Plan to Use Wild Horses for Wildfire Fuel Mitigation Characterized as "Innovative Approach" by AM Best TV

Yreka, CA, April 12, 2023 --(PR.com)-- Recently, AM Best TV released a video news report about a plan to reduce catastrophic wildfires, that in the process, saves the relatively few remaining "genetically intact" wild horses.

That plan is called the "Natural Wildfire Abatement and Forest Protection Plan."

The Plan is also known as "Wild Horse Fire Brigade" because the plan is based upon using large-bodied herbivores (wild horses) in appropriate critical wilderness areas to mitigate and manage annual grass and brush wildfire fuels.

AM Best TV is a world leader in providing mission critical information to the world's leading insurance companies.

These companies can and do influence politicians, who in turn influence Congress and the Department of Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The AM Best TV video report titled, "'Rewilding' Horses Aims to Mitigate Wildfires, Reduce Insured Losses," can be viewed at this URL:
http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=wildhorses323&AltSrc=182

The Bureau of Land Management ("BLM") has, of late, engaged in massive roundups of native species American wild horses in the American west.

The reasoning for these roundups are economically motivated because wild horses compete for grazing with commercially valuable herbivores such cattle and sheep. This is only a problem because flawed management guidelines for wild horses rely heavily on obsolete science from the 1950s and 1960s.

Modern scientific principals argue that key flaws in the current management of public grazing lands include these concerns:

The removal of apex predators (with extreme prejudice) from public land grazing areas (Herd Management Areas - "HMAs") in order to maximize livestock production creates unintended adverse consequences:

a. Since cervids also co-inhabit public lands shared with livestock production, the removal of their natural co-evolved predators has greatly enhanced conditions supporting the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in deer and other cervids (elk, pronghorn, etc).

Bears, wolves, mountain lions and coyotes are immune to CWD and are uniquely able to weed-out sick deer quickly, before they spread this fatal disease to other animals.

However, due to the elimination of virtually all the apex predators to enhance livestock production, sick deer are able to survive much longer than they normally would and this enhances the spread of CWD to other cervids. According to the CDC, Chronic Wasting Disease is now in 29 states and spreading.

b. Because wild horses and livestock are commingled in many Herd Management and Herd Areas, the aggressive culling of apex predators also has impacted wild horses. Contrary to what the BLM has written, all North American apex predators are the co-evolved natural predators of wild horses. So obviously, when wild horses are forced by land managers to stay in grazing areas commingled with cattle and sheep, wild horse populations can grow abnormally due to a lack of their co-evolved predators. Making matters worse for wild horses is the loss of "Natural Selection" by the co-evolved predators of wild horses, which maintains the genetic vigor of the species - E. Caballus - the modern wild horse. In naturally operating wilderness ecosystems where there are adequate apex predator populations, wild horses do not over-populate and benefit genetically from their natural predators removing sick, weak and elderly horses from the herd.

Once captured, the BLM then castrates the stallions and sterilizes mares without performing any genetic testing beforehand. This process, which has been going-on for the past 10 years, has yielded over 65,000 American wild horses into expensive taxpayer-funded off-range captivity where virtually all these horses are genetically dead.

What that ("genetically dead") means is, these thousands of native species wild horses are unable to complete their natural life-cycles, and will merely live-out their lives in cruel, taxpayer-funded, off-range holding, unable to produce any offspring. The result is that the important genetic lines of these tens of thousands of horses have been eliminated from the face of the planet via the genetic mutilation of these American icons.

Some of these wild horses may have genetic lineages that predate the discovery of North American by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

For instance, we know for a fact that some of the wild horses that live today on the Oregon-California border may be the descendants of wild horses observed and documented by Sir Francis Drake when he explored the west coast of America in 1580. And wild horses that were seen by Drake in 1580 were the descendants of wild horses that survived the Ice Age and predated any reintroduction of Spanish horses to North America:

This is an extracted quote from the doctoral dissertation by Dr. Yvette "Running Horse" Collin, titled"

The relationship between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the horse: deconstructing a Eurocentric myth, which can be read in it's entirety at the following URL: https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/7592

Page 39:

"The Spanish conquistadors were not the only European explorers to have noticed and recorded early sightings of horses in the Americas. In 1579, the Queen of England sent Sir Francis Drake to 'The New World.' Drake also recorded having seen herds of horses in the Americas during his voyage off the coasts of what are now known as California and Oregon. An account given of Drake’s landing in the geographic areas now known as Northern California and Southern Oregon includes the English explorer’s description of the homes of the Native Peoples, as well as the animals that he encountered. 'It related his wonder at seeing so many wild horses, because he had heard that the Spaniards had found no native horses in America, save those of the Arab breed which they had introduced.' 116. In addition to accounts from explorers appointed by European kings and queens, there are accounts of native horses in South America in the area now known as Argentina. One such account even includes an explanation as to why the Spanish may have been motivated to hide the fact that the Indigenous horse of the Americas existed and had a relationship with Native Peoples. According to an article, entitled, Antiguedad del Caballo En El Plata (The Antiquity of the Horse in the River Plate), by Anibal Cardoso, as cited by Austin Whittall, on his blog site article..."

115 Ibid., 53.
116 Henry S. Burrage, Original Narratives of Early American History. Early English and French Voyages (New York: Unknown Binding, 1906), 23.

This recent PBS documentary, supported by several scientists, also supports that Wild Horses in N. America are Native:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGki2EwrbkA

Wild Horse Fire Brigade ("WHFB") is an all-volunteer, 501-c-3 nonprofit organization that believes in using the donations we get wisely, so we can achieve the greatest effect with our multiple mission objectives. Educating the public, politicians and even the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service is one of our key missions.

The team of researchers (Michelle Gough & William E. Simpson II) at WHFB are on the cutting-edge of wilderness research by living-among and studying free-roaming wild horses living naturally in wilderness ecosystems. WHFB has dedicated volunteer board members and advisors who believe American taxpayers deserve better management and care of our limited natural resources, including our remaining native species American wild horses.

Learn more about the WHFB Board at this URL: https://www.wildhorsefirebrigade.org/advocacy-board

Gough & Simpson are living in the remote mountain wilderness on the Oregon-California border to obtain important insights into wild horse behavioral ecology and ethology that have been understudied or missed altogether. These insights will benefit wild horses and their management going forward, leading to their sustainable natural conservation and the re-balancing of American wilderness ecosystems.

The Wild Horse Fire Brigade plan to naturally save wild horses is so unique, and makes so much sense ecologically and economically, that it's growing organically.

Time is of the essence: Virtually all American critical wilderness areas, the forests and wildlife, are now at very high risk for devastation by catastrophic wildfire.

AM Best TV sent their news video report out on their public and subscriber-based news platform to the major players in the insurance and finance world.

The word about Wild Horse Fire Brigade's plan is spreading as is the groundswell of support.

About AM Best:

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City.