AR-News: Don't You Care About Wild Horses? (US)

[p.a.wood at juno.com]

PLEASE HELP - Only about 80 messages have been received by the Army for
this Environmental Assessment - we need them to receive at least 1000
messages.
Please cross-post widely.

The deadline has been extended to May 20th to

S A V E    T H E    L O U I S I A N A    W I L D    H O R S E S

At least PLEASE tell the Army that you believe wild horses are a symbol
of freedom and the free spirit, and that it is important to Americans to
know that such horses are protected from harm and allowed to remain on
the land, especially the hundreds of horses that roam freely today in the
Kisatchie National Forest of Louisiana..

Send your e-mail to <horses at polk.army.mil> with the subject line:
Kisatchie Free-Roaming Horses Environmental Assessment. 

For more about what all concerned people can do see "What You Need To Do"
below.

(Formerly, the commanding general at Ft. Polk (Kisatchie National Forest)
expressed a strong desire to keep allowing the wild horses to roam freely
on their training areas in the forest, but the Louisiana Commissioner of
Agriculture (the ogre in this) continues to pester the Army to remove
them. The Army feels they should comply. Please read-on, but at least
make contact with the Army so they can count how many people are
concerned about the wild horses.)

THE REASON ACTION ON YOUR PART IS NEEDED

Hundreds of wild, free-roaming horses roam the piney woodlands of the
Kisatchie National Forest in wild-horse bands. 129 horses have been
counted in one large grouping (made up of several bands together). The
Ft. Polk Military Reservation is located within the Kisatchie N.F. area,
and the U.S. Army uses other parts (two predominantly) of the National
Forest for training exercises and weapons firing. An environmental
specialist at Ft. Polk has estimated that within these three areas there
are approximately 350 horses. During exercises, the horses make
themselves scarce. There are other segments of the Kisatchie N.F. in the
region. No one really
knows how many wild horses there are all together. Certainly there must
be several hundreds of them.

The Commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry
(LDAF), Bob Odom, has asked the Army to get rid of the horses, and the
Army feels it should comply with his request, believing it is coming from
the State of Louisiana. Odom is a powerful Louisiana politician having
held his elected office for a very long time. He has proliferated "canned
hunts" (commercial operations where animals are shot within enclosures),
and he has supported cockfighting. He is currently being prosecuted in
federal court for impropriety in contracting the storage of federally
contributed commodities for school children.

Odom's Livestock Sanitary Board established rules with regard to equine
infectious anemia (EIA), a disease of horses and related equine animals,
that are seriously extreme. The rules require that horses that test
positive for exposure to the disease (i.e., having antibodies against the
disease in their blood) must be killed. This has caused great economic
loss for some, and great heartache for others who's much loved pets they
were forced to destroy, including childrens' ponies. Attempts by horse
owners to stand up to the LSB in valiant efforts to save horses have
ended in rude abuse, dishonesty, and humiliation. Most states, not even
Kentucky has such a policy. Kentucky: home of many preciously valuable
race horses.

The chief scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture -
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service - Veterinary Services
(USDA-APHIS-VS), Dr. Tim Cordes (DVM) said that EIA is currently regarded
by him to be a disease of low transmissibility which requires a lot of
exposure between animals to be transmitted. Dr. Cordes produced, along
with Dr. Charles Issel (DVM,PhD) of the University of Kentucky, USDA
documents (including uniform method rules which are recommendations for
states to follow). Professor Issel is a researcher and world-
renowned authority on EIA. He began his research on EIA while at
Louisiana State University. Dr. Issel estimates (and the USDA reports)
that, regardless of any other factors, when horses are separated by a
distance of 200 yards, "the transmission of EIA is broken."

In a seminal paper on EIA, Tim Crawford, DVM and S. Lynn Kittleson, DVM
state: "This irrational fear is a result of many distorted accounts of
the severity and contagiousness of the disease ...". Here's an indication
of the rarety of natural transmission, even in conducive circumstances:
EIA-negative horses that were kept for long periods of time (9 years for
8 of the horses, and 15 years in one case), on a quarantine farm located
next to the Florida Everglades among EIA-positive horses, continued to
test EIA-negative.

