By Staci-lee Sherwood
Wild horses don’t need birth control… but we humans sure do. For a prime example of a species that is vastly over-populated, decimates the land, rapidly depletes natural resources, we need look no further than our own species. In truth, we are the only species that falls into this category. We know deep down there are too many people for the natural resources to support, but we ignore this truth — choosing instead to find others to blame for the extinguishing of life on this planet.
Warning signs have been there for decades, yet we persist in our over-breeding and over-using of what nature provides. We knew back in the ’70s we were polluting our own drinking water — knowing it could never be cleaned up, driving countless species to the brink and sometimes over the edge of extinction. This did not deter us and at times seemed to propel us as a country to go even further down the rabbit hole.
For many, ego forbids them from admitting they have failed. This is particularly true when it comes to wildlife. Somehow we got it into our heads that our own species did not need managing, but every other species does. The mindset that fosters this type of skewed vision of the world, and perverts our relationship with nature, is killing us and everything around us. We are part of nature; it’s not something we go visit. This disconnect is how we find ourselves at a point where it’s accepted policy to kill wolf pups nursing in a den, contaminate our own food and water, and remove native wild horses from their native range — and then shoot them up with experimental birth control drugs.
How did we ever get to this point of insanity?
Taxpayer funding for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Wild Horse & Burro Program (WH&B) commands an annual budget of over $150 million. That’s serious funding… some might say, the kind that invites theft, fraud, and corruption. A budget like this is impossible to keep track of, and perhaps that is by design. Some consider the BLM one of the most corrupt agencies in the entire Federal Government. That’s quite an achievement, considering the stiff competition in the corruption racket with such notables like Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration, thought to be a close second.
But let’s talk about using possibly dangerous birth control methods on wild horses.
The use of birth control as a bargaining chip is a failed argument.
Many horse advocacy groups fall back on the excuse of saying the fertility program is a bargaining tool. Back in 2017 many advocates and supporters thought these nonprofits — Humane Society (HSUS), Return to Freedom (RTF), American Society for Prevention of Cruelty Animals (ASPCA) — were going to champion the issues of wild horses and burros and elevate their plight to the level of urgent importance it always was.
They failed miserably, yet cling to the tired myth that birth control will end roundups. This lie was sold to the public and financial supporters of these nonprofits and other advocate groups that jumped on the bandwagon. Anyone who has worked with the BLM or even just observes their actions know there is virtually nothing that will stop the roundups. Supporting the use of birth control accepts the narrative pushed by ranchers and energy companies via the mouths of the government.
The use of birth control go hand in hand with the ‘Path forward’ agenda that leads to extinction.
Never mind what was hoped for during negotiations between the chosen stakeholders back in 2017. The list of the participants reads like a Who’s Who in the ranching/energy sectors, and is void of any genuine horse and burro advocates. HSUS has a long history of fraud; ASPCA hasn’t done much for wildlife in decades. The only nonprofit specifically representing wild horses was RTF who has since back peddled, with claims they didn’t know that the government would just do their own thing. The American Mustang Foundation is a front for energy interests.
The ‘Path Forward’ set the tone for the unscientific basis of using AML’s to determine how many horses get to stay in a particular area. The aml stands for average monthly level which in laymen’s term means number of horses and burros. This number was concocted between ranchers and the BLM to see how few horses they can get away with leaving on the range so it doesn’t look completely wiped out all at once. The plan in 2017 was to take a few years slowly increasing the numbers of horses and burros removed in each roundup while increasing the use of toxic birth control drugs, knowing eventually it would lead to birth defects and sterility. That is the true intent of the ‘Path forward’ and it’s working.
