HORSE ADVOCATES ASK FOR HALT TO ROUNDUP!

In today's newspaper (Reno Gazette- 8/7/2010), I read an article and I am putting it on this post for all of you to enjoy. Horse protectors advocates on Friday asked a U.S. appeals court for an emergency order blocking the government's biggest roundup of the year of thousands of free-roaming mustangs in California and Nevada." Yay Horse protectors!,"Despite an accompanying plea from dozens of Congress members, Interior Department officials said they didn't intend to suspend the roundup of more than 2,000 mustangs before it was scheduled to begin on Monday on both sides of the state line about 120 miles northwest of Reno. The department's BLM announced later Friday the roundup across nearly 800,000 acres of BLM land in the Twin Peaks Horse Management area. would be delayed most likely until Wednesday but said that was due to helicopter maintenance, not the legal challenge.
Lawyers for the San Francisco Bay Area-based In Defence of Animals and others filed the motion for an emergency stay with with 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco a day after a federal judge in Sacramento had refused to issue a temporary injunction halting the roundup. The motion filed in San Fransisco said the BLM's environmental assessment of the planned roundup failed to provide the data it relied upon to conclude springs and creeks in the area are "currently damaged and in a state of decline and that this damage is recent and is primarily caused by the wild horses and burros, rather than by livestock".
"This emergency stay aims to stop the agency's mass and illegal removal of federally protected mustangs from the range to serve the livestock industry and other commercial interests that exploit our public lands," said Stuart Gross, the Sacramento based legal attorney for the horse advocates.
A panel of judges began to review the request Friday afternoon, said Rachael Fazio, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, but most likely will give the Interior Department's lawyers an opportunity to formally respond to the request before making any decisions.
"We know they have filed for appeal but at this time there is no stay so there it is our intention to proceed." BLM spokeswomen Jan Bedrosain said. She confirmed that a BLM contractor indicated he needed to do maintenance work on a helicopter "so it looks like we will probably start on Wednesday as opposed to Monday".
Nancy Haug, BLM district Manager based in Susanville, California, said earlier this week that the horses in the Twin Peaks HMA are healthy and water remains available.
The agency says that such gathers are necessary to thin overpopulated herds causing ecological damage to the range land that serves as critical habitat for numerous species across much of the west, including Sage Grouse.
But critics said there has been no discussion or consideration of removing some of the 10,000 plus cattle and sheep currently grazing on the Twin Peaks HMA.