Please Comment to Protect Wyoming’s Wild Horses from the Devastating 2017 Checkerboard Roundup | Wild Hoofbeats

Adobe Town Family

Please Comment by April 4, 2017 on the Checkerboard 2017 Roundup

The BLM was unable to roundup wild horses from Salt Wells Creek, Adobe Town and Great Divide Basin in 2016 because we won a lawsuit that prohibits the BLM from managing the wild horses in the Checkerboard using only Section 4 of the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act, which allows them to remove wild horses from private lands. Because the Checkerboard includes public lands, it is illegal to manage them as if they were privately owned by the ranchers demanding these roundups. In order to legally roundup wild horses from the Checkerboard, the BLM must prove that the numbers are above Appropriate Management Level, or AML. Now, they are not even conducting a census to prove this, instead they are “projecting” that the horses are over the high end of AML.

Roundups cause the destruction of hundreds of wild horse families, as well as injuries and death to the horses as they are chased by helicopters and flee in terror into traps. These captured wild horses are chased into trailers and taken away from the only home they have ever had to end up spending the rest of their days languishing in holding corrals with no shelter. Only a lucky few are adopted by members of the public and these do not always mean good homes – the return rate back to the BLM for adopted or purchased wild horses is over 50%. Many many of these horses will end up at slaughter in Mexico. There is no good reason to roundup and remove these horses from Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek and Great Divide Basin.

I have been following and observing and photographing the wild horses in these three herd management areas for the last 13 years. These horses are uniquely suited to this sometime harsh high desert environment. They are the last three largest herds in Wyoming, and they deserve to be preserved on our public lands. Although the Checkerboard presents challenges to BLM management because of its pattern of public alternating with private lands, that is no reason to cave into petty demands from the Rock Springs Grazing Association, which is made up from less than 25 members. These wild horses are valuable to us, the American public, and so every effort must be made to preserve them here where they were found at the time the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act was passed. These horses were here long before the Grazing Association, and now what needs to happen is land swaps to consolidate blocks of public land that the horses can continue to roam upon. Managing the wild horses on the range, on our public lands where they can continue to roam free and making these necessary land swaps happen is what the BLM needs to be working on, not perpetuating this every 3 year pattern of roundup, removal, then warehouse our wild horses. The Field Manager of the Rock Springs BLM Field Office has been quoted as saying: “For all intents and purposes, we consider the Checkerboard private.” But it is NOT private. In fact, over half of the Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek and Great Divide Basin Herd Management Areas are public land, that belongs to us, the citizens of the United States of America, not the Rock Springs Grazing Association.

Great Divide Basin Family

This time, the BLM wants to remove 1029 wild horses: 584 removed from Salt Wells Creek, 210 removed from Adobe Town, and 235 removed from Great Divide Basin.

They are not even calculating their numbers from an actual aerial census – they are making these numbers up. Every year, the BLM conducts and aerial census in late April, but now they are just “projecting” the numbers.

2017 “Projections”

Great Divide Basin 650

Salt Wells Creek 835

Adobe Town 820

Here are past census numbers provided by the BLM for these three areas:

2016 Statistically Corrected Census Counts
HMA	Total within HMA	Total within Checkerboard
Great Divide Basin	542	272
Salt Wells Creek	696	187
Adobe Town	684	25
Total	1,922	484

2015 April Census Numbers:

Adobe Town: 858
Salt Wells Creek: 616
Great Divide Basin: 579

2014 Post Roundup Census 2014

Adobe Town: 519
Salt Wells Creek: 29
Great Divide Basin: 91

As you can see with these numbers, they randomly go wildly up and down but somehow are considered “statistically corrected.” The BLM has to prove that Adobe Town has more than 800 wild horses, Great Divide Basin has more than 600 wild horses and Salt Wells Creek has more than 365 wild horses in order to legally proceed with a roundup. There is no attempt to account for mortality rates due to deaths of older horses and foals, which can be very high when there is a harsh winter, which this last winter certainly has been, with storm after storm, much more snow and much more freezing temperatures than normal.

A real, professionally done, independent census needs to be conducted to get a real, accurate count of the wild horses in each of these three HMAs before any plans are made to roundup and remove wild horses from their rightful homes.

Radio Collared Adobe Town mare

I have been following the Adobe Town Radio Collar Study which is currently going on in conjunction with the University of Wyoming. Their plan to study the movements of wild horses through tracking 20 mares wearing radio collars will be completely disrupted if they round up wild horses in Adobe Town, so this is yet another reason that this proposal is senseless. I contend that there are NOT more than 800 wild horses in Adobe Town and therefore there is no legal reason to proceed with a roundup, and they will be subverting their own study by removing wild horses from this HMA, so this is yet another reason not to roundup and remove horses from Adobe Town. But none of the horses from any of these three HMAs should be removed without an accurate count of how many wild horses are in each area.

The biggest reason for not going forward with the Checkerboard 2017 Roundup is the well being of the wild horses themselves. This seems to be very low on the BLM’s priority list. What will happen to these 1029 formerly wild horses? We, the taxpaying public, will be paying to warehouse and feed them, at huge cost. The horses themselves will live out miserable lives in the holding facility, without their families, without shelter, and under the possibility that at any moment the BLM could elect to “euthanize” the more than 45,000 wild horses in captivity. This must stop.

Adobe Town mare and foal

Please comment by April 4. These wild horses need your help.

You are welcome to use any points from this blog but please use your own words. The BLM counts any form letter or form email as 1.

blm_wy_adobetown_saltwells_hma@blm.gov (Please include “2017 AML Gather” in the subject line), mailed or hand-delivered during regular business hours (7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) to: BLM Rock Springs Field Office, 2017 AML Gather, 280 Highway 191 North, Rock Springs, WY 82901.

For more information, please contact the BLM at 307-352-0256.

Here is a link to the Scoping Document:

https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-front-office/projects/nepa/74247/98803/119700/2017_Scoping_Statement_-_Adobe_Town,_Salt_Wells_Creek,_Great_Divide_Basin_AML_Gather.pdf

Source: Please Comment to Protect Wyoming’s Wild Horses from the Devastating 2017 Checkerboard Roundup | Wild Hoofbeats

Myths and Facts about Wild Horses and Burros | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

Stallion of Antelope Valley HMA ~ photo by Terry Fitch of Wild Horse Freedom Federation

by Bonnie Kohleriter

MYTH 1 26,500 wild horses and burros are to be on our public lands in 10 states, as that number was on our public lands in 1971 when the Wild Horse and Burro Law was passed. Wild horses and burros are in AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, and WY.

FACT 1 No census of numbers of wild horses and burros was done in 1971 when the Law was passed in December of that year. The 1971 Law did not say the number of wild horses and burros that could be on our public lands. 26,500 is an arbitrary, non-evidenced based number.

MYTH 2 Wild horses and burros are on our public lands everywhere and they are destroying our public lands.

