Wild Horses Know No Sanctuary from the BLM

by R.T. Fitch, editor of Straight from the Horse’s Heart 

It didn’t take long; only several weeks ago New Mexico announced plans to purchase 12,000 acres of private land with the intent to turn a portion of the property into a wild horse sanctuary and already the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is attempting to interject itself squarely into the middle of the state’s proposal.

Don Glenn, chief of the BLM’s rogue and dysfunctional Wild Horse and Burro program was quoted in a recent Santa Fe New Mexican article saying:

"We are interested in a partnership with the state if they buy this land."

That single sentence is enough to send cold shivers down the spine of every wild horse advocate in the United States who earlier held great hope for New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s sanctuary plan.  The main point in establishing a state owned wild horse sanctuary was to protect the few remaining NM wild horses from the Obama administration’s BLM "Wild Horse Harvesting Machine."

Across the west the BLM has instigated an unprecedented assault upon  America’s fast disappearing wild horses and burros.  Currently the BLM holds 40,000+ sterilized wild horses in mostly privately owned and undisclosed concentration camps with 12,000 stripped from their rightful homes in 2010 and 11,000 more to lose their freedom and lives in 2011.  The BLM publicly admits that they now hold more wild horses behind corral bars than are allowed to run free on the public land allocated to them by Congress. 

Governor Richardson has noted that once healthy herds of wild horses in New Mexico have been decimated by the BLM down to only a few hundred remaining free souls.  It was thought by many advocates that the action taken by the governor was a prudent step to wrest control of the lives of these horses out of the proven failed program of the BLM and into a protective sanctuary on state land with the assistance of a qualified non-profit organization.  The American public embraced New Mexico’s concept as long as the special interest driven BLM was not involved.  Obviously, the feds have other plans.

What was once a good idea has suddenly taken a turn for the worse with the potential influence of the BLM’s proven junk science coming into play.

"We do have to remove a lot of horses every year," Glenn said. "They’re destroying their own habitat. We do need to find places to put them, let them live out their lives. Some are not adoptable. Some are."

Don Glenn is the same federal official who promised transparency, on camera, to the American public yet the BLM continues to deny public access to view their inhumane roundups and allows contractors with criminal records to dictate trap location/access on public land while attacking the taxpaying free press through legal harassment.

Governor Richardson’s plan called for managing a free and intact herd of wild horse families while Don Glenn’s BLM perspective is to turn the sanctuary into a wild horse death watch as "Glenn said the parcel proposed for the sanctuary would only support a small nonbreeding herd".

The mark of the BLM on the grave of the American wild horse is one of the greatest American crimes of all time.

For more on the plan to save New Mexico’s remaining wild horses and how you can help ensure them a sanctuary…..

Image courtesy of John Holland