Yet Odom, reacting to the hysteria motivated "witch hunt" mentality
within the LSB, has claimed that the Kisatchie wild horses are a
reservoir of EIA infection, and he continues to pester the Army to get
rid of them. Obviously, it is impossible, in any practical sense, for the
wild horses to transmit EIA to owned horses even if it is assumed that
they carry the EIA virus, which may or may not be so. A test conducted a
few years ago of six captured Kisatchie wild horses showed that none of
the six tested positive for EIA exposure. While the scientific inquiry
regarding EIA has necessarily been based upon captive animals, and Dr.
Cordes admits little is known about wild horses with regard to EIA, Dr.
Issel believes that there would be some percentage of EIA-exposed horses
in any population of wild horses. Accordingly, if Odom would have his
way, all wild horses everywhere would have to be gotten rid of. Such a
scenario would be abhorrent to most Americans.

The Fund for Animal has successfully sued the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) over their "carelessness" in the adoption of wild horses (mustangs
from ranges in the West). It appears that the majority of wild horses
that are captured and "adopted" end up at the slaughterhouse in less than
one year. Wild horses are not gentle animals. They may disappoint people
who adopt them with unrealistic expectations. Also, some with criminal
motives "adopt" wild horses to turn a profit at the slaughterhouse. The
Army will make an effort to see that the horses are humanely treated and
adopted. But saying that is one thing and doing it is another. The
capture and handling of wild horses is extremely traumatic for the horses
and results in casualties. The Army did not track the adoptions of the
six horses (and one foal born after capture) that were taken in the test.
They turned them over to a volunteer from a humane organization near Ft.
Polk.

If the Army actually pursues getting rid of the horses as they seem
intent on doing, it will be costly to the government, and distract the
Army from its primary mission in this time of world crisis. The horses
are actually playing a role currently in some training exercises because
they add an "element of realism" to the areas that are supposed to
simulate a "3rd World" setting. If the Army troubles to remove the horses
from their training areas, horses from other areas in the Kisatchie N.F.
will surely be a source of re-population. The Army will have the same
situation to again contend with year after year into the future.

As a result of a settlement in a lawsuit in the U.S. Circuit Court (of
Appeal) the Army is
conducting an Environmental Assessment (EA) regarding the horses. The
first public comment phase ends May 15th. While they say they are
approaching the issue without pre-determining the outcome, they have
already hired a contractor to consider removal of the horses, and the two
public meetings they held were one-way affairs which did not permit
public discussion on the issue. Comment forms to be completed in writing
were handed out. The Army seems to be moving to comply with Odom's
request. Odom has no legitimate authority over the wild horses; no more
than any other citizen of this nation.

The wild horses were labeled "trespass horses" by an attorney at the USDA
who was less than conversant with the issue. While this was contradictory
to the opinion of an Army attorney, the court made it stick. This is an
absurdity. The law in the U.S. Code that protects wild horses defines a
wild horse as any unclaimed and unbranded horse on public lands of the
United States. And, case law has recognized unclaimed and unbranded
horses that join wild horse bands as being wild horses themselves. The
Kisatchie wild horses have been there for generations, and are just as
much wild horses as any in the United States. "Trespass" means they came
onto the land unlawfully. These horses were born on that land (except for
the few that may have joined them in more recent years). They are native
to it.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

1. Write an appeal to save the horses, and send it to the Army at Ft.
Polk at: <horses at polk.army.mil> or Public Affairs Office; Attn: Dan
Nance; 7073 Radio Road; Ft. Polk, LA 7459-5342. If possible, please
include any substantive information that supports the statements or
arguments in your appeal. 

[The Army may respond with non-Odom/EIA related arguments about why the
horses may need to be removed: the horses are in danger (they go away and
hide in times of danger), and the horses get in the way on airfields and
in drop zones, but these were never a serious concern of the Army, except
there has been a bit of concern expressed about horses coming in to eat
grass from re-seeded exercise plots denuded by Army operations with light
cavalry vehicles. Surely there is a way to address this without removing
the horses.]

2. If possible, copy your appeal to the governor of Louisiana: Governor
Kathleen Babineaux Blanco; State Capitol; P.O. Box 94004; Baton Rouge, LA
70804.

3. If applicable, contact your U.S. senator and your congressman. Tell
them you want the Kisatchie wild horses to remain on the lands of the
Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana; you don't want the Army to remove
them at the whim of a mis-guided Louisiana politician; and you want them
afforded the same protection the government grants to any other wild
horses under the Wild, Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act.

Thank you. The horses need your help.

_______________________________________________






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