FACT 2 The BLM manages 245 M acres of our public lands. About 3 M livestock are on 160 M acres, wildlife is everywhere, and wild horses and burros are limited to 29 M acres in areas called Herd Management Areas (HMAs). Within the HMAs about 400,000 livestock that reside here as well are allocated 82% of the forage while the wild horses and burros are assigned 17%. In 1971 the wild horses and burros were in Herd Areas (HAs), but the BLM said those areas were too difficult to manage so they drew circles within the HAs and called them HMAs. Unbeknown to the animals where the boundaries are when they go into HA land, they are fodder to be removed without question.

MYTH 3 The BLM has 177 herd management areas (HMAs) for wild horses and burros giving the illusion horses and burros are in those areas.

FACT 3 The BLM has only 160 HMAs where wild horses and burros are now found. The other areas don’t have any horses or burros in them, or are part of the military or forest service or are double counted. The BLM had 339 HMAs initially, but little by little has zeroed them out.

MYTH 4 The BLM sets “Appropriate Management Levels” (AMLs) for the wild horses and burros in each area. It sets a low number at which the animals should be and allows them to breed to a higher number after which it gathers, removes and reduces the animals to the low number again. The overall low number is 17, 810 and the high number is 27,500.

FACT 4 “Appropriate” is inappropriate. Allowing only 17,810 horses and burros in 160 areas in 10 western states is a species that is threatened or endangered.

MYTH 5 The BLM says it strives to have healthy horses on healthy rangelands.

FACT 5 Dr. Gus Cothran, the retained geneticist for the Wild Horse and Burro Program, says the following: Conservation geneticists maintain a minimum of 150-200 animals is needed in a herd with 50 effective breeding animals to have sufficient genetic variability for continued long term viability. Of these herds, only 28 herds have 150-200+ horses allowed in them, and of these herds, only 3 herds have 150-200+ burros allowed in them. In other words, 82% of the herds don’t have appropriate allowable numbers in them for continued health and viability.

MYTH 6 The herd members intermingle with the herd members in other herds so the individual numbers within a herd don’t matter.

FACT 6 Intermingling of the herds has not been scientifically researched and validated, and established by the BLM.

MYTH 7 Horses and burros can be imported from other herds to sustain genetic viability.

FACT 7 The 1971 Law says the horses are supposed to be “where found.”

MYTH 8 The BLM strives to have a “thriving, natural, ecological balance” on our public lands with a multiple use mandate.

FACT 8 The wild horses and burros are not a thriving species, the arbitrary numbers are not natural, and the numbers are not in balance, (27,000 vs. 400,000) in the ecological environment in which they are to be distributed. The National Academy of Sciences addressed this Myth in 2013, in Chapter 7 of its report, Using Science to Improve the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program.

MYTH 9 The BLM asserted 67,000 wild horses and burros were on our public lands in 2016 and 47,000 were in off the range holding facilities. The number of livestock within the 27 M acres needs to stay there as they feed the world. The number of livestock have been reduced by 35% from 1971-2014.

FACT 9 Livestock within the HMAs provide less than ½ of 1% of the United States meat. The number of livestock have been reduced due to overgrazing and drought. Cow/calf size has increased by 1 ½, offsetting the reduction in number of allowable livestock. Though ways of counting wild horses and burros have improved, counting continues to be a challenge. Reducing the number of livestock only within the HMAs and increasing the number of allowable wild horses and burros has not been explored. The Cattlemen’s Association and now the Gas, Oil, and Mining Industries are powerful competitors and lobbyists for our public lands on which the wild horses and burros depend.

MYTH 10 The BLM is mandated by the 1971 Law to manage, protect, and control the wild horses and burros on our public lands.

FACT 10 Look at the BLM’s budget. The BLM, unlike wildlife and livestock groups, does ever so little to manage and protect the wild horses and burros on our public lands. The BLM doesn’t tend to water, forage, or space (fence) issues. The BLM’s focus is on control, hiring contractors to gather and remove animals, hiring contractors to house animals off the range in short-term corrals or in long-term pastures, hiring contractors to move animals around the country for adoptions, and hiring administrators to complete the paperwork.

The BLM does not engage in using fertility control treatment (PZP) as a way to keep the wild horses and burros on the range though volunteers stand ready to help. Up to now only four small herds have used this control method but now five more larger herds are involved in its use. In 2013, 509 horses received PZP, in 2014, 384, and in 2015, 469, paltry numbers. The BLM does not engage in promoting recreational tourism on the range which could and would bring in money and in which volunteers stand ready to help. The BLM has considered sterilizing mares but the procedures are dangerous for the mares and foals and the BLM is researching geldings to be used in on the range horse and burro herds.

MYTH 11 The National Advisory Board of the Wild Horse and Burro Program and the horse advocates on the 9 Regional Advisory Councils are available to advise on what is best for the future of the wild horses and burros.

FACT 11 The advisory board members are people with livestock, wildlife and land interests, not with wild horse and burro interests. They are cattlemen and livestock vets. They are not horse and burro geneticists, equine vets, biologists and ecologists, recreational entrepreneurs, volunteer coordinators.

This is a broken program in need of change and a different direction. This is a program that needs to focus on ways to retain wild horses and burros on our public lands in controlled but healthy numbers, and to focus on providing them with adequate water, forage, and space.

Wild horses evolved in the Americas. They left during the Ice Age 10,000 years ago and were domesticated in Europe. They were brought back to the Americas and were left to be wild again when automation was introduced. They were used to settle our country and to fight our wars in WW1 and WW2. Today, they are symbols of our past of the Wild Wild West. They are symbols of our freedom. We as Americans are charged to be stewards of them. They need to be managed and protected on our public lands, controlled in genetically healthy numbers, and when those goals are met, in my opinion, then given fertility control treatment.

Source: Myths and Facts about Wild Horses and Burros | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

A new kind of doctor’s office charges a monthly fee and doesn’t take insurance – and it could be the future of medicine – TheBreakAway

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Source: BusinessInsider.com
March 19, 2017

Dr. Bryan Hill spent his career working as a pediatrician, teaching at a university, and working at a hospital. But in March 2016, he decided he no longer wanted a boss.

He took some time off, then one day he got a call asking if he’d be up for doing a house call for a woman whose son was sick. He agreed, and by the end of that visit, he realized he wanted to treat patients without dealing with any of the insurance requirements.

Then he learned about a totally different way to run a doctor’s office. It’s called direct primary care, and it works like this: Instead of accepting insurance for routine visits and drugs, these practices charge a monthly membership fee that covers most of what the average patient needs, including visits and drugs at much lower prices.

That sounded good to him. In September, Hill opened his direct-primary-care pediatrics practice, Gold Standard Pediatrics, in South Carolina.

Hill is part of a small but fast-growing movement of pediatricians, family-medicine physicians, and internists who are opting for this different model. It’s happening at a time when high-deductible health plans are on the rise – a survey in September found that 51% of workers had a plan that required them to pay up to $1,000 out of pocket for healthcare until insurance picks up most of the rest.

That means consumers have a clearer picture of how much they’re spending on healthcare and are having to pay more. At the same time, primary-care doctors in the traditional system are feeling the pressure under the typical fee-for-service model in which doctors are incentivized to see more patients for less time to maximize profits.

Direct primary care has the potential to simplify basic doctor visits, allowing a doctor to focus solely on the patient. But there are also concerns about the effect that separating insurance from primary care could have on the rest of the healthcare system – that and doctors often have to accept lower pay in exchange for less stress.

