
We also currently have 1 FOIA Appeal filed with the USDA’s Forest Service, who claimed they had no records regarding the Devil’s Garden wild horses over almost a 4 month period of time (see letter at top of this page). In other words, they claimed there is not one email, not one Bill of Sale, not one piece of paper.
Wild Horse Freedom Federation will continue to fight for transparency. We need your help to continue our work. Please donate here: http://wildhorsefreedomfederation.org/donate/
Be sure to subscribe HERE to Wild Horse Freedom Federation, so that you can receive email alerts.
The PPJ Gazette 
Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:30:00
The Devil’s Garden and the wild horses belong to US
Devil’s Garden
Devil’s Garden wild horses are the last sustainable herd in California, but they are in danger of being rounded up and sold to kill buyers. This short film shows the beautiful garden itself, as well as the devastating consequences of cattle grazing on our public lands.
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Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:27:06
AWHC response
Response to Alta Magazine’s, “Feral Horses, Fierce Controversy”
“Fake news” is a reality in today’s society, and our wild horses and burros are not immune from the barrage of inaccurate, misleading, agenda-driven reporting.
A recent example is Jason G. Goldman’s “Feral Horses, Fierce Controversy” that was published in the July issue of Alta, a magazine that professes to fashion itself after The New Yorker and Rolling Stone and promises “a celebration and examination of all things about California.”
On the one hand, Mr. Goldman’s cover story is typical of other anti-wild horse/pro-rancher propaganda pieces. In this case, the subject was the wild horses who live on the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory (DGWHT) within the Modoc National Forest in Alturas, CA. According to Mr. Goldman, these federally-protected mustangs are so overpopulated that private ranchers in Modoc County are no longer able to make living grazing their livestock because of rangeland degradation caused exclusively by the horses.
Mr. Goldman constructed this “fake news” premise through an alarming combination of sensationalism and sloppy and biased reporting. In doing so, he’s elevated the conflict between wild horses and ranchers to a whole new level for no purpose other than to misinform and push a divisive and dangerous agenda
Start with the sensationalism. It’s unfortunate that Mr. Goldman is so enamored by the cowboy archetype and its manifestation in his story’s subject, ranch manager Jesse Dancer, that he fails to peel back the layers and investigate the real story in Devil’s Garden – the undue influence on federal policy of local private ranchers seeking unfettered access to grazing on the 258,000 acres of public rangelands and the near elimination of the Devil’s Garden wild horses.
For starters, Modoc County is not the Wild West. While ranchers shooting people and wild horses and things getting “ugly in the cattle vs. horse standoff” makes for good headlines, it’s irresponsible of Mr. Goldman to frame his article around Jess Dancer’s glib predictions of violence, especially because there is no evidence that other ranchers support such actions.
Moreover, Jess Dancer is not a “small family” rancher struggling to survive. He’s the manager of Alturas Ranches, a corporate ranching operation owned by a wealthy developer based in San Jose, CA.
Instead of focusing on the financial woes of Alturas Ranches as a result of reduced grazing in the Devil’s Garden Territory, a more salient line of inquiry would be why a multi-millionaire is allowed to graze his cattle on public lands, paying grazing fees that are a fraction of market rate, thanks to subsidies from American taxpayers. And this is not an isolated situation – other wealthy individuals and national and international corporations, such as J. R. Simplot Corporation and the Hewlitt and Hilton families, also enjoy similar perks.
Then there’s Mr. Goldman’s fondness for inaccuracy, bias, and omission. There’s a whole list of examples – in fact, way too many to cite. But here are some of the most egregious.
Regarding the wild horse population in Devil’s Garden, Mr. Goldman asserts that removing 932 horses in 2018 wasn’t “enough to solve the problem” because nearly still 4,000 remain. He also cites Laura Snell, a livestock specialist for the University of California Cooperative Extension and a vehement wild horse opponent, who predicts that another roundup this fall will target 1,500 horses for removal in order to restore the ecology of the range.
