Madeleine Pickens Wild Horse Sanctuary

Another BLM Wild Horse Roundup: Submit Comments Today! Comments Must Be Received By Jan. 27

Removal of 550 horses in eastern Nevada set to begin next month

Just When We Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse – Government Claims More Than 670,000 Acres Can Only Support 100 to 200 Horses

Dear Friends:

We told you this was going to be a long, hard fight – thank you for sticking with us to take action on each and every unacceptable assault by the Obama Administration on our wild horses. We are up against the deeply entrenched special interests who want wild horses removed from public lands so they can conduct business as usual. That means cheap usage of our public land for their private profits at the horses’ and taxpayers’ expense.

It’s time to get public comments in on another large removal of wild horses which is planned by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This time the BLM intends to remove over 500 of the estimated 645 horses living in or near the “Eagle Herd Management Area” in eastern Nevada outside of Ely. While 500 individuals is fewer than the 2,500 horses currently being rounded up and removed from the Calico Complex in northwest Nevada (click here for Calico update), the Eagle roundup is even more ludicrous because it is 125,000 acres larger than Calico, but the government will only allow 100 horses to remain! In Calico, by contrast, 500-900 horses will be left behind in the approximately 500,000-acre public land complex.

The proposed Eagle HMA plan puts these wild horses at great risk because the BLM is reducing the number of horses to dangerously low numbers, which could threaten the viability of the herd. Many horse advocates believe this is the BLM’s method of systematically dwindling horse population numbers down to untenable levels in order to ultimately eradicate these American living legends from public lands.

The Obama Administration is continuing the Bush Administration policy of targeting wild horses in order to serve special cattle and other industry interests. Under President Obama’s oversight, the BLM is actually accelerating the pace of wild horse removals, with 12,000 horses targeted for capture from our public lands in Fiscal Year 2010 alone. The majority of these horses will be sent to government holding facilities, where they will join the 35,000 wild horses already stockpiled at taxpayer expense.

For more information on the government’s plans, the Preliminary Environmental Assessment for this roundup is available here.

Click HERE to View the PHOTOS

Dear Friends and Supporters,

A CALL FOR ACTION!
I IMPLORE YOU TO CONTACT YOUR U.S. SENATORS TODAY FOR THE PASSAGE OF THE R.O.A.M. ACT!

Dear Friends:

I write today to again ask for your support for another important part of the effort to protect our wild horses.  On March 3rd of this year, I testified before the House Subcommittee on Public Lands on legislation sponsored by Congressman Rahall from West Virginia, H.R. 1018, referred to as the Restore Our American Mustangs or R.O.A.M Act.  That legislation subsequently passed the House of Representatives on July 17, 2009 by a vote of 239-185, a comfortable majority.  The legislation then moved to the Senate and was referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where it sits today.  This is the second Congress in which Congressman Rahall, along with Congressman Grijalva of Arizona and many other Members of the House of Representatives have managed to pass legislation that would make major changes to the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971.

It is quite amazing to think that a program that has been around for nearly 40 years and by anyone’s admission is rife with problems would not have undergone a major review and overhaul, but that is the case with the Wild Horse and Burro Act.  Oh sure, there has been the usual tinkering with small parts of the original legislation but never has there been a serious effort to correct many of the deficiencies that plague the program.  One has to ask, where are the champions of the wild horses in the United States Senate?  Why hasn’t someone on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee pressed for changes to the Program?  To his credit, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia has sponsored a bill, S 1579, that is a companion bill to the one passed by Congressman Rahall.  Isn’t it interesting that there seems to be more interest in West Virginia in correcting the deficiencies in the Wild Horse and Burro Program than that demonstrated by Members from western States where wild horses reside?

Over the course of the history of this country, mainly in the past two hundred years, we have watched as different species disappeared from the American landscape.  In the 1800s it was the buffalo, totally eliminated to make room for the development of the plains of the great Midwest.  In the 20 century it was the gray wolf that seemed to offend the sensibilities of the ranching community and had to go.  And now we find buffalo preserves growing up all over the country in an effort to restore this once predominant and magnificent animal.  And, of course, we have engaged in a massive effort to restore the gray wolf to much of its original habitat, at great expense to the taxpayer.  Why is it that we never seem to learn the lessons of preserving our wildlife species before they become extinct?  One could argue that pure economics trumps all when it comes to saving some of this Nation’s most valuable resources, our native wildlife.  And the wild horses run the risk of being the next native species to fall victim to this reckless policy.