How direct primary care works

Courtesy Lauren Clark

Dustin and Lauren Clark, who operate Black Bag Family Healthcare.

For Brent Long and his family, paying for healthcare is now like paying a cellphone bill. Since they joined Black Bag Family Healthcare in Johnson City, Tennessee, about two years ago, the family has paid about $150 a month to belong to the practice.

Long joined around the time he was shifting his insurance to a high-deductible health plan. There were two reasons he decided to switch and start paying for all six members of his family to get direct primary care: the cost-effectiveness of not having to deal with copays or urgent-care visits, and the fact that it could easily fit his family’s busy lifestyle that doesn’t jibe with spending hours in waiting rooms.

Included in that monthly fee are basic checkups, same-day or next-day appointments, and – a big boon to patients – the ability to obtain medications and lab tests at or near wholesale prices.

Direct primary care also comes with near-constant access to a doctor – talking via FaceTime while the family is on vacation, or taking an emergency trip to the office to get stitches after a bad fall on a Saturday night. Because direct primary care doesn’t take insurance, there are no copays and no costs beyond the monthly fee.

Skye Gould/Business Insider

When Blythe Fortin went in for a recent visit at sparkMD, a direct-primary-care practice in Boise, Idaho, Dr. Julie Gunther spent an hour chatting with her before getting to the results of her blood test, which showed elevated blood-sugar levels.

“She listened when I said I can manage with diet,” rather than starting her on medication, Fortin said.

Fortin, who pays $60 a month for sparkMD, had used a different kind of subscription healthcare called concierge medicine. It has some similarities to direct primary care but often costs thousands per month and still incorporates health insurance. She says she prefers direct primary care because the quality of care she has received is better than concierge medicine, and she likes that it’s available to a wider base of patients.

At the 17 direct-primary-care practices Business Insider spoke with, the percentage of members who still had insurance varied. At some practices, all but a handful had some form of insurance, while at others a little more than half didn’t have insurance.

Courtesy of Dr. Julie Gunther

Dr. Julie Gunther of sparkMD with one of her newest patients.

To describe how coverage functions under direct primary care, doctors use the example of car insurance: You don’t use your car insurance for small transactions like oil changes, but it’s there for you if you get in a car accident. Likewise, health-insurance plans – especially those with high deductibles – can be there if you require healthcare beyond primary care.

For those who have insurance, the choice to pay for both makes financial sense, even if they can’t use it at their doctor’s office.

Fran Ciarlo has coverage through Medicare but decided to pay for sparkMD as well. One of the ways she’s seen an advantage is in prescriptions – like many direct-primary-care practices, sparkMD can provide prescriptions at wholesale prices, adding a 10% fee. On a recent visit, Ciarlo estimated she had saved at least $100 on prescriptions for standard steroids and antibiotics that in total cost her $6.

And for those with high health-insurance costs, it’s occasionally a choice between paying a monthly premium or the monthly membership fee for a direct-primary-care practice. For Rebekah Bennett, paying for direct primary care at sparkMD made more sense for her and her children than opting for insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, since for roughly the same cost, if not less, her family could see their doctor without any copays.

The history of the direct-primary-care movement

Philip Eskew, who has tracked the movement through his website, Direct Primary Care Frontier, said direct primary care began at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s. Around that time, three doctors had the idea to go insurance-free, charging monthly fees instead and freeing up time to enjoy practicing medicine. This way, patients who might not have insurance could have a clear idea of how much going to the doctor would cost.

One of the three founded Qliance, a direct-primary-care system based in Washington state that got its start in 2007. The company was backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Dell founder Michael Dell before the company leadership bought it to run it privately, without investor pressure. Qliance now has about 25,000 members visiting a handful of clinics around Puget Sound.

Cofounder Dr. Erika Bliss sees this movement growing in the future from its grass roots, rather than becoming big and national.

“It keeps the resolve and the drive toward independent primary care,” she said, which she described as a critical element. She says she envisions independent practices with maybe 10 to 20 providers at three to five locations being about as big as they’d get.

Getting off the ground

Dr. Matthew Abinante opened his practice in Huntington Beach, California, in September. Since then, he has had two people call his office to find out more about his practice. When he explained the system, he said, the callers thought it had to be a scam.

It’s one of the biggest hurdles doctors face when starting direct primary care – the “too good to be true” factor, the learning curve that comes with the understanding that “No, you won’t be using insurance here.” Even so, Abinante has signed up about 150 patients.

Going into direct primary care often means ditching the reliability of a salary. Because the practice relies on membership fees, the more patients who sign on, the more money that can be made. Practices cap their number of patients at anywhere from 300 to 1,000.

And it’s not exactly cheap to get started. Dr. Vance Lassey, who runs Holton Direct Care in Holton, Kansas, took out a loan to start his practice and spent time renovating a 750-square-foot space he rented from a friend at an industrial park. He picked up a lot of old equipment from a nearby nonprofit hospital and surplus stores. For his in-house pharmacy, Lassey took mismatched cabinets and refinished them so they matched.

Courtesy Dr. Vance Lassey

Dr. Vance Lassey in front of the pharmacy cabinets he built from a mismatched set.

Keeping his costs low helped Lassey break even within four months of opening his practice. Still, he’s not earning as much as he used to when he worked at a hospital and had only five to 10 minutes with a patient – a lot less time than he gets to spend with his patients now.

“I am making a profit, I have more free time, and I can practice properly,” he said. “It’s worth it to me.”

Others, like Dr. M. Chad Williamson in Fort Payne, Alabama, went upscale – he offers his patients a 24-hour gym as part of his practice’s $60 monthly membership fee. Williamson, who opened his practice in August, a few months after finishing his residency, currently has 215 members. He wants to bring that up to between 600 and 1,000 people, ideally.

And it’s not just building the office space – direct-primary-care doctors are also responsible for building referral relationships with other doctors in the area.

What’s holding direct primary care back

While doctors and patients using direct primary care might praise the model – it was hard to get anybody to suggest a group, geographic or otherwise, that they thought wouldn’t benefit from direct primary care – not everyone is sold just yet.

Carolyn Long Engelhard, a public-health expert and professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, broke down the main concerns with direct primary care:

It might give the false impression that it’s a kind of insurance, so people might not opt to also get a real insurance plan. But if a patient were to have a health issue outside the scope of primary care, they wouldn’t be protected financially. All the providers Business Insider spoke with said they recommended patients have some form of insurance, and there were many instances where most patients in a practice had insurance or took part in a healthcare sharing plan, a program that functions like insurance in which an amount is sent monthly to people who have medical expenses in the plan.
Because doctors at direct-primary-care practices take on fewer patients than doctors at traditional primary-care practices, it might add to the caseloads of primary-care doctors. There is a shortage of these doctors in the US, partly because many choose to go into specialty medicine. Some doctors, on the other hand, say that they would have considered leaving medicine outright if they hadn’t had the option to do direct primary care. “There are doctor shortages already, so I say, ‘Compared to what?’” Dr. Chad Savage, who runs YourChoice Direct Care in Brighton, Michigan, told Business Insider.
Direct-primary-care physicians could become isolated from other doctors, and because the only person the direct-primary-care doctor has to answer to is the patient, there are fewer insurance regulations in place, potentially putting patients at risk. This is one of the reasons that getting hard data on how direct primary care compares with traditional practices is difficult. But between direct-primary-care networks and the referral relationships doctors build in their communities, there might not be so much isolation from the rest of the system. Dr. Deborah Moore of AmarilloMD in Amarillo, Texas, said she has more time now to do research than she did when she worked at a clinic. “I can do what I really need to be doing,” she said.

