Raul Grijalva For Interior Secretary

Tell President Obama: Appoint Raul Grijalva US Interior Secretary

A Champion For Our Public Lands. Protecting Our National Treasures. A Bold Leader.

For Secretary of Interior, the choice is clear. President Obama should appoint Rep. Raul Grijalva. He’s a bold leader and a champion of our public lands who will protect our natural treasures, including American wild horses and burros, for generations to come.

Dear President Obama,

Your choice for the next Secretary of the Interior will determine the future of our public lands and their natural resources, including wild horses and burros.The individual you appoint must reflect the ideals that you campaigned upon and that so many of us supported.

The person best qualified to represent these ideals and move the Interior Department forward is Rep. Raul Grijalva, Congressman from Arizona’s Third Congressional District.

Rep. Grijalva has spent his entire career standing up to special interests and for American taxpayers and the preservation of our natural resources. As the top Democrat on the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands since 2007, he has been an outspoken advocate for conservation. He has also been a leader in the fight to reform the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) costly and inhumane wild horse and burro program.

As Interior Secretary, Rep. Grijalva will hold the BLM accountable, and he will stop the government giveaway of public resources to commercial interests that exploit our public lands.

Please nominate Rep. Raul Grijalva as the 51st Secretary of the Interior. He is clearly the best choice to protect and preserve our public lands and our natural heritage, including America’s treasured wild horses and burros.

Sincerely,

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PLEASE ClICK HERE TO SIGN PETITION

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Petition credit given to: www.wildhorsepreservation.org

Posted in: Wolf Wars, Howling For Justice

Tags: Wild Horse Preservation dot org, Appoint Raul Grijalva, Secretary of the Interior, biodiversity, gray wolves, wild horses, President Obama

Be Vigilant For Wolves, Remember The Burns Amendment…..

UPDATE:

December 10, 2010

No anti-wolf bill has passed the House or Senate BUT do not be complacent because the  haters are tireless and will not stop, so we can’t either. Please contact your Senators, Representatives, Salazar and the President every day if possible. Keep up the pressure!! 

They may try a sneak attack, like the trick former Senator Conrad Burns pulled  at Christmas time 2004, amending the “1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act” when nobody was looking.

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Here’s the story behind the “Burn’s Amendment” and why Congress could try something like this with wolves.

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Galloping Scared

by Kurt Brungardt

November 2006

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/11/wildhorses200611

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Wild Horse and Burro Act Gutted
Conrad Burns of Montana adds Rider to Appropriations Bill

December 2004

The rider amends the criminal provisions of the Wild Horse and Burro Act, which makes it a crime to process or permit to be processed into commercial products the remains of a wild horse or burro, to exempt horses bought pursuant to the new “horse sale” program.

 

The rider adds a new sub-section to the Act, creating a “horse sale” requirement that mandates that BLM sell “at local sale years or other convenient livestock selling facilities” all wild horses, “without limitation” — i.e., no adoption program, etc. that are either over 10 years old, or who have been put up for adoption 3 times. BLM is required to continue to sell these horses until all “excess animals” are sold, or it attains the appropriate management level in all wild horse areas.

 

Read The Rider: (Burns Amendment)

 Sec.142.SALE of Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros (4) In General—Section 3 of Public Law 92–195(15 U.S.C. 1333) is amended—

(1) in subsection (d)(5), by striking “this section” and all that follows through the period at the end and inserting “this section” and (2) by adding at the end the following:“

 (e) SALE OF EXCESS ANIMALS.—……(4) EFFECT OF SALE—Any excess animal sold under this provision shall no longer be considered to be a wild free-roaming horse or burro for purposes of this Act“

(1) In General.—Any excess animal or the remains of an excess animal shall be sold if —

“(A) the excess animal is more than 10 years of age: or “(B) the excess animal has been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least 3 times.

(2) METHOD OF SALE.—An excess animal that meets either of the criteria in paragraph (1) shall be made available for sale without limitation including through auction to the highest bidder, at local sale yards or other convenient livestock selling facilities, until such time as — “(A) all excess animals offered for sale are sold: or “(B) the appropriate management level, as determined by the Secretary; is attained in all areas occupied by wild free-roaming horses and burros.

http://www.hawkline.com/mustangs/slaughter.html

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The Story Behind the Burns Amendment

http://www.wildhorsepreservation.com/resources/burns_story.html

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Congress could try something like this again. Be vigilant!