Here’s the reality. Last week the United States Forest Service (USFS) issued a press release that totally contradicts those numbers – a Spring 2019 census found 1,802 horses inside and outside the Territory –less than half the number claimed by Goldman — and a roundup scheduled this fall will remove 500 of them. In the article, Jess Dancer claimed that over 1,000 wild horses are on the Emigrant Springs public lands allotment where Alturas Ranches grazes privately-owned cattle, but the Forest Service Census found 436.
This brings up another concern – Mr. Goldman’s sources. Like Jess Dancer and Laura Snell, his other go-to guys, Keith Norris, and Eric Beever are both affiliated with the Wildlife Society, which lobbies for the interests of cattlemen and hunters and pushes for the mass roundup and slaughter of wild horses. Both Norris and Beever scapegoat wild horses for rangeland damage in the West. Of course, Goldman’s article promotes their claims without alerting readers to the fact that an estimated nine million cattle and only 80,000 wild horses and burros actually live on Western public lands.
Perhaps the deepest flaw in Mr. Goldman’s treatise is that he never bothered to contact two major stakeholders. One is the Modoc National Forest, the federal agency that is tasked with managing the Devil’s Garden Territory. In fact, they didn’t even know he was writing the article.
The other is the American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC). If Mr. Goldman had spoken with us, he would have learned, among other things, about our efforts to expose the unprecedented influence that local ranching interests have on the management of the Devil’s Garden Territory; our lawsuits to win back the middle section of the Territory for the wild horse herd and prevent the USFS from selling the horses for slaughter; our very successful PZP program for the 4,000 wild horses on the Virginia Range in Nevada as well as our proposed PZP pilot project for Devil’s Garden . (After we committed substantial resources to the planning the project, the USFS sidelined it in large part, we believe, because of resistance from the Modoc County Farm Bureau and local cattle groups.)
But he didn’t. And here’s why.
He’s touted as an award-winning journalist, but Mr. Goldman has failed to uphold journalistic standards in his article that perpetuates the simplistic “wild horses are bad – ranchers are good” myth. According to him, “feral” horses – not wild horses, mind you – are solely responsible for “squeezing out cattle and native wildlife that must compete for limited resources” Nothing is said about the thousands of cattle and sheep that run in the Modoc Forest every year. Mr. Goldman’s only solution: rounding up and removing them – and, if necessary, selling them for slaughter.
Finally, adhering to the tenets of “fake news,” Mr. Goldman practices the fine art of omission, which includes omitting any mention of the following:
· a 2013 report by the National Academy of Sciences warns that roundup and removals are “expensive and unproductive” and maximize “the population growth rate” and recommended the use of fertility control, including PZP, as a more cost-effective and sustainable alternative for stabilizing and reducing population rates;
· paleontological and mitochondrial DNA evidence supports the fact that wild horses are native wildlife, not “feral” or an invasive species;
· protection of the Devil’s Garden wild horses is mandated under federal law, while livestock grazing there is a privilege offered at the discretion of the Secretary of Agriculture;
· the number of privately-owned livestock that the USFS allows to graze on the DGWHT vastly exceeds the number of wild horses permitted there – 3,700 cattle and 2,900 sheep compared to 206 – 402 wild horses;
· 100 years of unmanaged livestock grazing and current intensive grazing practices that sanction turning out livestock during the spring, a critical growth period for grasses and other forage, are the real cause of the extensive ecological damage within the DGWHT; and
· California’s elected officials – including Senator Diane Feinstein, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Representative Ted Lieu, and Assemblyman Todd Gloria — have spoken out against the USFS’s inhumane management plans for Devil’s Garden wild horses.
In “Feral Horses, Fierce Controversy,” Mr. Goldman and Alta miss an opportunity to celebrate and examine “all things about California” – in this case, the state’s largest and most historic wild horse herd and the ongoing threats it faces by entitled local ranching interests who control the USFS’s management of the DGWHT. While Mr. Goldman is correct in characterizing the DGWHT as controversial, he misses the mark in branding the Devil’s Garden wild horses as the “problem.” In serving up this fake news, he does a huge disservice not only to the readers of Alta but the American public who value wild horses and their protection.