Engelhard worries about the direct-primary-care model becoming the norm. Generally, she said, “I do think it has a place in our healthcare system.” Instead, though, she’d like to see more adoption of the “patient-centered medical home,” a model in which primary care is more of a team effort.

Medical organizations have had mixed reactions to the movement as well. The American Academy of Family Physicians supports it, while the American College of Physicians, which represents internal-medicine doctors, has chosen not to take a stance on direct primary care.

There are also logistical hurdles that present challenges. For example, Eskew said that in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, having a health savings account is illegal if you’re a member of a direct-primary-care practice. The IRS views the monthly fees as insurance payments, making the person ineligible for an HSA, he said. Patients also can’t use the funds from an HSA, flexible savings account, or Medicare savings account to pay their monthly membership bills.

But politicians have shown support for the business model. Libertarians see direct primary care as a free-market solution to healthcare, and legislation at the state level has gained support from Democrats and Republicans alike. And direct primary care is on the radar of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who while he was a member of Congress introduced a plan that would allow HSA funds to pay for direct primary care.

“Whoever is in power tries to take credit,” Eskew said. The ACA contains a paragraph about direct primary care that allows for the business model. It’s unclear what would happen to direct primary care under the American Health Care Act, the proposed bill to replace the ACA.

Courtesy of Dr. J. Bryan Hill

Hill with a patient.

Where does direct primary care go from here?

As one of the first pediatricians to go into direct primary care, Hill has had the additional challenge of figuring out how the service works with children. Unlike many direct-primary-care physicians, he offers one-time visits to nonmembers. He said he also spends a lot of time listening to what parents want and sets his prices accordingly, offering discounts to families with three or more kids.

Doctors who are part of the movement tend to be the first in their area to have a direct-primary-care practice, and patients the first of their friends to use direct primary care. But all said they had positive experiences with the model.

“This is a niche, but a niche that makes sense,” Long said.

If direct primary care continues to gain traction, it could lead to new kinds of insurance plans – ones that don’t necessarily factor in primary care. Already, patients with high-deductible healthcare plans are using this. But direct-primary-care doctors also said they’d prefer to recommend catastrophic health insurance plans, which have deductibles as much as $10,000 or $30,000 and aren’t allowed under the ACA.

Even with the growth in the last few years, Bliss said the market is still slow, and a lot of unknowns would come with the AHCA should it become law. And it will be hard to get fully insured employers to use it in the same way self-insured employers and unions have picked it up.

Either way, those in direct primary care are optimistic about the movement’s future.

“In 10 years, we’re going to be an overnight success,” Eskew said jokingly.

‘Horrific incident’: Family speaks out after pet dog killed by ‘cyanide bomb’ | Xtreme Idaho | idahostatejournal.com

By Shelbie Harris sharris@journalnet.com

POCATELLO — As he walked his dog along the ridgeline of the hillside just south of his family’s home on West Buckskin Road, 14-year-old Canyon Mansfield noticed what he thought was a sprinkler head protruding 6 inches from the ground.

Like many curious teenagers would, he bent down and touched the pipe, which erupted with a loud popping noise that knocked Canyon off his feet. A hissing sound ensued and Canyon noticed his clothing and face were covered with an orange, powdery substance. After quickly washing his face and clothes in a nearby patch of snow, he called for his dog, a 3-year-old Lab named Casey.

But Canyon’s best friend didn’t respond.

Within minutes, Casey was dead.

“My little brother is lying in bed crying next to me,” said Canyon’s sister, Madison Mansfield. “He spent yesterday in the emergency room after stumbling upon an unmarked cyanide bomb in the woods directly behind my home. He watched his best friend suffocate as sodium cyanide was deposited in his mouth.”

Canyon was taken to Portneuf Medical Center, where he was treated and released. But he must continue daily follow-up appointments to check toxicity levels.

On Thursday afternoon, Casey joined thousands of other non-targeted animals — both wild and domestic — that have been mistakenly killed by one of the most lethal tools at the disposal of the U.S. Department of Agriculture — spring-loaded metal cylinders that are baited with scent that shoot sodium cyanide powder into the mouth or face of whatever or whoever touches them.

Known as M-44 devices, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) division of the USDA deploys these sodium cyanide capsules throughout the West to protect livestock from coyotes, wild dogs, and red and gray foxes.

M-44s are hollow metal tubes 5 to 7 inches long that are driven into the ground, loaded with 0.9 grams of sodium cyanide and coated with the smelliest bait possible.

Though the devices are legal methods of controlling local predators, the legality regarding the manner in which the device that killed Casey was planted remains under investigation.

On Friday, APHIS released the following statement regarding the incident:

“APHIS’ Wildlife Services confirms the unintentional lethal take of a dog in Idaho. As a program made up of individual employees many of whom are pet owners, Wildlife Services understands the close bonds between people and their pets and sincerely regrets such losses. Wildlife Services has removed M-44s in that immediate area. Wildlife Services is completing a thorough review of the circumstances of this incident, and will work to review our operating procedures to determine whether improvements can be made to reduce the likelihood of similar occurrences happening in the future.”

The spokesman for APHIS, R. Andre Bell, said in a Friday statement that “the unintentional lethal take of a dog is a rare occurrence (and Wildlife Services) posts signs and issues other warnings to alert pet owners when wildlife traps or other devices are being used in an area for wildlife damage management.”

The statement also said that M-44 devices are only set at the request of and with permission from property owners or managers, and that this is the first unintentional take of an animal with an M-44 device in Idaho since 2014.

“The USDA’s statement regarding the horrific incident that happened to my family yesterday is both disrespectful and inaccurate,” Madison said. “The USDA intentionally refers to the brutal killing of our dog as a ‘take’ to render his death trivial and insignificant.”

She continued, “They also claim that the killing of an unintended victim is a rare occurrence, but this is entirely untrue. In fact, this issue is nationally recognized due to the lack of selectivity of cyanide bombs, and there have been many reported incidents in which unintended animals and people have been targeted.”

On March 11 near Casper, Wyoming, a national nonprofit advocacy organization called Predator Defense reported that two families out on a hiking trip, including an 8-year-old girl, watched two of their four canine companions die after uncovering unmarked cyanide devices.

When deploying these “cyanide bombs,” applicators must adhere to several guidelines that include requesting permission from the landowners and posting warning signs in both Spanish and English.

However, Canyon said he did not see any posted signs.

“The guy that planted them there said he got consent,” Canyon said. “And he said he put signs up but I would have noticed it because I go up there all the time.”

There were no obvious warning signs, according to Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen, but as of Friday afternoon, his deputies were still investigating.

“The trapper that set those for the federal government did show up, we were able to interview him and he has disarmed those that are in that area, and hopefully the rest of the county,” Nielsen said.

