Fight to Save our Wild Horses Progresses
It’s been a tough month for Wild Horse Advocates, even tougher for the horses. Months of legal planning had been mapped out by the HfH Advisory Council in an effort to stop four, specifically targeted BLM roundups from occurring. Two of those were postponed by a year, one directly due to our efforts. But the other two went forward, one struggle even made it to court. Did we make any progress? Were the horses helped in anyway? To put it mildly; “You bet ya!”
The year delay of the West Douglas stampede happened with very little fanfare and in what appeared to be a blink of an eye, mostly due to the fact that we held off on public notification until the TRO was filed. The intent was to give you the full story and the culmination of our efforts but by the time we issued our press release it was only hours later that the BLM backed away and said that they would reconsider the attack on the horses the following year. We filed our contempt of court paperwork one day, our preliminary injunction order the next day following up with the TRO the next and within hours the BLM stepped back. Was that a win? Once again, “You bet ya!” Even though not ordered by the court the horses of West Douglas certainly gave it a big “hooves up” as they get to live like God intended them to live for at least another year and we have additional time granted to us to better prepare to defend them.
This past Thursday a New York Judge failed to find in our favor for our effort to stop the North Piceance roundup in Colorado. With all of the time, money, blood, sweat and tears spent was it a success for the horses? Once again a resounding; “You bet ya!”
I’ll put it into the whispered terms of a loving women who I held, crying, in my arms upon hearing the news of the court’s denial.
“The horses of North Piceance made a sacrifice that other herds well benefit from,” whispered my wife Terry as we both struggled with tears upon hearing the news, “it’s like a new born foal taking its first steps, one at a time. We took several little legal foal steps that the BLM will never be able to erase.”
And she is right.
Although the horses of the North Piceance herd will now slip away into the BLM’s cloud of mysterious equine disappearances and obscurity their ultimate sacrifice allowed us to win several combative, legal skirmishes against the BLM.
Although it might seem like a very small victory it will prove to be huge in the future and that little foal step was the issue of “venue” or where the suit was filed. We landed this case far from the ranges of the west and right in the middle of Central Park in New York City. Why? We did so in hopes of finding a judge that was fresh, new and untainted by the influence of Ken Salazar’s special interest driven BLM. The BLM wanted out of NYC, badly. They wanted to be either back out west or in a D.C. court where their cronies had more influence but due to the New York based ASPCA being one of our volunteer plaintiffs, the judge let us stay thus setting a precedence for seeking out favorable venues for additional cases in the future. Thank you ASPCA for the win and do you think we will use this in the future, “You bet ya!”
The major win of the case comes from the quiet and sincere Colorado Veterinarian Dr. Don Moore. Dr. Moore was first taken to the North Piceance area to view the horses by his father over forty years ago. Dr. Moore has grown up with those horses and the court agreed that Dr. Moore has suffered irreparable harm by this herd being destroyed. The BLM’s argument was that Dr. Moore could just go somewhere else to see wild horses, what’s the difference? The difference is gigantic and the BLM’s indifference in court outlines their failed understanding of their primary job to protect these horses instead of destroying them. To tell Dr. Moore to go somewhere else to see other wild horses is like telling Ginger Kathrens that she does not need to see Cloud, the wild stallion of the Pryor Mountain herd that she has been following for over a decade and a half. The BLM can simply stampede Cloud and his family into the mystery concentration camps and Ginger can just go somewhere else to see a wild horse. How asinine is that for a defense in federal court? It’s your tax dollars hard at work trying to defend a failed and perverted policy of systematically exterminating all of the publicly owned wild horses on publicly owned land. The court agreed so that from this day forward, it is on the record that for future cases Americans are irreparably damaged and injured by the BLM’s insidious action of cruelly and inhumanely stripping our federally protected wild horses from public lands. Will we use that angle in future cases when attempting to save our wild horses from extinction? “You bet ya!”
Over the last several weeks we have accomplished what our good friend and fellow wild horse crusader Laura Leigh from Grass Roots Horse has said,
“We laid another brick, just one more legal brick in the foundation of the major case to forever stop the BLM from violating local, state and federal laws.”
One brick at a time, one little foal step at a time we move forward and forward we did move.
I am a man driven by a wet tear on the side of my face, a woman softly sobbing in my arms and the soft yet stinging words,
“We didn’t stop the killing of the horses, R.T. The mares, that little foal, we did not save them.”
And for that I bleed, and because of that we stand strong.
For all those who have perished; we will press on to stop the massacre of the mustangs, even if it is only one little foal step at a time.
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