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Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:26:28
Governor Gavin Newsom facebook
https://www.facebook.com/GavinNewsom/
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Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:26:00
You may contact Governor Gavin Newsom by mail at:
Mailing address:
Governor Gavin Newsom
1303 10th Street, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-2841
Fax: (916) 558-3160
Contact the Governor
Purpose of communication:
https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/
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Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:25:33
XAVIER BECERRA
California Attorney General
Office of the Attorney General
1300 “I” Street
Sacramento, CA 95814-2919
Phone: (916) 445-9555
Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550
Office of the Attorney General
455 Golden Gate, Suite 11000
San Francisco, CA 94102-7004
Phone: (415) 510-4400
Office of the Attorney General
1515 Clay Street
Oakland, CA 94612-1499
Phone: (510) 879-1300
Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 70550
Oakland, CA 94612-0550
Office of the Attorney General
2550 Mariposa Mall, Room 5090
Fresno, CA 93721-2271
Phone: (559) 705-2300
Office of the Attorney General
300 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013-1230
Phone: (213) 269-6000
Office of the Attorney General
600 West Broadway Street, Suite 1800
San Diego, CA 92101-3702
Phone: (619) 738-9000
Office of the Attorney General
P.O. Box 85266-5299
San Diego, CA 92186-5266
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Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:24:30
Senator Kamala Harris
Send an e-mail
https://www.harris.senate.gov/contact/email
500 Tulare Street, Suite 5290
Fresno, CA 93721
Phone (559) 497 – 5109
Fax (202) 228 – 3864
333 Bush Street, Suite 3225
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone (415) 981 – 9369
Fax (202) 224 – 0454
501 I Street, Suite 7-800
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone (916) 448 – 2787
Fax (202) 228 – 3865
11845 West Olympic Boulevard, Suite 1250W
Los Angeles, CA 90064
Phone (310) 231 – 4494
Fax (202) 224 – 0357
600 B Street, Suite 2240
San Diego, CA 92101
Phone (619) 239 – 3884
Fax (202) 228 – 3863
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone (202) 224 – 3553
Fax (202) 224 – 2200
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Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:23:54
Calling the local offices of senators or representatives is often the best way to get a message through and to actually talk to someone.
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Send an e-mail message
https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me
San Francisco
One Post Street, Suite 2450
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: (415) 393-0707
Fax: (415) 393-0710
Los Angeles
11111 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 915
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Phone: (310) 914-7300
Fax: (310) 914-7318
San Diego
880 Front Street, Suite 4236
San Diego, CA 92101
Phone: (619) 231-9712
Fax: (619) 231-1108
Fresno
2500 Tulare Street, Suite 4290
Fresno, CA 93721
Phone: (559) 485-7430
Fax: (559) 485-9689
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Aug 27, 2019 @ 15:23:05
There was an enormous amount of taxpayer money transferred from the Forest Service to the Modoc Farm Bureau.
There needs to be an audit.
Office of the Campus Counsel
This site provides information related to the conflict of interest rules of the California Political Reform Act. The Political Reform Act (“Act”) requires certain state and local government officials to publicly disclose their private economic interests on the Form 700, Statement of Economic Interests. Additionally, it requires that all government (University) employees disqualify themselves from participating in decisions in which they have a personal financial interest.
The University’s Conflict of Interest Code adopts and incorporates portions of the Act, identifying those positions on each campus and at the Office of the President which are required to file a Statement of Economic Interest form. University employees may also be subject to other UC policies and procedures in addition to other conflict of interest laws. On this site you will find links to some of these policies and laws.
The University’s philosophy on conflict of interest is that none of its faculty, staff, managers, or officials shall engage in any activities that place them in a conflict of interest between their official activities and any other interest or obligation. Personnel Policies for Staff Members 82, Conflict of Interest provides a short summary of a number of University conflict of interest policies. In addition, a variety of specialized policies and guidelines have been issued in recognition of the need for guidance in this area and in the related areas of ethical standards and codes of conduct.
The compendium of policies and guidelines is intended for the use of University employees should the question of a possible conflict of interest arise. An individual who, after considering these policies, guidelines, and regulations, is still uncertain about the propriety of a particular action or relationship in connection with University duties, can consult the Conflict of Interest Coordinator in the Office of the Campus Counsel.
https://campuscounsel.ucdavis.edu/conflict-interest
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