The identity of the individual who set the cyanide traps could not be confirmed as of Friday afternoon, but Nielsen did confirm the individual is an employee of APHIS.

The Bannock County Sheriff’s Office believes the incident happened on Bureau of Land Management land south of the Mansfield’s property. However, the BLM said Friday the incident did not happen on its land.

“I’ve been sheriff for 20-plus years and I have never heard of these before,” Nielsen said about the cyanide bombs. “It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to have a landmine-type device that disperses cyanide gas.”

Cyanide is notoriously known as one of the fastest-acting poisons to ever exist. Yet it’s so uncommon that the Bannock County Sheriff’s deputies, Canyon’s father, Mark, who is a local doctor, and the doctor at the emergency room didn’t immediately know how to handle the situation.

The poison works by binding to hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells responsible for transporting oxygen throughout the body. It then prevents the cells from using oxygen to make energy molecules. Essentially, cyanide suffocates the victim exposed to it from the inside out.

“Not only is cyanide unethical, the antidote is highly ineffective and can rarely be administered in time to treat it,” Madison said. “My dog suffered as he struggled for breath while my brother stood helplessly nearby. This is not humane, and no animal, dog or coyote should ever be killed in such a gruesome manner.”

APHIS agency records show that more than 3,400 animals have been mistakenly killed by M-44s between 2006 and 2012. These include black bears, bobcats, raccoons, opossums, ravens, ringtails, red fox, gray fox, kit fox, swift fox, turkey vultures and dogs, according to the Sacramento Bee.

At least 18 employees and several members of the public have also been exposed to cyanide over the past 25 years. None died, but many were treated for nausea, blurred vision and other symptoms, the Sacramento Bee reported.

“The placement of these unmarked devices in a residential area without notifying the families and the authorities is grossly negligent,” Madison said. “The individual who placed the bombs is most certainly not ‘highly-trained’ as the USDA claims. If he was, he would have noticed the homes clearly beneath him and this tragedy could have been easily avoided.”

Some of the cyanide devices used to control predator populations are manufactured at Pocatello Supply Depot in Pocatello.

In July 2014, Pocatello Supply Depot transitioned from being a private company and became a fully federalized facility operated exclusively by Wildlife Services, according to documents posted to APHIS’s website.

Canyon’s mother, Theresa Mansfield, said she wants to make the public aware of this situation and doesn’t want to see another pet or child put in danger.

“This is horrific,” Theresa said. “This is like terrorism in my backyard.”

Source: ‘Horrific incident’: Family speaks out after pet dog killed by ‘cyanide bomb’ | Xtreme Idaho | idahostatejournal.com

Antarctica: NASA Images Reveal Traces Of Ancient Human Settlement Underneath 2.3K Of Ice – TheBreakAway

AntarcticaCivilization
WorldNewsDailyReport.com

WASHINGTON | Recently released remote sensing photography of NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission in Antarctica led to a fascinating discovery when images revealed what some experts believe could be the existence of a possible ancient human settlement lying beneath an impressive 2.3 kilometers of ice.

The intriguing discovery was made during aircraft tests trials of NASA’s Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) lidar technology set to be launched on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) in 2017, that aims to monitor changes in polar ice.

“There’s very little margin for error when it comes to individual photons hitting on individual fiber optics, that is why we were so surprised when we noticed these abnormal features on the lidar imagery,” explains Nathan Borrowitz, IceBridge’s project scientist and sea ice researcher with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“As of now we can only speculate as to what these features are but the launching of ICESat-2 in 2017 could lead to other major discoveries and a better understanding of Antarctica’s geomorphological features” he adds.
A human settlement buried under 2.3 km of ice

Leading archeologist, Ashoka Tripathi, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Calcutta believes the images show clear evidence of an ancient human settlement beneath the ice sheet.

“These are clearly features of some sort of human-made structure, resembling some sort of pyramidal structure. The patterns clearly show nothing we should expect from natural geomorphological formations found in nature. We clearly have here evidence of human engineering. The only problem is that these photographs were taken in Antarctica under 2 kilometers of ice. That is clearly the puzzling part, we do not have any explanation for this at the moment,” he admits.

“These pictures just reflect a small portion of Antarctica’s total land mass. There are possibly many other additional sites that are covered over with ice. It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements,” says Dr Tripathi.

Remnants of a lost civilization

Historian and cartographer at the University of Cambridge, Christopher Adam, believes there might be a rationnal explanation.

The map of Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513 AD shows the “ice less” coastline of Antarctica

“One of histories most puzzling maps is that of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513 AD which successfully mapped the coastline of Antarctica over 500 years ago. What is most fascinating about this map is that it shows the coastline of Antarctica without any ice. How is this possible when images of the subglacial coastline of Antarctica were only seen for the first time after the development of ground-penetrating radar in 1958? Is it possible Antarctica has not always been covered under such an ice sheet? This could be evidence that it is a possibility” he acknowledges.

« A slight pole shift or displacement of the axis of rotation of the Earth in historical times is possibly the only rational explanation that comes to mind but we definitely need more research done before we jump to any conclusion.”

ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2), part of NASA’s Earth Observing System, is a planned satellite mission for measuring ice sheet mass elevation, sea ice freeboard as well as land topography and vegetation characteristics, and is set to launch in may 2017.

Equine charities unite | The Donkey Sanctuary

UK equine welfare charities Brooke, The Donkey Sanctuary, SPANA and

World Horse Welfare today announce their first formal coalition.

Formed specifically to put policy into practice, the coalition aims to advise, motivate and support the implementation of the first ever global welfare standards for working horses, donkeys and mules. These landmark standards were approved by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in May 2016 following advocacy and technical support from Brooke and World Horse Welfare.

This is the first time all four major charities have formally joined forces. Although not law, these landmark changes finally give legitimacy to calls for equine welfare to be improved around the world.

Petra Ingram, CEO at Brooke, who spearheaded the formation of the coalition and will be its Chair for the first year, believes that it’s the right vehicle to bring the standards to life: “A respected champion of change can be the difference between success and failure when it comes to implementation. Our message to countries is: let us help; equine welfare is an ally of humanitarian issues.”

With 180 OIE member states now acknowledging the importance of working horses, donkeys and mules, the time is right for coordinated action to implement the standards around the world.

Chief Executive of World Horse Welfare, Roly Owers, said “We know that horses, donkeys and mules are essential to hundreds of millions of human livelihoods, and it is heartening that the world is now recognising their versatility and importance.

“World Horse Welfare looks forward to working in partnership, bringing our influencing skills and 90 years of practical expertise gained helping equines around the world. The scale of the challenge to help 100 million working animals is so large that we must work together to get them the recognition and support they desperately need.”

As world-leading experts in equine welfare with a combined geographic reach covering the major populations of the world’s working equines, the four UK-based charities will provide a unique resource.

The coalition’s goal is to share a wealth of professional expertise and technical know-how by jointly developing training resources and working with governments, academics, communities and professionals to help put the standards into practice within the contexts of different countries, cultures and economies.

Geoffrey Dennis, Chief Executive of SPANA, said: “It is very encouraging that there is now international recognition for the working equines that play a fundamental role in supporting the livelihoods of millions of families worldwide.