“The Equid Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission recommends minimum populations of 2,500 individuals for the conservation of genetic diversity. Currently, no single herd management area on public lands has a minimal viable population for the long term.” Click here to read the full article : https://friendsofanimals.org/news/what-pzp-pushers-dont-want-you-to-know/?fbclid=IwAR2xnAVOF6SDtVzV_Jb8q8KY5GQfhFG5ku639vGqOOmbgufIwepUdBzPNzc
A lengthy 2013 report by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences, “Using Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program: A Way Forward” had two key findings of interest and the full report is here: https://www.nap.edu/read/13511/chapter/4#33
“…the statistics on the national population size cannot be considered scientifically rigorous…”
“How AML’s are established, monitored, and adjusted is not transparent to stakeholders, supported by scientific information, or amendable to adaptation with new information and environmental and social change.”
If you thought peer reviewed scientific research using verified independent sources were conducting the experiments, that is not the case. In 2017 a GAO report noted that no studies have been conducted separating out the impacts to range lands from wild horses and cattle; US Government Accountability Office Report, Animal Welfare: 2017 “Information on the US Horse.”
Gonacon comes with a lot of serious warnings how safe can it really be? The loudest of the horse nonprofits – American Wild Horse Campaign (AWHC) and RTF have been pushing using PZP as a way to stop the roundups and save our horses. They only push the PZP which HSUS owns the patent to and was originally designed for female White-tailed deer, not horses. They seem to be tone deaf when asked about Gonacon usage. In my conversation with Jenny Lesieutre, BLM WHB Nevada public relations officer told me in our phone conversation that they “have been using Gonacon for two years but haven’t gotten around to putting out the press release to the public.” Ask most people they are unaware it’s being used or to what extent. Lesieutre also said if Gonacon hits the gut of the mare instead of the rear it can be deadly.
On the label for Gonacon, it lists mammalian gonadotropin releasing hormone as 0.03% and ‘Other ingredients’ as 99.97%. What exactly would the ‘other’ ingredients be?
We know our federal agencies Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been hijacked, seemingly willingly, by corporate interests. They have zero credibility when they approve a chemical, drug or product. In fact the EPA and FDA are little more than huge bureaucratic filing systems for some of the most deadly chemicals ever put into our food, water and drugs. We need not look any further than our history with asbestos, Roundup and Oxycontin to see how ineffective our so called watchdog agencies are.
The USDA’s involvement with making Gonacon seems all the proof one needs to know this is not a genuine birth control drug but a sterility drug in disguise. More disturbing are the experiments going on wild horses at Teddy Roosevelt National Park (TRNP). Their once genetically diverse herd is now inbred with health problems. Their long term survival is in question. This is most likely due to the use of birth control that has destroyed the horses own ability to pick a genetically viable mate.
At the Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Fertility Control Workshop, held on November 8, 2018 in Albuquerque, NM., experiments on wild horses at Teddy Roosevelt National Park was discussed, with enlightening and disturbing kernels of truth mostly kept from the public.
“Through our research, all of which has been shared on our Facebook page and is being continually updated on our website, showed us that the ‘research’ being done in TRNP was being done for reasons beyond the horses in TRNP. The plan was always to continue to experiment on our horses until they were able to find the right dosage of GonaCon that would permanently sterilize mares. Once they found that dosage, they could take that, along with the new remote darting system that the TRNP horses were also subjected to experimentation on, out west to sterilize mares out on the range.“
At the same conference that Dr. Dan Baker proudly spoke at, Dr. Jenny Powers also spoke proudly about this remote darting system being developed to use on the wild horses on the western range. Links to both videos can be found on this website: https://chwha.org/library/
Gonacon products are classified by EPA as restricted-use pesticides. Since these products are restricted-use; all users must be certified pesticide applicators or be under the supervision of a certified pesticide applicator. ‘’Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment for the Use of Wildlife Damage Management Methods by USDA-APHIS-Wildlife Services Chapter XI The Use of GonaCon in Wildlife Damage Management August 2017.” We know this is not the case at the BLM; they use veterinarians, which are not the same. We have many studies of the dangers human birth control pills do, when they get released into the water and the damage they do to aquatic life. Is Gonacon more dangerous?
If one needs to wear protective gear when administering this to a living creature… how safe is it really?
To learn more about these issues, please visit my website, RealityChecksWithStaciLee.com