I am writing about the unnecessary death of a wild one-year-old filly in the bait trapping operation currently being conducted in the McCullough Peaks herd near Cody, Wyoming.
I have been visiting and observing and photographing the wild horses in this herd 2 – 3 times per year since 2004. When the BLM’s plans for this bait trapping were announced, I commented against it and encouraged others to do so as well because this is an aging herd, with a significant portion of the horses being over 20 years old, and the likelihood that at least 10 would die over the winter. Since summer, 10 horses have already died this winter, bringing the count to be only 171 wild horses. The herd’s numbers have been successfully kept in check using PZP birth control. And in the BLM’s Environmental Assessment Plan, there was no range data, nothing to show if the horses were causing range degradation, and thus a need for removal.
The time of year is also critical. In the Cody Resource Management Plan, record 4151, it says “apply seasonal restrictions from February 1 to July 31 to prevent foal abandonment or jeopardy of wild horse health and welfare, as appropriate, to surface and disruptive activities in the McCullough Peaks HMA” and record 4154 states, “Avoid wild horse gathers 6-weeks before or 6-weeks after peak foaling season. To the extent possible conduct wild horse gathers in the fall, after peak foaling season has occurred.”
It is now February 1. They should not be capturing any more horses.
Regarding the tragic events of January 24, the BLM captured 10 horses. They were only supposed to remove horses between one year old and five years old. They separated a four-month-old, a five-month-old and two yearlings from their mothers, released the mothers, then left the foals and yearlings alone, unmonitored, overnight, and one of them, a filly named Kat Ballou, was found dead in the morning with an acute head and neck injury. The excuse from the BLM was that they were quiet when BLM staff left. I contend that anyone who knows anything about wild horses or domestic horses knows that what they did was negligent and wrong. These youngsters had never been without their mothers. They had never been penned up in a corral before. This was a dangerous situation to put these young horses in. I own three mustangs myself, one of whom came from McCullough Peaks after the 2009 helicopter roundup, and these horses need to be allowed to become accustomed to being confined in a pen or corral. They can become injured if panicked. I have owned horses for over 50 years.
The lead on this bait trap gather is inexperienced with wild and domestic horses. He made a decision that resulted in the death of one of these horses that did not need to happen. Because BLM staff has not admitted that they have done anything wrong, I am very concerned that there will be more deaths as this bait trapping continues. This ill-conceived and ill-managed bait trapping should be stopped now.
CRAWFORD, N.Y. — A harness racing trainer in upstate New York was accused of striking a horse and fracturing its skull, requiring the animal to be euthanized, authorities said.
Frederick Bourgault, 26, was arraigned Tuesday on two charges in connection with the death of a race horse named Finish Line last July at the Pine Bush Training Facility in Crawford, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of New York City, according to Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler.
Bourgault is accused of striking the horse with an unspecified hard object, causing a skull fracture that resulted in the animal being euthanized, according to a social media post from Hoovler.
Investigators later had the horse exhumed and examined by veterinary experts.
Bourgault was indicted in November on two felony charges, including second-degree criminal mischief. A judge on Tuesday ordered Bourgault, who is from Canada, to surrender his passport as the case proceeds.
It was not clear if Bourgault had an attorney. The Associated Press left phone messages at the offices of the district attorney and legal aid seeking information.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals noted that Bourgault had previously been fined or suspended for kicking horses and for excessive use of the whip.
“Bourgault is a repeat offender who should have been booted from racing years ago and banned the first time he whipped a horse after a race was over,” PETA senior vice president Kathy Guillermo said in a prepared release.
Photo courtesy of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Gov. Jay Inslee has directed state wildlife managers to reform the protocols used for determining when to kill endangered gray wolves.
Inslee’s directive a big win for wildlife groups
Gov. Jay Inslee has directed state wildlife managers to develop new rules governing when endangered gray wolves can be killed in response to attacks on livestock.
The governor sided with a coalition of wildlife conservation groups that called for reforms to state protocols on killing wolves in a petition submitted to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission last fall.
The commission rejected the petition by a 6-3 vote in October. The wildlife groups appealed the decision to Inslee, who directed the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) this month to begin drafting new rules “to put into place enforceable standards to regulate the state’s management of endangered gray wolves.”
The governor’s directive is seen as a win for conservation groups who say too many wolves are being killed by WDFW as a result of conflicts with livestock. Wildlife advocates have been pushing for “greater accountability, transparency and clarity” about decisions on killing wolves, said Claire Loebs Davis, president of Washington Wildlife First, one of the groups that petitioned for the new rules.
Davis called Inslee’s decision “a significant victory, both for Washington’s wolves and for our campaign to ensure that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife makes management decisions based on the best available science rather than in response to demands by entrenched special interests.”
Ongoing effort
Since 2012, 53 wolves have been killed for “actual or claimed conflicts” and 75% of those killed were as a result of conflict involving a single livestock owner, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the petitioners.
In response to Inslee’s directive, issued on Jan. 12, WDFW said staff would meet with the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission to initiate the rulemaking process.