The Rahall and Byrd legislation seeks to address some very common sense solutions to the current problems of the Wild Horse and Burro Program.  Here are a few of the things that the legislation seeks to accomplish:

1. It would, to the extent practical, make available as much land as was set aside in the original Wild Horse and Burro Act for wild horses.

2. Provide an annual inventory of our wild horses and make public that information.

3. Provide a fair and thriving ecological balance for wild horses on our public lands.

4. Assist in establishing sanctuaries on private lands.

5. Develop a policy standard to assess the Appropriate Management Levels of wild horses on our public lands.

Should any of these provisions strike fear in the hearts of those who oppose a fair resolution to the problems inherent in the Wild Horse and Burro Program?  I think not.  And yet there is little if any discussion of moving any reauthorizing legislation in the Unites States Senate.

It is incumbent on those of us who care dearly about the survival of our wild horse herds in the Western United States to wholeheartedly engage in an effort to pressure members of the Senate and the Senate as a whole to move this legislation at the first opportunity.  Please take time to write your U.S. Senator today and ask that he or she get directly involved in the effort to pass legislation to “preserve and protect” our wild horses for future generations.

Click on the link below to “Take Action” on this important issue.  From there you will be able to contact your local U.S. Senator directly with your own message.  I’ve also listed the current Members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee below that will link to their webpage.  A letter or a phone call to each will prove critical in helping our wild horses survive.  I implore you to take the time today to write that letter or make that call.  TAKE ACTION!

Thank you,

Madeleine Pickens

TAKE ACTION HERE: CONTACT YOUR U.S. SENATORS TODAY: http://www.capwiz.com/madeleinepickens/issues/alert/?alertid=14468161&type=TA

Energy and Natural Resources Committee Office
304 Dirksen Senate Building
Washington , DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4971
Fax: (202) 224-6163
http://energy.senate.gov/public/
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Members:

Democrats:
Chairman Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Byron L. Dorgan (ND)
Ron Wyden (OR)
Tim Johnson (SD)
Mary L. Landrieu (LA)
Maria Cantwell (WA)
Robert Menendez (NJ)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Bernard Sanders (I) (VT)
Evan Bayh (IN)
Debbie Stabenow (MI)
Mark Udall (CO)
Jeanne Shaheen (NH)

Republicans:
Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Richard Burr (NC)
John Barrasso (WY)
Sam Brownback (KS)
James E. Risch (ID)
John McCain (AZ)
Robert Bennett (UT)
Jim Bunning (KY)
Jeff Sessions (AL)
Bob Corker (TN)

Dear Friends,

In keeping with my commitment to protect America’s wild horses, I thought it important to provide you with an update of where we are with the plans to build a sanctuary for thousands of wild horses currently in holding pens across the country and to inform you of a new initiative I am launching on another front: the wild horse gather schedule that has been proposed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Nearly 18 months ago I launched the effort to buy a ranch in Nevada to build a state of the art wild horse sanctuary that would be home to thousands of wild horses that currently stand in holding pens, their fate uncertain.  At the time I began this odyssey, there was talk of euthanizing thousands of the wild horses that were and remain in BLM’s holding facilities.  We were able to take that discussion off the table, though many horses are still going to slaughter in Mexico, and we proceeded to circulate the plan from my Foundation to build a sanctuary that would provide a permanent home for the horses and be accessible as an educational and tourist destination for the American people.  We met with every official within the Department of Interior, including Secretary Salazar, assistant secretaries, the new BLM Director, Bob Abbey, and many members of Congress, along with their staff.

Secretary Salazar has embraced the idea of public/private partnerships and creating what he calls “preserves,” basically along the lines of the proposal I submitted for the sanctuary in Nevada, with one significant difference; he wants to build them in the Midwest or the East, far from the natural habitat of the wild horses and their natural range, Nevada and the other states in the West.  His announcement also included plans for two “preserves” that the BLM would buy with $96 million dollars of taxpayer money that would house a total of around 7,000 wild horses.

While the Secretary was making his recent announcement to create “preserves” for wild horses, he also laid out his plans for other management activities with the wild horses.  Included in his proposal was the announcement that the BLM is going to gather between 12,000 and 13,000 wild horses in the next calendar year, beginning later this month.  This proposed gather schedule threatens the very survival of the remaining wild horse herds in the western United States and must be stopped.

Among the many things I have discovered during 18 months of negotiating with the BLM is that their management style goes from crisis to crisis, never quite achieving any resolution of a major problem before a new one arises.  At the time I began the discussion of a sanctuary for wild horses, there were 33,000 of them in various holding facilities, some short term and some long term.  There are still 33,000 wild horses in holding facilities, some that have been in the same facility for up to two years, and still no answer to that problem.  The holding facilities now managed by the BLM are full to the maximum and they are having difficulty finding more long term holding, another concept unique to their management style and arguably not consistent with their mandate under the law to “preserve and protect” wild horses for future generations.