Top Wolf Photo: Courtesy Monty Sloan, Wolf Park 

Bottom Wolf Photo: Courtesy kewlwallpapers.com

Horse Photo: Courtesy Pryor Mountain Mustangs

Posted in: Wolf Wars

Tags: Burns Amendment, wild horses, sneak attack on the ESA, gray wolves in peril, anti-wolf bills piling up, scapegoat

 

Manifest Destiny and Ken Salazar

I recently stumbled across Barbara Clarke’s blog, she operates Dreamcatcher, a wild horse sanctuary. Her excellent post speaks about Ken Salazar and his attitude toward wolves, wild horses and other wildlife. I thought it was worthy to repost her take on why the Secretary of the Interior, who is charged with the care of our wild lands and the animals who inhabit them, is practicing the opposite of good stewardship.

It was Ken Salazar, a fifth generation rancher, appointed by the Obama administration, that delisted the gray wolf in the Northern Rockies, which caused the death of hundreds of wolves in state sponsored wolf hunts. Over five hundred wolves died in the Northern Rockies in 2009 and more brutal hunts are planned if Judge Molloy doesn’t relist them.

It’s Ken Salazar who is directing BLM to round-up our mustangs, chasing them with helicopters in the blazing heat, literally frightening some of them to death, than squeezing them into holding pens (horse jail). Why is this being done?  Barbara Clarke answers that question.

Salazar’s Manifest Destiny

by Barbara Clarke

February 8, 2010

“In a recent documentary about the problems involved with the reintroduction of the nearly extinct Mexican wolf, a rancher was quoted as saying “we don’t want them”. No science. No statistics. No reason or clear argument. Just “we don’t want them”.

That statement is the crux of the whole problem facing animals in the west today and the basis for Ken Salazar’s opinions as to how to manage the dwindling herds of wild horses. The ranching community still believes in the notion of manifest destiny: the right to claim the west for human endeavors.

And this is no small notion. For Salazar, a product of five generations of ranching, the belief that the west belongs to ranchers and by extension cattle, is deep and pervasive. For over one hundred fifty years the livestock industry, by sweat and blood, has clawed its way across the continent in search of the ever needed forage for hungry cattle and sheep. This neo-exploration was and still is backed by the government through subsidies and ridiculously low grazing fees.

And even though the prairies and rangelands had once supported millions of grazing wildlife including buffalo and mustangs, by the beginning of the twentieth century the once lush rangeland west of the Mississippi had been reduced to stubble, with native grasses obliterated and alarming damage done to waterways.

Anything and anyone that threatened this quest for manifest destiny or was seen as competitors for forage, was soon eliminated. Native Americans were pushed off of ancestral lands and whole species were slaughtered in the name of protecting livestock and grazing. Wolves, coyotes, eagles, bears, ground squirrels and wild horses all found themselves in the cross-hairs of powerful weapons with the full support of our nation’s leaders.

The American government wanted the west. The ranchers gave it to them. And in no small way this has made cattle and all the issues surrounding them, politically untouchable.

So it is no surprise that with the appointment of a fifth generation rancher to head the Department of the Interior, the president, who espouses change – but is granting a $26 million dollar increase in budget for Salazar to remove horses – has opened the door to an increase in the agonies that accompany manifest destiny. Wolves, coyotes, ground squirrels and wild horses are fighting for their very lives.

Wild horses, which have a clear fossil and DNA linage to our continent, are being pushed off of lands set aside for them by congress in unprecedented numbers in the dubious name of saving them from starvation or protecting eco-systems. Yet observers at roundups continue to see healthy horses being captured, thriving rangeland and most notably, no decrease in the number of cattle allowed to graze the same supposedly sensitive areas.

This rush to sweep the wild horses off the rangeland has the full support of Salazar. And why not? When he looks at the mustang, he sees them through a hundred and fifty year lens of ranching. Wild horses are competitors for forage, inhabit areas wanted for mining, the powerfully backed Ruby Pipeline and California Heliostat projects, and do not generate hunting fees. So Salazar wants them removed. But not only removed, he wants them transplanted back east……somewhere, on pseudo-sanctuaries, at a cost of $96 million dollars, where he believes people will actually pay to watch once wild horses eat grass all day.

His plan, therefore, to move them to areas in the east, is not surprising, nor is his revisionist view of wild horse history. It is the final chapter in the long saga of claiming the west. Soon the horses, like the buffalo and the wolf and so many other beings, will be mere shadows of the species they once were. And our president, and his appointees, can go down in history as those who stole the magnificence of the west from our children.”

http://dreamcatcher.typepad.com/my_weblog/

Photo: Manifest Destiny Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Posted in: Wolf Wars, biodiversity

Tags: Ken Salazar, gray wolves, wild horses, Manifest Destiny