“Through veterinary treatment, education and training for animal owners, SPANA works to improve the welfare of these vitally important horses, donkeys and mules across many countries. We are looking forward to working in partnership to ensure that the new standards are translated into practical support and action that makes a tangible difference to working animals and the communities that depend on them.”

The coalition’s work will use the skills the four organisations have in welfare assessment training; building capacity in equine owning communities; equipping service providers (including farriers, saddlers and vets) with the skills and tools required to provide affordable quality services. It supports universities in curriculum development, and postgraduate vets with continuing professional development; as well as raising awareness of the importance of working equids to human livelihoods with policy makers.

Mike Baker, CEO of The Donkey Sanctuary, said: “This is a fantastic milestone in global equine welfare standards. Our new coalition will really maximise welfare improvements as we share our skills, resources and experience. Millions of donkeys, horses and mules work extremely hard every day and it will be wonderful to highlight how vital they are for their human owners and communities.”

Source: Equine charities unite | The Donkey Sanctuary

Dana Perino: How I reset my heart (after a brutal election) — My visit to Mercy Ships | Fox News

By Dana Perino

Published March 16, 2017

FoxNews.com

Last October, after an intense, bizarre and exhausting day covering the election, I came home and told my husband Peter I needed to regroup.

I was suffocating from superficiality. I needed to reset my heart, reconnect with him, and do something together as a couple to the benefit of other people.

So we booked a five-day trip. Our destination: Cotonou, Benin in West Africa, to visit Mercy Ships.

Mercy Ships is a surgical hospital ship whose mission is to bring health and healing to the forgotten poor. We’ve been involved with the group for several years. For this visit, we brought along Erin Landers, the sole employee of Dana Perino and Company. She’d never been to Africa, and it was fun to watch it through her eyes. “Did you see that?!” She loved it. And then some.

I wrote this on the long flight home:

The trip to Benin was our second visit to Mercy Ships. The first was in August 2013 when the ship was in Pointe Noir, Congo. We were there for the screening day, before the surgeries even started, when 7,500 people lined up hoping to be a candidate to be cured of what ailed them.

Some problems are not fixed by surgery, like cerebral palsy. Watching the gentle way the nurses turned non-surgical cases away was heart wrenching. But they were also able to say yes to many, and we shared their relief and joy as they moved on to scheduling. (As an example of how much need there is in this part of the world, Mercy Ships filled up all nine months of goiter surgeries before noon on screening day.)

That day, a little boy, two-years-old, was in and out of consciousness and the people in line raised up their arms and passed him to the front. His name was Emanuel.

A doctor looked at him and couldn’t see anything wrong — until she asked him to open his mouth. There was a tumor growing on his palate that was obstructing his breathing. The doctors got him stable, and Emanuel was the first to be operated on during the ship’s stay in Congo.

The surgeon was a friend we made on the ship, Dr. Mark Shrime (Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology and of Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School). Dr. Shrime volunteers two months a year on the ship, which he has that written into his contract (note to self).

When I talked to him in the fall of 2016, he said he’d be back on the ship in March, so we booked our trip to overlap with his.

At dinner one night, I asked how Emanuel was. Unfortunately, no one knows. They haven’t heard anything since he was treated.

We know he was a healthy and happy boy when he left the ship, and that he was loved by his mom and dad who were there by his side. But it’s also Africa — follow up is difficult, though technology will help the ship try to stay in contact with patients in the future.

We agreed that we must find out how Emanuel is doing. Someone at the table had a friend who was still there, and they knew someone who worked at the port where Emanuel’s dad worked. Six degrees of separation applies in Africa, too. I bet Dr. Shrime that he and Emanuel would be reconnected by April.

There were several volunteers still on the ship that we’d met on our first trip. Some of them stay for many years. All of them raise money from their churches and communities, including online ones, and they pay a ship’s fee to cover their expenses.

Some people, like Keith Brinkman, have spent 28 years on the ship — what a career he’s had (and one of his financial supporters follows me on Twitter. How about that!).

Others, like Dr. Shrime, come when they can. Surgeons, dentists, anesthesiologists and ophthalmologists, for example, can come for as little as two weeks, while other jobs require a longer commitment due to training requirements or for teachers.

One of the full-timers that works in the operating room says he loves having visiting surgeons on the ship, but if they are there for two weeks they want to work 24/7 and get as much done as possible, which means the others don’t get a day or two to recharge. And one of the reasons they brought their families on the ship was to have more time with them. There’s a lot of what we used to call “forced family fun!”

In Benin there’s a cultural custom that family members wear the same pattern of traditional African clothing. The ship knows a few tailors who come on and make special outfits for everyone.

When we went out one night, several of the couples dressed in matching clothes. When in Benin! (Though Peter, Erin and I had a bit of a uniform, too – khakis and blue shirts. “YOBOS!”, we learned, is the nickname for white people — it wasn’t an insult; rather more playful and we laughed, too).

We made some new friends, too — including a young woman named Renee Joubarne from Canada who is relatively new to Mercy Ships and works in the communications office.

She patiently drove us everywhere and served as our interpreter. Her first service was in Madagascar. Next stop, Cameroon. We told her that back in the States, they’d call her a “Girl Boss.” She isn’t prideful, but I think she kind of loved that title.

We met nurses from Michigan. One of them is going back at the end of this field service to work as a travel nurse and pay down her student loans. Her girlfriend opted to stay on and will work in Cameroon as a ward nurse.

The head operating room nurse is from Holland and such a great leader — I’d follow her anywhere.

The galley staff is amazing — they make so much food, buying local when they can, cooking birthday cakes for celebrations, making sure anyone with a food allergy has some options, and being so cheerful about it all.

The captain is John Barrow from Australia. Quite a character.

When we were touring the ship’s bridge, I said “What’s it like to be captain of a ship that stays in port for nine months at a time?”

He was a good sport and laughed.

Captain Barrow and his wife are raising two boys on the ship.

“What’s the hardest part about that?” I asked.

“Boys want to run. But there’s no running on the ship. And as the rule enforcer for everyone on the ship, I’m always telling them to stop running!” he said.

Captain Barrow said that recruiting for non-medical staff was really important, because without the support staff (both on and off the ship), the medical team can’t do their work.

For example, he said that they really needed a car mechanic for their fleet of vehicles. I asked if they’d tried to tap into returning veterans who want to continue doing good work with organized, meaningful missions, and he thought that sounded like a good idea.

So that night during a live hit with “The Five,” I made an appeal for a car mechanic. Well, the next day there was an application in from a 25-year-old veteran with the required skills who said he was interested in the job.

The night we left, he caught me in the hall and said, “You’re a woman that’s good for your word.”

Well, it’s better than being good for nothing!” I said.

I hope I see him again one day.

There was also Timmy Baskerville, who started as a mechanic and ended up on the communications team as a photographer. Remember his name — his art is powerful. He started on the ship doing one job and ended up realizing he had a hidden talent and has a future as an artist.

I loved talking with the dentist from Peru, and the couple from Pennsylvania who sold everything and decided to give this a go because retirement felt like a death sentence.

