(Note: 'Officials' do what they appear to do best: Pass the buck, shift the blame and pretend that the deaths and blood of these horses isn't on their hands.)

July 18, 2003

From Staff & Wire Reports

Elko Daily Free Press

Elko, Nevada  http://www.elkodaily.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: editor@elkodaily.com

Elko, Nevada - Federal agents and Eureka County's sheriff said Thursday that they were trying to determine if any laws were broken when 48 dead horses were dumped on public land near Fish Creek Ranch.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management was investigating who dumped the horses on land managed by BLM, but the nearby rancher has since said he moved the carcasses. That essentially ends the BLM's investigation, spokesman Mike Brown of the Elko office said today, but he wasn't sure if BLM would take any action against the rancher.

The dead horses discovered near Eureka last weekend were likely among the more than 500 the BLM rounded up from Western Shoshone sisters Carrie and Mary Dann of Crescent Valley in February.

The Danns claimed ownership of the horses BLM gathered and sold them to California rancher Slick Gardner, who promised to rescue the horses.

Most of the dead horses were malnourished and some of the youngest apparently had been trampled in a corral, the BLM said.

Investigators have been unable to determine who owned the horses at the time of the deaths, which stretched over two to three months.

"It is still under investigation. It is a confusing issue," Eureka County Sheriff Larry Etter said.

"It's a very unfortunate situation that happened," he said. "One of the questions we're trying to answer is if there is any ordinance or law that we need to enforce."

The leader of a horse rescue group said BLM bears at least part of the responsibility for the deaths because it rounded up some of the horses with helicopters, causing stress to numerous pregnant mares that later aborted their colts.

Brown said the Dann sisters also used a helicopter to round up horses "before the BLM got there," which meant the horses were already getting stressed before the BLM gathering.

The Danns knew the BLM was planning to gather horses off an allotment than spans Crescent and Pine valleys and rounded up as many as they could in advance of the BLM action.

Brown also said BLM shut down the gathering because of the foaling season.

As word spread that BLM was planning the round up, horse rescue groups across the country worked out a plan through the Internet, finding buyers all over the nation for the horses, but that rescue plan was based on a guess that the Danns wouldn't claim ownership.

In that case, ownership would fall to the state after BLM declared them estray horses, but the Danns chose to turn the horses over to Gardner instead.

Among those pointing blame:

€ BLM officials blame Mary and Carrie Dann for illegally grazing the horses on overgrazed range, degrading the land and the health of the horses.

€ Luke Wise, the Nevada rancher who kept some of the horses temporarily for Gardner near Eureka, said they were in bad shape after the roundup and that Gardner refused to feed them enough to help them recover.

€ The Danns blame the BLM for removing the horses from land they say they have a right to graze under the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863.

"To be honest with you, I don't know who's to blame," said Wise, who admitted dumping the horse carcasses on BLM land but does not think he did anything wrong.

"Those horses were starving to death when they came in. All the ribs were showing. You just can't run a pregnant mare 10 or 15 miles and expect her to have a normal colt," he said.

Gardner initially took about 250 of the Danns' horses to his ranch in Buellton, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles and left most of the rest at Fish Creek Ranch with Wise.

"He was only supposed to leave them here for a couple of weeks and that was in March," Wise said. "Then his checks bounced and finally he ended up owing us $3,000 for feed before the Lifesavers got involved."

Gardner said the roundup harmed the horses but that they had "plenty of feed" at Wise's Fish Creek Ranch.

"Everybody can point fingers at whoever they want, but the loser is the horse," Gardner said.

"There's no question in my mind if those horses had been left where they were (on the range) they would have been fine. But the government has to follow the law. So it was really nobody's fault. They just got caught up in a political situation," he said.

Gardner said he's had no involvement with the horses since he transferred ownership to Lifesavers in May.

Jill Starr, head of Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescuers in Lancaster, Calif., said the horses had been dying at Fish Creek since they were taken there in February. She said her group removed the last of 152 horses from the ranch in June.

"The BLM knew this was going on. There's no reason this should surprise anybody. They should have done something when the horses started dying. I find it comical that it's under investigation now," Starr said.

"If the horses weren't already skinny, they were stressed out and depressed and deteriorating because of the fashion the roundup was done," she said.

"And then you put them in a little sardine can of a corral. It would have taken a miracle to keep those horses alive."

Wise said he dumped the horse carcasses on BLM land but didn't think it violated any laws.

"We figured they came off the BLM so we figured that's where they should go back," Wise said.

Wrong, says the BLM.

"They didn't come from BLM. They were horses that were trespassing on public land," BLM spokeswoman Jo Simpson said.

"We gathered them because the horses and the land were in very bad shape. The Danns are responsible for trampling the land. The land was degraded and so was the health of the horses."

BLM had no jurisdiction once the Danns sold the horses to Gardner but was investigating now because the carcasses were dumped on BLM land, Simpson said.

She disputed the charge that a large number of mares gathered were nearing the end of pregnancies. She said the BLM planned the roundup in February before the main foaling season begins in March.

http://www.elkodaily.com/articles/2003/07/18/news/local/news3.txt