In a statement, WDFW noted that the petition filed last year is similar to petitions received from conservation groups in 2014, 2020 and 2022, that were all rejected by the wildlife commission. In 2019, Inslee directed WDFW to find ways to reduce the number of wolves being killed by the agency, but conservation groups said WDFW did not significantly change its management approach.
“Third time’s the charm, and I hope that this time the state will listen to the science and adopt rules that will reduce wolf killing and lessen livestock losses,” said Amaroq Weiss of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Melanie Rowland, a Methow Valley resident and member of the state Fish and Wildlife Commission, was one of the three members on the commission who voted to accept the petition from conservation groups last fall and said she welcomes the opportunity to address the ongoing issue.
“The reason for the petition is to assure were doing the least killing of an endangered species that we can do and still have livestock producers not being unduly affected by the wolves that are returning,” Rowland said.
WDFW currently uses a “wolf livestock interaction protocol” to guide how the state responds to wolf depredations on livestock. Rowland said it’s time the agency moves forward on formalizing its management through a legally binding rule developed with public comment.
“I don’t see what the big deal is about a rule,” Rowland said. “Rules are what make government agencies accountable. The public can challenge them, if public thinks they are not implementing a rule correctly. A protocol is guidance for the agency, but there is no public comment required and the agency can deviate from it with no legal consequences,” she said.
“Those of us who support a wolf rule are not saying the agency has violated the protocol or acted irresponsibly, at least in recent years,” Rowland added. “Recently WDFW has done a good job of reducing the number of wolves killed under the protocol for livestock predation.
“But the protocol can easily be changed or ignored under a future administration, while the public can force compliance with a rule through the courts, and a rule must go through the rulemaking process to be changed,” she said.
Rowland sits on the wildlife committee of the Fish and Wildlife Commission, and said she’d like to see the wildlife committee take the lead on putting together a draft rule for public comment.
New policies urged
In a letter explaining his directive to begin rulemaking, Inslee said that while he cannot legally prescribe specific policies, he urged WDFW to “consider new policies or regulations on ‘caught in the act’ procedures, as a number of wolves have recently been killed under ‘caught in the act’ when they were not attacking livestock. If not restricted and carefully monitored, this vague policy may be used to unjustly kill an increasing number of Washington’s wolves.”
In their petition, conservation groups listed a dozen recommendations to improve wolf management, including calling for limits to “caught in the act” provisions that petitioners said provide “a loophole that allows livestock owners to kill wolves without any accountability.”
The petition said that 10 wolves “caught in the act” were shot, with nine of those confirmed killed, between June 2017-May 2023, with five instances in the past 17 months. In seven of the nine killings, incidence reports show the wolves were not attacking when killed, petitioners said.
Other recommendations from the petitioners include prohibiting killing wolves on public land or as a result of predations on livestock grazing on public land; and prohibiting killing wolves due to livestock predations in close proximity to known core wolf areas like dens, or when killing wolves will orphan or jeopardize the survival of pups.
Petitioners also recommended requiring livestock owners to sign damage control prevention agreements before WDFW will use tax money to pay for killing wolves as a result of predation on their livestock; and requiring WDFW to develop conflict mitigation plans for chronic conflict areas.
Some recommendations mirror current protocols, such as requiring three confirmed wolf predations on livestock, at least two of which resulted in the death of livestock, within 30 days before WDFW considers killing wolves.
WDFW said that lethal removal of wolves has dropped by 64% in the past four years. In 2019 WDFW killed nine wolves, three in 2020, two in 2021, six in 2022, and two in 2023.
Since the Lookout Pack was discovered in the Methow Valley in 2008, the first known resident gray wolf pack in the state since the 1930s, the state’s wolf population has grown to at least 216 wolves and 37 packs in 2022, according to WDFW’s most recent count. Wolves were listed by the state as an endangered species in 1980.
Groups involved in the petition to draw up new wolf rules include the Center for Biological Diversity, Washington Wildlife First, Cascadia Wildlands, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Kettle Range Conservation Group, Northwest Animal Rights Network, Animal Wellness Action/Center for a Humane Economy, Endangered Species Coalition, Coexisting with Cougars in Klickitat County and Predator Defense.
Considering the South Korean outbreak of avian influenza A(H5N1), scientists made suggestions to avoid future disease spillover and reduce the potential for disease to spread to humans.
The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes COVID-19 disease, seems to be zoonotic, having moved into humans from wild animals. Diseases can also pass from wildlife to livestock, zoo animals and companion animals, including a small number of dogs and cats that caught COVID-19. This phenomenon of one non-human species passing a disease to another can be called spillover. Those animals don’t need to be in direct contact with each other for spillover to occur. On July 25 and 31 of last year, health officials confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) infections in two cat shelters in Seoul, South Korea. A team of researchers examined this outbreak and published a summary in Nature Communications, along with suggestions for controlling future cross-species disease transmission.
