fShoshone Nation Gathers Crescent Valley Horses KBR Wild Horse and Burro News

Western Shoshone Nation
Gathers Crescent Valley Horses

Elko, NV
January 27, 2003

A coalition of horse groups is attempting to assist the Western Shoshone relocate as many horses as possible in advance of a BLM "eviction" of Shoshone livestock that the Bureau has determined to be trespassing in Crescent Valley near Elko, NV.

After a couple of false starts, and not without interference from parties unfriendly to this effort, about one third of the animals have been successfully relocated. Assisting in this effort is former Nascar driver Slick Gardner who has his own wild horse sanctuary near Buellton, CA. Gardner has been working with some of the horse groups in an effort to help with the logistics of moving and possibly providing shelter for many of these animals.

Shirley Allen, Adoption Program Manager for Least Resistance Training Concepts (one of the state recognized adoption organization) posted this report on January 23.

Slick is trying to help the Dann Sisters gather as many as possible and get them moved. He was there last weekend and will be at Crescent Valley on and off until this whole thing is a done deal. If any come off that are not spoken for or if some of the groups back out for one reason or the other, Slick's place in Buellton can hold about 100-150 and the 3000 acres in Los Banos has wonderful pasture and a river that runs through it along with natural and man made stock tanks that hold water all year long.

They have moved approximately 300 Crescent Valley horses so far and Slick is working on helping to get panels to set up more corrals, finding trailers to help haul and has brought in a few people to help with round up. They are trying to move as many as possible on horse back but some in the mountain areas in the next group will have to be done with helicopter. I don't like the helicopters one bit either but they apparently don't have much of a choice in dealing with the time frame and area the horses are in.

The last info I got from the State and BLM indicates that they will not stand in the way but they don't think that all the horses can be rounded up so they are expecting to go ahead with their plans until they see different, and then moneys that have been sent can be refunded if appropriate. I'm hoping the groups don't start bowing out, I really think there will be some that we need to take. The mares that will be foaling soon, the injured and sick will be kept on the Dann Sisters property there so they can be taken care of until they're ready to be moved to Shoshone Land. Keep your fingers and toes crossed, I'm sure hoping these guys can all go to Shoshone Nation. It will make room for all the others out there that will still be coming in.

January 28 update:

Just heard from Slick. Things unfortunately are not going smoothly but we didn't expect that did we? They have only been able to bring in approx. a little over 300 so far. Slick says some people there are really jacking with the Shoshone and giving almost no cooperation. They had trucks ordered to come in and move horses the other day and someone (don't know who) called and cancelled the trucks. Then someone had called and sent trucks that had not been ordered up by the Dann Sisters group and of course trucking company wasn't happy running those trucks back and forth and all the confusion. That's just one small problem they have been running into.

Slick is back in Ca. now but is planning on going back next Friday. He daid that BLM is not cooperating as far as letting them know where they can fly and set up catch pens and local people don'tseem to be pitching in at all. A lot of the locals apparently work for the mines there and have bad feelings toward the Dann Sisters no matter what they are doing because they've made such probs in the past for the mines. Slick is still in there trying to make things work and get the horses moved off as soon as possible but it's definitely not going as well as it should.

More updates will be posted as Shirley reports in.

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