In spite of the fact that all the facilities are full, they propose to gather another 12,000 horses with virtually no place to put them.  Even if the Secretary’s announced plans to buy and create two preserves could be done, it could not be accomplished for another one to three years at the earliest and that is assuming that the Congress will appropriate the money, an assumption that is unlikely given the current budget crisis.  And yet my Foundation plan to build a sanctuary using private dollars for the purchase of the land languishes on some bureaucrat’s desk.

Rest assured I will not give up on the plan to build the sanctuary so the American people have a place where they can come and witness the majesty and grace of our great legacy, the wild horses.  But I must also turn my attention to what I consider the current crisis and challenge, the gathering of 12,000 or more wild horses.

There are many reasons why we must stop this massive gather.  To begin with, there is a legitimate dispute over the number of wild horses remaining on the range, and the BLM number of over 30,000 must be called into question.  There have been repeated calls for new census methodology to be utilized to determine the actual number of wild horses remaining on the ranges in the western United States.  The BLM has resisted these calls and relied on outdated and ineffective methods of counting horses.  Before we know how many wild horses actually remain on the range, we cannot allow 12,000 or more to be gathered.

Over 21 million acres of land originally designated as Herd Management Area available to our wild horses has been taken away from them.  This was done by zeroing out over 100 Herd Management Areas designated by the original Will Horse and Burro Act legislation.  The BLM committed over a year ago to produce a report on the status of those lands, yet nothing has been forthcoming in that regard.  In most cases, those 21 million acres are now being grazed by cattle.

Another argument not being taken into consideration deals with the genetics of the herd structure of many of the herds and bands of wild horses designated for gathers in the coming year.  Many equine scientists have written and discussed the issue of genetics and many have concluded that taking existing herd numbers below certain levels will have a devastating effect on the future reproduction rates and activities of those herds. The BLM is not applying a scientific approach to the issue of genetics when designing these gathers and the result of ignoring these issues could easily result in the future disappearance of these wild horse herds through sickness and disease or inferior breeding.

As I mentioned earlier, there is no room for 12,000 additional wild horses in the BLM’s existing facilities.  Gathering them without a plan that addresses where to put them will only result in another round of discussion about euthanasia and slaughter.

I am launching an effort to stop these proposed gathers and I will engage at many different levels in order to succeed.  Your continued monitoring and support of the wild horses is greatly appreciated and I ask you to continue to check my website (www.MadeleinesMustangs.org) for updates on my efforts to stop the gathers and to get the sanctuary built.  Together we can succeed in protecting our wild horses for future generations.

Thank you,

Madeleine Pickens

Saving America’s Mustangs last month announced the formation of a 25-member Advisory Board consisting of prominent entertainment and sports figures.  The Committee presently consists of:

• June Jones – CHAIRMAN, SMU “Mustangs” Head Football Coach
• Troy Aikman – NFL Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboys QB & Super Bowl MVP
• Michael Blake – Academy Award Winning Screenwriter, “Dances With Wolves”
• Jenny Craig – Founder, Jenny Craig, Inc.
• Mark Cuban – Owner, NBA Dallas Mavericks
• David Foster – Grammy Award-Winning musician, composer, singer, songwriter, and producer
• Jerry Jones – Owner, NFL Dallas Cowboys
• Toby Keith — Legendary Country Music Singer
• Adrienne Maloof-Nassif – Executive Vice President, Maloof Companies (NBA Sacramento Kings & Palms Casino and Resort)
• T. Boone Pickens – Legendary Businessman
• Mike Post – Grammy and Emmy Award-Winning Composer
• Rudy Ruettiger – Notre Dame Football Legend and real life inspiration for the movie “Rudy”
• Junior Seau — NFL All-Pro Linebacker for San Diego Chargers, Miami Dolphins & NE Patriots
• Emmitt Smith — NFL All-Pro Running Back for the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals
• Roger Staubach – NFL Hall of Fame former Dallas Cowboys QB & Super Bowl MVP
• Barry Switzer — Former Dallas Cowboys Head Football Coach
• Thurman Thomas — NFL Hall of Fame Running Back
• Doug Williams – Super Bowl MVP, former Washington Redskins QB

About Saving America’s Mustangs
Wild horses are a living symbol of our American heritage and freedom. These Mustangs must be protected.  Businesswoman and philanthropist Madeleine Pickens is committed to this promise. Through her Foundation, citizens from all walks of life are uniting to create a permanent home, a Sanctuary, to save these magnificent national treasures.

www.MadeleinesMustangs.org

March 31, 2009

The Bureau of Land Management just released a statement regarding my plan for the wild horses.  I am gratified to see that the BLM is taking my offer seriously.  The current handling of the wild horses is a serious problem, and it deserves the immediate attention of the BLM.

