Source: The Hill
Trump administration calls wild horses biggest threat to public lands — here are the real threats
“The livestock industry continues to run roughshod over the vast majority of our Western public lands, causing a cascade of major environmental problems.”
BY ERIK MOLVAR, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
Acting BLM Director William Perry Pendley told the Society of Environmental Journalists in Colorado on Friday that wild horses were the biggest problem facing federal public lands in the West.
The silliness of this statement becomes obvious when one considers that wild horses don’t exist on more than 85 percent of BLM lands, and where they do occur, they have to share the range with domestic livestock which typically have an even bigger impact on the land.
Pendley’s misstatement would be funny if it weren’t so dishonest and is symptomatic of major problems stemming from placing one of the nation’s most vitriolic opponents of environmental conservation in charge of our biggest land management agency.
Let’s examine some of the real problems facing the Bureau of Land Management, from the standpoint of an environmental professional, to put Pendley’s claims in some context.
Read the rest of this article HERE.
Erik Molvar is a wildlife biologist and executive director with Western Watersheds Project, an environmental conservation group dedicated to protecting and restoring watersheds and wildlife throughout the West.
The PPJ Gazette 
Oct 13, 2019 @ 14:27:23
From PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility)
July 29, 2019
NEW BLM ACTING DIRECTOR THREATENS AGENCY’S EXISTENCE
Ultra-Right Wing Lawyer William Pendley is Uniquely Unqualified to Run BLM
Posted on Jul 29, 2019
Further, the BLM Director position is one that requires the “advice and consent” of the Senate, under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. However, President Trump and Secretary Bernhardt have diligently detoured around that requirement, denying all of the U.S. Senate the ability to review and confirm or deny a nominee for the position.
“The very purpose of the Constitution’s advice and consent requirement is so the Senate can block the President from appointing unqualified, ultra-controversial ideologues like William Pendley into major agency leadership positions,”
BLM has been run during the Trump Administration by a rotating cast of political appointees, whom PEER has named “bad actors.” Mr. Pendley is the 5th such actor. Mr. Trump has never even bothered to nominate a full Director to the Senate for confirmation. The legality of all these appointments is highly doubtful.
https://www.peer.org/news/press-releases/new-blm-acting-director-threatens-agencys-existence.html
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Oct 13, 2019 @ 14:25:41
Mountain States is SUPPOSED to be about protecting PRIVATE property rights.
This departure seems rather odd.
Mountain States Legal Foundation received funds from WHICH “MAJOR CORPORATION”?
LAW
Foundation that launched Interior chiefs Watt, Norton doubles down on litigation
Jeremy P. Jacobs, E&E reporter
Greenwire: Thursday, January 2, 2014
“….though it acknowledges that it received FUNDS FROM “MAJOR CORPORATIONS” funds from “major corporations” and seven grants from national foundations ranging from $15,000 to $75,000.”
Among the many framed comic strips in the Mountain States Legal Foundation president’s office here is one of a Zeus-like character perched on a cloud and holding a thunderbolt.
“Let’s keep them off balance,” the caption says. “Try to hit an environmentalist.”
That pretty much sums up the philosophy of the foundation launched in the late 1970s as a conservative counterweight to environmental groups’ litigation efforts. Mountain States has defended the government against the likes of the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife.
But lately the foundation has been taking on the government, challenging what it views as regulatory overreach. This month, the nonprofit foundation based in a Denver suburb will be at the Supreme Court representing a Wyoming property owner who says the Forest Service had no right to build a bicycle trail on an abandoned railway that bisects his property (Greenwire, Dec. 3).
William Perry Pendley, the foundation’s president, said the case shows the government flouting property rights and acting without accountability. That, he said, is a troubling trend that has given Mountain States plenty of litigation opportunities.
“A Marine under attack says it’s a target-rich environment. We can shoot in any direction and hit the enemy,” said Pendley, a rangy former Marine who served in the Interior Department under President Reagan. “That’s what we have — a target-rich environment. And that’s not a good thing.”
3 goals
Pendly set three goals. The first: Win the lawsuit. With only a $2 million annual budget and seven attorneys,
Mountain States’ second goal: Set a legal precedent….
Mountain States says a third of its funding in 2012 came from 81 large donors whose contributions ranged from $600,000 to $5,000. Another third came from about 200 donors who gave between $1,000 and $5,000. The last third came from about 17,500 individuals who contributed up to $1,000.
