BLM Releases Wild Horse Vet Report On Same Day of Judicial Spanking

Straight from the Horse's Heart

OpEd by R.T. Fitch ~ Author/President of Wild Horse Freedom Federation

“You Think There Was Something Behind the Timing?”

Pilot in question at BLM Antelope Complex Stampede earlier this year ~ photo by Terry Fitch

On Friday August the 26th, Laura Leigh, VP of  Wild Horse Freedom Federation, filed in a Reno Nevada Court for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the BLM and their contractors in an effort to stop the well documented inhumane and cruel treatment of stampeded wild horses at their Triple B helicopter stampede in eastern Nevada.  Centerpiece of the complaint was the abusive piloting of a contract helicopter that actually struck a horse with it’s skids and was, obviously, operating dangerously close to not only the animal but the ground based contract workers.

A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, August 30th before U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben where the honorable judge was taken aback by Ms. Leigh’s comprehensive footage and granted a TRO against the helicopter pilot’s actions while admonishing the activity to be cruel and inhumane.  Meanwhile, on the same day that the BLM was being spanked by the judge the agency quietly released a slanted report that had been in the making since June.  The report, generated by the notorious  American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP), stated that the handling of wild horses by the BLM was generally not inhumane and although there were about a dozen recommendations for improvement the one that stood out front and center was that helicopters should keep their distance from the horses they were harassing…you think the timing of this report’s release was a coincidence, I think not.

 

Any equine related report or documentation issued by the AAEP is instantly suspect when you consider that the AAEP has gone on record stating that horse slaughter is not inhumane outside of the stress that a horse may feel when smelling blood prior to its own gruesome demise for the sake of selling tainted horse-flesh to elite foreign consumers.

 

Likewise, the BLM would never consider hiring any independent agency to audit it’s actions if it thought for one moment that there was even the remotest possibility that an overall negative consensus would be brought forward.  But the small reference to helicopters keeping their distance, come on, when was that plugged into the pamphlet?  The report date says August 2011, could there have been a rush and/or an edit to add this one little caveat over the weekend to ensure that helicopter safety was addressed so that it could mask or defuse a negative ruling by the judge on Tuesday, give me a break, of course the possibility exists.

 

What a shame, what a blatant attempt to bury the truth and preempt an explosive ruling that has the potential to ground 50% of the BLM’s contract helicopter hot shots.  This is government corruption at it’s finest; fine tuned and slippery as an eel…it makes you want to lose your lunch.

 

Our Laura Leigh gave an excellent rebuttal to the report’s findings in a recent article in “the Horse” and I echo her most extreme and heartfelt concerns; the BLM is trying to hide from not only the general public but from a federal judge, also.  To date, the BLM’s top PR honcho, Tom Gorey, has not replied to repeated inquires from the media regarding Judge McKibben’s ruling, instead he issued a sickening sweet press release, on Sept 1st, praising the biased report and stating how much the BLM  cares about the safety and well-being of our wild horses and burros.  Give me a break, if there is a way to do something wrong and/or in the most expensive fashion possible the BLM will do it.  Doing the right thing and following the spirit of the law has never been in the vocabulary of the BLM and they have proved that this week with their mismanagement of their judicial slap down and failure to be both transparent and honest.  If the BLM management had the education and smarts to actually aquire real jobs in the private sector they would not only be fired for their actions but would most likely find themselves sitting in a courtroom answering to viable and legitimate charges…instead, you the American public pay them for this brand of sordid behavior.

 

The BLM has made a dangerous mistake in underestimating the tenacity and rock solid moral fortitude of the American public and the wild horse advocacy, overall…in a nutshell, we are NOT going away.  So they can play their devious shell games and attempt to hide behind their ever-changing self-generated rules for the harder they attempt to trick and deceive the harder we will hammer them in the last and final stand for our wild equines; in the courts of the United States of America.

 

Allow me to put it like this: “Let Freedom Ring!!!”