Media Contacts:
Anne Novak
Tel: 415-531-8454
Makendra Silverman
Tel: 719-351-8187
For Immediate Release
Renewed Motion Filed to Stop Rock Creek Wild Horse Roundup in NV
Herd Watch Director Continues Fight for First Amendment Rights
Reno NV (July 23, 2010)—Laura Leigh,
Herd-Watch Director for the Cloud Foundation and journalist, filed a
Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) in Nevada Federal District Court today to halt the Rock Creek Roundup and prevent a repeat fatal summer roundup and the shutting out of the public and plaintiff from observing wild horse roundups.
Nevada,
“We’re talking about a matter of public interest,” explained Leigh’s attorney Gordon Cowan. “This is a hot button issue here in Nevada. To prevent the public and press from observing the government in action on public lands is shameful.”
Leigh is asking the court for the following:
1.) Immediate cessation of all horse gather activity in the Rock Creek and
Little Humboldt Horse Management Areas in northwestern Elko County, to
maintain the status quo until the matter may be heard by the court. There
is no purported emergency or pressing urgency to remove horses from
purported drought conditions as was contended by Defendants, in
Owyhee:
2.) A Temporary Restraining Order enjoining the government Defendants
from conducting helicopter wild horse gathers during summer months and
so close to the foaling season. There are many foals three months in age
or less, running alongside the hips of their moms. If removal of some of
these horses is necessary, in that event the Defendants can reschedule
and complete this process in the Fall season or at the end of Summer
when temperatures are more mild and foals are more mature and better
adept at withstand the gather. To gather at this date is inhumane and
directly contradictory to provisions of the Free Roaming Wild Horse and
Burro Act of 1971;
3.) A Temporary Restraining Order that at this point requires the Defendants in no uncertain terms to include and accommodate members of the public, the press and journalists including Ms. Leigh and others who are not hand-picked by the Defendants, to view every step of the process of
gathering horses from public lands, such that the Defendants’ gather
method and process becomes open and transparent from beginning to
end, rather than secretive and hidden from the public as it is currently; and
such that the method of protecting the health and safety of the public
during these gathers is not used as the excuse to restrict, limit or
otherwise offend First Amendment speech and press concerns but
instead, ensures independence in observing and reporting the
Defendants’ gather activities in a method encouraging liberal access and
safe accommodation to the public including Ms. Leigh, to observe and
record these gathers;
4.) To require the Defendants to conduct such gathers on public lands should private land owners not be willing or able to accommodate members of the public, the press, journalists or other interested persons including Ms. Leigh, in their observation of these gathers.
In his decision issued on July 16, Nevada District court Judge Larry Hicks recognized that the Owyhee complex roundups consist of three distinct and separate actions. Although BLM presented to the court claims that an unexpected and unprecedented emergency existed in the Owyhee herd management area, no emergency either claimed or proven exists in Rock Creek were BLM is currently rounding up horses. The public was permitted to observe the roundup for a short time only today.
“We hope the TRO will be granted and the case can be heard before all the horses are gone from Rock Creek and Little Humboldt herd management areas,” stated Leigh.
According to the TRO the BLM used the “private property” tactic to strike fear among those seeking to observe the Defendants’ gather operation. Members of the public were threatened with immediate, on-the-spot arrest should they “trespass,” intentionally or not, onto the very land the Defendants chose to set their horse traps to complete the
Owyhee gather.
Nearly two-dozen wild horses, including many foals, have already died as a result of the BLM’s Tuscarora roundups from which the agency plans to remove 1,100 wild horses and leave only 440.
Contrary to the BLM’s spin that the Owyhee horses were dying due to lack of water in their environment—a so called “emergency”, veterinarian Nina Windand goes on the record to explain the wild horses died due to the lack of proper care after being rounded up and stressed in desert heat.
“The lack of controlled reintroduction of water to these dehydrated, overheated recently stressed horses and the failure to use commonsense horsemanship by letting them drink ad lib under these conditioned caused unnecessary deaths by water intoxication,” states Nina Windand, DVM. “It is my opinion that this constitutes negligent management and that had expert or even common sense management prevailed a plan for gradual rehydration would have been instituted before the gather was in progress, not after the initial wave of deaths. I further believe that leaving animals in this condition without overnight monitoring was a lapse of professional judgment.”
Dr. Windand condemns the
Owyhee roundup saying, “The uncontroverted fact remains that nearly
all horses who reportedly perished, did so during the process of gather itself or immediately thereafter while the horses were in the custody of the BLM, but not before”.
BLM continues to ignore both the public’s first amendment rights and wild horse welfare. Advocates are outraged that BLM continues forward, at rapid speed, with their multi-million dollar roundups as the agency strives to remove more than 6,000 wild horses and burros in the next three months.
# # #
Links of interest:
Judge’s motion for response Monday: http://bit.ly/July23order
All court documents filed today: http://bit.ly/July23LLvSalazar
George Knapp/KLAS reports & helicopter ride w/ Leigh: http://bit.ly/iteamOwyhee
George Knapp’s column on BLM secrecy: http://bit.ly/GKnapp
CNN Tuscarora/Ruby Pipeline Coverage: http://bit.ly/CNNnvmustangs
BLM daily reports on Tuscarora roundups: http://bit.ly/Tuscarora
Court Order Granting Injunction 7/14 http://bit.ly/doc10LeighvSalazar
‘Herd-Watch: Public Eyes for Public Horses’ http://bit.ly/9Wvh58
Restraining order sought – AP article http://bit.ly/TROsought
Tuscarora Mustangs fenced out of water http://bit.ly/Livestockfences
Roundup Schedule- updated July 12, 2010 http://bit.ly/roundupschedule
Disappointment Valley… A Modern Day Western Trailer- excellent sample of interviews regarding the issues http://bit.ly/awFbwm
Fact Sheet on Wild Herds & The Salazar Plan http://bit.ly/bfdX1y
Wild Horse and Burro Act http://bit.ly/a7hOeS
Photos, video and interviews available from:
The Cloud Foundation ~ Makendra@TheCloudFoundation.org
The Cloud Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to the preservation and protection of wild horses and burros on our Western public lands with a focus on protecting Cloud’s herd in the Pryor Mountains of Montana.
107 S. 7th St. – Colorado Springs, CO 80905 – 719-633-3842- www.thecloudfoundation.org
New York, NY (October 15, 2010)—A New York Federal District Court Judge will consider a request on October 20 to stop the federal government’s roundup and removal of Colorado’s North Piceance wild horse herd. Second-string contractors, hired by the BLM, already have killed one mare who attempted to escape with her baby. They roped her, choked her down, kicked her and then dragged her into the trailer. Yesterday the mare was shot. An application for a Temporary Restraining Order/Preliminary Injunction was filed yesterday by the plaintiffs, Habitat for Horses, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), The Cloud Foundation, Toni and Don Moore, DVM in order to stop the roundup. This legal action is co-funded by Habitat for Horses Advisory Council and the ASPCA. 
Straight from the horses heart
The PPJ Gazette 