“The influenza A(H5N1) outbreaks in the cat shelters in South Korea, along with an increasing number of reports of influenza A(H5N1) infection in mammals, suggest the need to enhance the effectiveness of infectious disease surveillance and prevention in any settings where a group of potentially susceptible animals are kept in close contact,” they wrote. “This is particularly important for groups of animals that typically are not covered by regulatory efforts aimed at maintaining or improving animal health and welfare standards. These animal groups could not only provide environments for cross-species viral transmission, promoting zoonotic risk, but could also serve as sentinels for detecting such events, thereby offering opportunities to assess and then mitigate such risk.”
H5N1 avian flu can spread to and kill humans. Between 2003 and 2023, the World Health Organization received 882 reports of human infection with H5N1 bird flu in 23 countries. Of these, 461 cases were fatal. Interspecies transmission of diseases can be fatal for the animals as well.
South Korean bird flu outbreak among shelter cats
In the case last year at one of the cat shelters in South Korea, 38 out of the 40 infected cats died within a month. The shelter cats had all been kept indoors, so it seemed unlikely that wild birds had spread the pathogen to the cats. Instead, the virus may have spread to the cats through their food. Investigators with South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) detected influenza A(H5N1) virus in cat food from one of the shelters. The cat foods were Balanced Duck and Balanced Chicken manufactured by Nature’s Raw at its facility in Gimpo, west of Seoul. The Ministry stated that the company had failed to follow necessary sterilization steps since May 25 due to an equipment malfunction. MAFRA officials then ordered the recall of all cat food batches considered at risk of harboring the virus. Approximately 13,200 units had already been sold to 286 pet owners. However, these pet owners reported no signs of infection in their cats.
The virus may have entered the cat food stream during an outbreak of the virus on South Korean poultry, including duck, farms that lasted until April 2023. While it seems likely that these farm infections may have been the source of the virus that infected the cats, the authors of the Nature paper noted that no conclusive evidence has been released by MAFRA. It is also unknown if the cats also spread the virus among each other, or if the disease always came from the cat food.
No humans in contact with the cats have tested positive for avian influenza. Although cats can contract highly pathogenic avian influenza, epidemiologists believe cats are not a significant vector for the disease and do not play a major role in transmitting avian influenza to people or other animals.
Avian influenza infection of cats
Avian influenza or bird flu naturally spreads among wild aquatic birds worldwide and can infect domestic poultry and other bird and animal species, according to the World Health Organization. Highly pathogenic avian influenza is a subtype of the virus. It can cause severe illness and high mortality rates in domestic poultry and wild birds. The viruses can devastate poultry industries and have economic repercussions due to trade restrictions. Some varieties, including H5N1, can cross species barriers and may cause severe illnesses in mammals.
In June, the IHR National Focal Point of Poland notified the World Health Organization of unusual deaths in cats across the country, suspected to be caused by highly pathogenic avian influenza. As of July 11, 47 samples had been tested from 46 cats and one captive caracal. Twenty-five samples tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza. Fourteen cats were euthanized. A further 11 died with the last death reported on June 30. Some cats developed severe symptoms, such as labored breathing, bloody diarrhea and neurological signs. Some of the cats deteriorated rapidly and died. In total, 20 cats had neurological signs, 19 had respiratory signs and 17 had both signs.
Monitoring and controlling disease spillover among pet cats and dogs
The outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza among the shelter cats was a rarity. The fact that the cats were all in one place may have been a major reason why the disease was discovered as the culprit, the study authors wrote. In individual homes, a cat infected with avian flu might have been diagnosed as suffering from another more common disease. Multiple cats getting the same disease were more easily observed in a shelter. Likewise in a home, the virus wouldn’t have had the opportunity to spread among various animals, if that indeed happened.
Considering the South Korean outbreak of avian influenza A(H5N1), the scientists made suggestions to avoid future disease spillover and reduce zoonotic potential.
1. Require pet shelters to systematically record adverse animal health events at individual animal and group levels. In outbreak situations, pet shelters should also record environmental factors (e.g. access to/from wildlife, and introduction of new animals) and husbandry conditions (e.g. food and water source).
“In the event of cross-species viral transmission, this information will help to better understand the source of infection and thus inform the implementation of preventive and control measures,” the scientists wrote. “Such a recording practice appears to have been lacking in these particular settings, very much in contrast to conventional livestock farming where the recording is routinely practiced.
2. Training shelter staff to report any unusual clinical signs or health trends among animals in the shelter. Animal health authorities need to precisely define reporting criteria and ensure shelter staff are familiar with those criteria.
3. The potential for undercooked poultry to transmit avian influenza justifies prohibiting or limiting the feeding of uncooked meat to animals kept for non-conventional production purposes, such as pet shelters and fur farms, and those in non-agricultural settings. These restrictions could minimise the risk of cross-species transmission of influenza A(H5N1) virus and other viruses.
4. Continue discussing how to implement measures to prevent and control cross-species viral transmission.
“It is crucial to involve all relevant stakeholders in this discussion, particularly the staff of the aforementioned animal settings, as their understanding of the implications of animal keeping for animal and human health might be less than amongst those involved in conventional livestock farming,” they wrote.
Exposing the Big Game 