Lone Female Equine Observer in Fear of Life in Desert
Reno, NV (Cloud)—Laura Leigh, Director of Herd Watch, a Cloud Foundation program, has been monitoring a hidden roundup occurring this week at the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge—notorious for hiding their activities from the public. Historically horses from Sheldon, in northwestern Nevada, have been extremely vulnerable to the slaughter pipeline and have been unaccounted for on many occasions. Herd Watch has learned that Sheldon horses have been subjected to experimental procedures such as vasectomies and hysterectomies done in the field so they still look like normal horses only they have been sterilized. Advocates are outraged. The roundup run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), United States FIsh and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Cattoor Livestock, is happening without any public notification or provisions for observation.
“I walked over a ridge and began to see horse bones,” explains Leslie Peeples, operating in Sheldon on a tip from Leigh, “The bone trail became more abundant and led me to a large pit that had been recently covered up near another one freshly dug up. I photographed what I observed there.”
Peeples continued onward to view more than 250 wild horses alive in a temporary holding facility out of the 400 intend to secretly gather.
“When I got back into my car I was chased from the area by the roundup contractor’s helicopter that came within 20-30 feet of my car,” Peeples states. “I was afraid for my life.”
On Friday, Sept 24th Leigh filed for injunctive relief in connection with her lawsuit, supported by Grass Roots Horse, in Reno federal district court. She asks for the cessation of all activities associated with the clandestine protocols surrounding wild horse roundups and asks for documentation to be made public about all facets of wild horse and burro management under the Department of Interior. Leigh also asks that all private facilities be open to the public, including long-term warehousing where public horses are currently stockpiled and off-limits to public view with their ultimate bulk sale receipts to alleged kill-buyers kept hidden.
As a result of the 2004 Burns Ammendment, BLM now has the legal right to partake in unlimited sales of wild horses to alleged kill-buyers as well as mass euthanasia.
The Sheldon incident and all of it’s details including photographs, experimental vasectomy and hysterectomy accounts, and statements have been added to Leigh’s motion in order to illustrate the extraordinary efforts made to hide roundup activities by privately contracted individuals paid for by tax dollars.
“This iron curtain of secrecy must end now,” states Leigh. “Without transparency, democracy fails.”
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