In the BLM’s response, they concede my proposal would save the taxpayers millions of dollars, but raise several legalisms that the BLM says would prevent them from accepting my proposal without Congressional authorization, and they also point out that most of their contracts are awarded by competitive bidding.

I strongly favor competition for government contracts to assure that the process by which our taxpayer dollars are spent is open and transparent.  I hope that the BLM will join with me to ask Congress to authorize an open competition to provide a solution for the wild horses that is more humane and cost effective than the alternatives that the BLM has identified under existing law. 

I will be happy to submit my proposal under a competitive process to select the most humane, cost effective solution to this problem.  I expect to meet with Congressional staff and the acting director of the BLM later this week to discuss how this can be done.

BLM Statement regarding Madeleine Pickens’ Wild Horse Sanctuary Proposal

The Bureau of Land Management is grateful to Madeleine Pickens for her interest in helping the BLM deal with the challenges of managing wild horses and burros, both on and off Western public rangelands. The BLM is committed to continuing its discussions with Mrs. Pickens to address these challenges, which include the effective management of wild horses and burros and the protection of taxpayer dollars expended through the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program.

Last November, Mrs. Pickens offered to take over the care of thousands of wild horses that the BLM holds in facilities across the United States by setting up a private foundation that would care for the animals at no cost to the government, potentially saving American taxpayers millions of dollars.

Mrs. Pickens’ more recent proposal seeks a BLM stipend of $500 per horse, per year for the life of each horse. Under this plan, Mrs. Pickens’ foundation would first take about 10,000 wild horses currently in BLM short-term holding facilities (corrals), the costs of which are significantly greater to the BLM than those of keeping horses in long-term holding (pastures).

To realize these potential savings to the BLM, however, Mrs. Pickens’ sanctuary plan would need to meet certain requirements for wild horse management.

First, Mrs. Pickens’ plan to care for these animals at $500 per horse, per year is similar to the long-term holding contracts that the BLM currently has with private landowners in the Midwest, where about 22,000 unadopted or unsold animals are cared for at an annual cost of about $475 per horse. The animals graze on private pastures in Oklahoma, Kansas, and South Dakota, where forage and water are abundant. In contrast to these annual contracts, Mrs. Pickens has asked the BLM to commit to lifetime payments. Because Congress appropriates the agency’s funding on an annual basis, the BLM is not authorized to make such an unlimited commitment.

Second, Mrs. Pickens’ plan proposes to take the animals from private pastures and facilities and instead graze them on private and public lands on a large ranch in Nevada. However, current Federal law prohibits the BLM from using allotments associated with that ranch for grazing wild horses. The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act restricts animals to the areas where they were found roaming when the Act was passed in 1971. Unfortunately, none of the BLM grazing allotments that Mrs. Pickens proposes for her sanctuary were areas where wild horses roamed in 1971.

Congress would have to amend the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to address this aspect of Mrs. Pickens’ proposal.

As an alternative, the BLM has offered to advertise a holding contract on private land and welcomes a bid from Mrs. Pickens’ foundation. Open bidding on such a contract would ensure that taxpayers get the maximum benefit from their investment.

The BLM is committed to working with Congress, stakeholders, and the public to ensure the welfare of wild horses and burros, both on and off public rangelands, while also protecting these Western lands from the destructive effects of herd overpopulation.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of H.R. 1018 and wild horses, an issue very near and dear to my heart.

My name is Madeleine Pickens, and I am a lifelong equestrian and animal lover. My husband, T. Boone Pickens, and I keep horses on our ranch in Texas, and I have had the good fortune and privilege to have bred and raced multiple champion race horses, including the famed Cigar, over the years. I am also keenly interested in wild horses and burros, and therefore am grateful for the opportunity to testify before the committee today on H.R. 1018, the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act, and to share some of my wild horse proposal with the. I commend Chairman Nick Rahall and Subcommittee Chairman Raul Grijalva for their willingness to lead on this issue. I know you are both true wild horse champions.

I want to share with the Committee details of a project I have been pursuing for several months now that could significantly assist the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) policies and practices when it comes to America’s wild horses and burros and which should be considered as the Committee reviews H.R. 1018.

Continue Reading Madeleine’s Testimony