The average contribution was $431 in 2012, the foundation says, though it acknowledges that it received funds from “major corporations” and seven grants from national foundations ranging from $15,000 to $75,000.
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059992336
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Oct 13, 2019 @ 14:20:04
Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s White Paper exposes BLM:
Evidence proves America’s wild horses and burros are disappearing without explanation
Pinehurst, Texas—(PR NEWSWIRE)— Wild Horse Freedom Federation, Inc. (WHFF), today released its
white paper, “Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse & Burro Program, with
a Focus on Problems Related to Holding Facilities.” America’s wild horses
and burros – long a national treasure and symbol of freedom – are endangered
and being pushed towards extinction, despite the Trump administration’s promise
to uphold the rule of law.
The comprehensive white paper cites horrific taxpayer waste and lying to the American public and
Congress. Gross offenses continue to occur on a massive scale under the direction of Trump-appointed Secretary of the Department of Interior (DoI), Ryan Zinke.
WHFF’s document notes current and historical violations that include evidence of fraud, wasting
taxpayer funds, and lack of scientific accounting for the wild horses and burros – in absolute defiance of the Congressional statute that provides for the safety of the iconic wild herds.
The five-year investigation culminating in the document has uncovered a consistent pattern of
the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) releasing misinformation to dupe the American taxpaying public and legislators.
For years, the BLM has taken healthy wild horses and burros from their legally protected lands in the
American West at the expense of taxpayers. Notably, on those lands, the cost to taxpayers was nothing, yet the BLM roundups have continued, taking tens of thousands of wild horses into captivity. Despite the reported number of horses in captivity (46,000) to date, large numbers of horses have mysteriously disappeared from the holding pens or during transports where they never arrived. And taxpayer money has been wasted by the BLM, at theexpense of the wild horses and burros they are supposed to protect.
WHFF’s FOIA obtained documentation on this topic, many of which have never been seen by Congress or
the public, prove BLM statements are filled with inaccuracies and outright lies. The beneficiaries of this systemic corruption have been corporate energy and ranching interests, both of whom, not surprisingly, are major donors to politicians who cover the areas where the most wild horses and burros are found.
Despite a strident outcry from American taxpayers who want, as the law requires, the horses and burros
protected and returned to their rightful place on public lands, the BLM has repeatedly asserted to America that the wild horses and burros need to be under its care. In the last century, the wild horse population has gone from
two million to less than 36,000 under BLM management. Less than two out of 100 wild horses that were present then remain in 2017.
WHFF’s white paper details multiple examples of mishandling of taxpayer funds, but the upshot is
simple: False assurances have been offered up to taxpayers while private interests and corruption related to the use of public land have run rampant. In another words, the BLM is the fox who guards the henhouse, seemingly unwilling to enforce the laws that obligate them to protect wild horses and burros.
“The DOI and BLM have undertaken a long term ‘Fake News’ campaign to spread misinformation to confuse
the issue. They want the wild horses and burros slaughtered, gone, full stop. Americans are not going to stand for that,” says Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s President R.T. Fitch. “Turns out Trump appointed a notorious horse slaughter proponent to oversee the DOI and his first major act could be to kill tens of thousands of wild horses and burros making this a timely must read for each and every American.” he continued.
This is paramount in importance right now for the wild horses and burros and American taxpayers.
In the coming days the Senate Appropriations Committee will take up the
Interior appropriations bill, which includes the Wild Horse and Burro Program
with the threat of killing wild horses and burros touted as a budgetary
necessity. Without intervention, for the rising generations of America,
wild horses and burros will be gone forever.
To read the WHFF white paper and for more information go to:
http://wildhorsefreedomfede…
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Oct 13, 2019 @ 14:19:17
The current BLM funding bill is based on falsified data because BLM states biologically and mathematically impossible annual wild horse population rates.
One example of many, the BLM recently stated that the wild horses on the Black Rock Herd Management Area had a 418% increase in ONE year (this would require a herd of 88 horses to produce 368 successful foals in one year which would require every single horse – including the stallions! – to each produce more than four surviving foals in one year). This is biologically impossible and fraudulent.
Click on to this link for a complete mathematical analysis of BLM’s fraudulent and deceptive population statistics
(All population figures used in the chart(s) come directly from the BLM published annual herd statistics)
https://app.box.com/s/4r67w0z43x567npablkxibbx06wd0s6q
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