Federal judge dismisses Nevada horse roundup suit
Associated Press
Monday, May 24, 2010 4:53 p.m.
A federal judge Monday officially dismissed a lawsuit brought by animal rights activists over a big wild horse roundup in northern Nevada, saying the case was moot and plaintiffs lacked standing.
U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman in Washington, D.C., who in December denied an injunction to prevent the roundup, said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has already gathered 1,922 horses from the Calico Mountains Complex north of Reno, therefore challenging the use of helicopters was moot.
The group In Defense of Animals, wildlife ecologist Craig Downer and children's author Terri Farley also claimed in their suit that shipping horses removed from the range to long-term holding corrals in the Midwest is not permitted under the Wild Horse and Burro Act.
But Friedman said the plaintiffs failed to show how sending the horses to other facilities would cause harm to themselves. Read More
Here’s an update on the lawsuit that was attempting to stop BLM from being able to manage the feral horse population in Nevada. Feral horse numbers are greatly exceeding the capacity of the rangeland to accommodate them. Nobody wants to completely eliminate them, however, like all animal species their population needs to be managed. If we don’t do it then disease or starvation will do it for us. ~Troy
2 comments:
For Heaven's sake! NO ONE was trying to prevent the BLM from managing the wild horses! How about not commenting on an issue unless you know SOMETHING about it?
The suit was to postpone a deep winter roundup in Nevada for fear many horses would be injured. And there were. Some because of the helicopter chase, and more are perishing almost every day at the holding facilities in Fallon. So far the count is over 100, if you count the foals that were aborted because of intense stress of the mares. Injured horses get little to nothing in the way of vet care. They have one vet and 2,000 horses.
The lawsuit also declared that the BLM's warehousing the horses off their (supposedly) protected native ranges is illegal. The judge actually agreed with that, but dismissed on a technicality.
Do NOT think this isn't coming right back. The BLM could save tax payers millions of dollars by using on the range management. But the special interests want the horses GONE so they can run more cattle - at tax payer's expense - and dig more mines, etc.
The horses were guaranteed certain lands in the 1971 Wild Horse Act. They've already been stripped of over 20 MILLION acres that were guaranteed to them, and the BLM is busy gathering up the rest.
This has nothing whatever to do with Ag, animal rights activists - who are conspicuous in their absence - doing away with all ranching or anything else except to give the horses they are legally supposed to have.
The horses are not feral and they are not overrunning anything. There is no overpopulation among the few remaining wild horses (less than 20,000), but there is an overpopulation of private ranchers' cattle (in the millions) that we, the US taxpayers, are subsidizing on our public lands to the tune of $123 MILLION taxpayer $$ per year...and who benefits from this? Private corporate ranchers--already millionaires themselves. Everyone knows the BLM is and always has been run by ranchers, and now with Salazar in power (though maybe not for much longer), the BLM is on a free-wheeling joy ride. Something is very wrong with this picture and it's not the wild horses!
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