I also enjoyed a couple from Oklahoma that is raising their three kids on Mercy Ships. The father is an anesthesiologist who could make a big salary in the States, but they wanted this experience for their family.

Their 11-year-old son agreed to do an interview for my package on Fox News, but he had a question for me, too. I said, go ahead ask me anything. But he got too shy and looked to his mom for help.

It turns out he wondered if I knew anyone in the States that might be willing to donate some AstroTurf that can be rolled or folded up and put away to be stored on the ship. The only place for them to play is on the dock and he wants to play “American football” (not just soccer and frisbee).

“Who’s your team?” I asked.

“The Seahawks,” he said.

“Is that allowed when you’re from Oklahoma?”

“Well, I don’t want to support the Cowboys!”

“How about the Broncos then? That’s my team.”

He scoffed.

“Ok, the Seahawks it is.”

I told him I didn’t know any company off the top of my head that made that kind of AstroTurf project but that I would ask. I posted it on Facebook with a photograph of the cement dock where the kids play. The first response came immediately from a man who works for Shaw and said, “I think we can do that.” Lesson: don’t be afraid to ask.

The kids living on board attend a school called The Mercy Ships Academy. There are thirty-five students, from nursery school to 11th grade. The classes are taught in English. On my tour, I met fifth graders learning synonyms and eighth graders building apps.

I talked with a social studies teacher that was creating lessons about different forms of government.

One of my favorite teachers is Miss Beth Kirchner, who used to work for Disney and can draw Mickey for her students to color in. Dave is their principal — he’s from Australia. Wonderful chap. He’s leaving in a couple of months and the school needs a new principal ASAP (hint hint) so that the kids can keep attending the school on the ship with their parents. Otherwise they’d have to go to boarding school. “Do not want” is an understatement.

I met a William Wolfenberger from Kansas in his early 20’s who works in the engine room on the ship – before this job he’d never been on a boat or seen the ocean. The second youngest on board, he’s grown a beard and seems to always be in a good mood, even when we were talking about the cabin he had where his towels never completely dried.

He is friends with Tyler Shroyer, a young man from Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Tyler spent his time on the ship studying business and will be going back this year, the oldest of seven boys, to help his father grow his concrete company. He also has a blog called “From the Barnyard to Benin.”

For Christmas this year, he sold his beard at an auction — they get creative with gifts. Whoever won got to dye the beard purple or pink (he has red hair). The cost of this item? $25.

“So, if I put up $26, I could get you out of it?” I asked.

“Yes, I suppose you could,” he said, a bit hopeful.

“Not that I’m going to,” I said. “I don’t want to spoil the fun.”

There was a girl named Anna Psiaki. Tall and willowy, long blond hair. She’s from upstate New York, one of nine children. She’s a writer on the ship — a poet, too.

Her team says she’s the first to get to know all the locals and has amazing stories of how people just invite her in for a meal, ask her to babysit their children and make her special gifts.

We saw her off the ship, too, at the French Institute where a jazz concert was playing. She was wearing a red sweater despite the heat. It was hideous and I said so.

“It’s meant to be!” she said.

It was an ugly Christmas sweater a friend had left behind on the ship. She wore it with no inhibitions. Anna is fully herself. I admire and envy that.

“What number were you out of the nine?” I asked her.

“I was the fifth,” she said.

“So no one paid attention to you?”

“I don’t think anyone even knows I’m in Africa.”

That was one of the funniest things I heard on the ship.

Then there was nine-year-old (almost 10!) Harry. His dad is the second engineer who served in the Navy for New Zealand. Harry, according to his dad, “loves the ladies.” He was not shy about saying hello and telling me all sorts of things.

“You are quite something!” I said. “You have a way with words.”

“Well, my mom says I can be about as diplomatic as a starving rhinoceros.”

“Can I use that line back home on ‘The Five’?”

Permission granted. I started wondering who’d that best describe back in the States.

We met a British couple that really should have their own reality show. Ally and Amy Jones. He’s the human resources director and she’s the Nurse and Medical Capacity Building Manager. Everyone loves these two and their great senses of humor.

Ally even took Peter surfing one morning. Well, Peter said it wasn’t really “surfing.” It was more like “fell off a short board over and over again.” The waves are rough in West Africa, but the temperature was perfect.

The night before, Amy was the designated driver to get me back to the ship in time to do my Fox News TV hit. We had to leave early, and our vehicle was blocked in. The parking attendants shrugged and looked around without meeting our eyes. But Amy was determined to get me back to the ship. The guys got one car moved. That left about 14 feet of space for a 15-foot long vehicle. She started maneuvering the vehicle. The men were all yelling instructions at her in different languages (she speaks English, French and some of the local language, Fon). The French military guard across the street came over to assist – these guys seemed bemused by this red headed woman driving a big SUV. She was confident. When she gunned it, the military guy jumped out of the way and the others all were shocked into laughter and a little bit of cheers. We made it with about a centimeter of space on each side. I kept saying, “Don’t worry, Amy. If I miss my hit, this will be the best reason EVER.” She was another Girl Boss. And one with a huge heart.

They’ll be leaving the ship soon for Amy to give birth to their first baby. Ally told me her condition upon agreeing to marry him was that he had to be comfortable living out of a suitcase. She loves to get off the ship and work in the village, while he likes being on board (with air conditioning and showers). A perfect match.

“Is the baby going to have to live out of one suitcase, too? I asked.

“Yes,” Ally said. “Well, ok, maybe two.”

They’ll be great parents.

Besides meeting new people, we got to see a lot more this time as the ship has been in port for about nine months and is preparing to leave this summer.

The hospital wards were full. Dr. Shrime performed four surgeries our first morning (Peter and Erin went in and filmed, while I shied away and dealt with motion sickness that morning — which is not the same as having morning sickness, so let’s not start any rumors).

We went to a celebration of sight where seventy patients that very week had gone from blind to seeing in just a couple of days. They danced and told their entire stories – no one summarized (we had to duck out or we’d have been there all day).

Then we visited patients in the outpatient tents who were having physical therapy to make sure everything was going well after their surgeries. It’s not of much use to have a skin graft to repair a burn if you don’t do the exercises to ensure range of motion. I was impressed by the care — from start to finish. No one is urged to go home before they’re ready.

The most powerful event was a New Dress ceremony held for three women who had their fistulas repaired on the ship. I am particularly interested in helping to heal women who have a fistula after their pregnancies.

I first became aware of it at the Aberdeen Clinic in Sierra Leone where women there stayed for three weeks and got to attend classes. The day I was there, they were learning to count to ten. Pause. Think of that. Learning to count to ten after you’ve already had at least one baby, probably more.

The patients get a new dress after their fistula surgery to celebrate the fact that they’re now healed. That morning on the ship, it was standing room only. The chaplain led the worship, the band played songs, and the patients and volunteers sang and danced. One of the songs lasted for twelve minutes — it had a good beat, and I was kind of bummed when it finished.

I was amazed that each of these women felt confident and strong enough to stand up in front of all of us, with no inhibitions, and give a speech — many fistula sufferers are ostracized for their condition and withdraw from society. Often they have their children taken away from them. They become broken, just shells of their former selves.

