Who is the BLM Kidding?

The BLM has just announced that it intends to pay $1.5 million to the National Academy of Sciences for a two-year study that would purportedly determine how best to count, control, collect, and ultimately manage America's wild horses. The agency claims it wants to use "the best science available" in managing wild horses and burros on public lands. Who are they kidding?

How can we possibly take this initiative seriously while the BLM is moving at literally breakneck speed to round up every wild horse it can find? It doesn't want a study, it wants a mandate. I don't buy it, and neither should anyone who truly cares about the future of the wild horses who are still roaming free on their appointed ranges.

The BLM's sudden interest in science is nothing more than an attempt to placate the Inspector General, whose office recently reported that the Department of Interior "has no comprehensive scientific integrity policy." Heck, wild horse advocates could have told them that.

Calls for a comprehensive scientific review are meaningless in the absence of a concurrent agreement to suspend the wild horse roundups pending the results of the investigation. If the BLM is so concerned about the need for an updated evaluation of how it calculates wild horse numbers and determines herd management areas, why is it in such a hurry to grab every horse in sight before such a study is even conducted, much less made available?

But if the National Academy of Sciences is to conduct a review, it should seek the answers to some hard questions. For example. . .

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King, the New York City Carriage Horse, Goes on to Greener Pastures

When Elizabeth Forel heard that the license of the elderly New York City carriage horse, King, would be allowed to expire when it came up for renewal on August 31st, she was concerned. She knew that King was owned by the same operator who had sent another of its carriage horses, "Billy," to the notorious New Holland auction earlier this summer.

The founder of the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages, Ms. Forel had been instrumental in securing Billy's safe passage from slaughter to a safe, permanent home at Equine Advocates, and she hoped that when King was released from service pulling cabs for the West Side Livery, he'd be able to go to a peaceful retirement, rather than find himself in harm's way. Certainly, King had earned it. Through her contacts, Ms. Forel had learned that the big chestnut, believed to be in his mid-20s, had been working seven days a week, without a vacation, for years. What would become of him now?

She had reason to worry. Between 2008 and 2009, 94 carriage horses had vanished from the New York City Department of Health's rolls, their whereabouts unknown.

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Academy Award, one of Secretariat's last surviving sons, dies at Old Friends

Barely seven months after his heralded arrival at Old Friends, the 24-year-old stallion, Academy Award, died peacefully at the Georgetown, Kentucky thoroughbred sanctuary on August 24th, succumbing to laminitis and other infirmities. He was one of the last surviving sons of the great Secretariat.

Academy Award raced with distinction, notching five victories, including the Grade II Early Times Manhattan Handicap on the Belmont turf. He retired with earnings of $226,943.

Affectionately nicknamed, "Oscar," by a member of the Old Friends staff, the diminutive chestnut's retirement had been made possible through the efforts of actress Angie Dickinson and Boston-based TV producer Barbara Bowen, with additional support from Secretariat's owner, Penny Chenery, through the Secretariat Foundation. Prior to his arrival at Old Friends on January 29th of this year, Academy Award had been on the stallion roster at Win Row Farm in Lebanon, Ohio.

Though he had barely settled into his cushy life as a pampered retiree, Academy Award touched the hearts of those who cared for him, and today, they deeply mourn his loss. Barbara Bowen had first met Academy Award in 1994, when she visited Claiborne Farm, where he was then standing at stud. She'd lost track of him in the intervening years, but in the spring of 2009, she happened upon an ad in the Thoroughbred Times, in which the then 23-year-old stallion was being offered for sale for $6000. . .

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