The first patient said she’d suffered from the condition for nineteen years — more than half of her life. She’d been shunned and no medical care was able to address her problem. Until the ship.

“Hallelujah!” she said. Indeed.

Then she led everyone in another song. I didn’t know the words, but I clapped and danced next to the patient who had beat me in Connect Four twice the day before.

“Rematch?” he said with his eyes.

“You bet,” I nodded. He was good though. A Connect Four ringer.

Despite those bits of humor, I cried for the entire ceremony — for their suffering, for the guilt of not being able to do more for them, and for the women who will not get this chance of a surgical remedy.

But mainly, mine were tears of joy. And maybe some tears of relief that my heart wasn’t as hard as it felt by the end of the election season. Then more guilt because with that thought I was making this about me. Is there no end to our self-absorption?

One of the African volunteers (a full-timer on the ship) who saw my tears stepped out to get me a tissue, a sweet gesture that, guess what? Made me cry even more.

As I tried to pull myself together, I was surprised to be called up to present one of the women with a gift. As self-conscious as I was since I really didn’t do anything to make her repair a reality, I wanted her to know how I felt.

I gave her an enthusiastic hug and she hugged me back as women who just understand each other.

“I’m so happy for you,” I said.

She didn’t speak English, but she knew what I meant.

She kissed my cheeks four times. Four is better than two in Benin.

At the end of the ceremony, the nurse in charge of the women’s clinic said to them. “All we ask is that when you leave here today, let God walk with you. You are not alone.” Yes, please do that. Don’t walk alone.

On Saturday, the ship held a party for kids from a local orphanage called Arbre de Vie, which means “tree of life”. The young couple that runs the orphanage is from Ohio. Ashley and John Reeves.

Ashley wore a black sleeveless dress, wedged sandals and a red straw hat. I liked her style. She held a toddler boy named Codjo. He called her mommy.

I wondered if they all did, but no, Ashley and John are adopting him.

He was brought to the orphanage when he was twenty days old. His mother had had a C-section and was sent home. But the placenta was still inside. Oh. Oh dear. What a tragic end to her young life. Story after story like this in Africa.

The orphanage has about thirty children under its care at any one time. They live way outside the city. I hear the place is joyous. They do all they can with what they have. They just got electricity last summer and a new kitchen, but their staff still prefers to cook outside over a fire. It probably does taste better anyway.

One of Ashley and John’s other kids is ready to go to university and wants to study medicine. They’ve done so many great things so far in their life, and being around people like that can make you really question your contribution to the world.

As we walked together after an interview, she thanked me for spreading the word.

“Well, none of us ever feels like we do enough,” I said.

She stopped walking, we shifted the babies we were holding from one hip to the other.

She said gently, “But you’re here. And not everyone can be here. You have unique talents that will help us be able to stay behind and do even more.”

I nodded, speechless, and was glad I was wearing sunglasses.

THE HOPE CENTER

Martha Rodriguez runs the Hope Center. She changed her name badge with a pen to go from public service to public servant. She grew up in Michigan and then worked for a chemical company in Houston.

She retired but wasn’t ready to settle. She was ready to do. And doing ended up being taking the lead at the Mercy Ships Hope Center. When she took us on a tour, she was full of joy and energy. “Can you believe I get to live here and do this?”

She loved every bit of it — the local day crew she hired all greeted her with big smiles. The children ran to her. The mamas met her gaze that to me said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The cooks make over 300 meals a day out of an outdoor kitchen, and they were washing beautiful lettuce leaves and had a huge bowl full of avocados (I kind of wanted one but I didn’t dare).

At one table, patients ready for surgery in the coming week were eating with their fingers, some with gigantic tumors on their faces that would be gone by Friday. In the heat, in their discomfort, they all stood to greet her, smiling. (Can you believe I got to come and see this?).

At the laundry area, several kids — some patients, others siblings or children of patients — played with whatever was handy — a stick, a broken race car.

I gave one little girl Felt Jasper to hold and she rubbed the soft material all over her face, put his pink Barbie stethoscope in his ears. Then the children saw Erin and the camera equipment and in unison they asked for what kids the world over want – a selfie! It turns out even little babies in Africa know how to swipe a phone.

Martha is an attractive woman. She has a long pony tail, letting her hair turn a lovely grey.

I thought I’d like to do that one day. Run a Hope Center and have pretty hair I don’t have to worry about coloring. And to have a heart that big.

As we were leaving to go back to the ship, an older couple came to the door. The husband was blind, walking with a cane and being led by his wife. They’d traveled from up country and said they were there to be pre-screened for his surgery. The problem was they were a day early and the center was full. It was only 2 p.m., and Martha said she’d figure it out, not to turn them away yet.

In the car, she called someone and explained that they’d come a long distance and needed a bed. But she was told there wasn’t a room that night and that they believed couple had a place to stay, perhaps with family.

Martha said good-bye and then, to no one in particular, said, “But they’ve traveled so far. There has to be a way. How could we turn them away?”

“I could never. Ever,” I said from the back seat, admiring and wanting to be more like her.

She was here and she was doing.

What was I doing?

A word about Benin. I’ve traveled to many countries in Africa, and to me Benin felt the most hopeful. It has a new president with a business background who is focused on the economy and expects results.

“But I am wearing the helmet, officer!”

I kind of appreciate the mix of compliance and defiance. But I do hope they start to wear their helmets.

With a stable government and a young population (65 percent of the country is under 35), and decent infrastructure in the main cities (that’s all relative in Africa), the city feels alive. And fairly safe.

Cotonou is the economic capital, and we ate at an Indian restaurant, Shamiana, whose pappadam were better than any I’ve had in the States.

Ouidah is the cultural city where millions of slaves died or passed through the Gate of No Return before the terrifying trip over the Atlantic.

When we were there, busloads of schoolchildren were there on field trips. They were colorful, loud, and funny.

Looked to me just like kids look anywhere. I got a photograph from behind as they all gathered at the sea, many of them seeing the ocean for the first time. And I wished them well — that they’d have peace and opportunity and that they’d keep giggling like that.

Finally, we met the U.S. Ambassador, Lucy Tamlyn and her husband Jorge Serpa, wonderful representatives of the USA in a country that aligns with America’s interest for freedom and opportunity. They are wonderful people who have both dedicated their lives to foreign service.

Peter and I feel lucky to know them – they have the best stories! (Like when Jorge was evacuated in Chad…TWICE). I finished my trip feeling like Benin had a hopeful future.

And not to be left behind on the ship, I took Caleb Biney with me. Caleb is fourteen and lives on the ship with his family. He’s a part of Scholastic’s young journalism program, and was able to interview Amb. Tamlyn for an article for Scholastic’s News Kids magazine. He was also taller than both of us.

As we left the ship, I told Peter I want my obituary to say, “Loved hellos. Hated goodbyes.”

Humans can make friends easily, if they are open to it and are interested in other people. There’s so much cultural and language diversity on the ship, but we all bonded over something that means a lot more than anything else I do every day — to serve others who need our help, and to do it selflessly and joyously.

It’s actually rather simple. It just took traveling halfway around the world for me to be reminded of it.

We accomplished what we set out to do — reset our priorities and reconnected with each other.

And now…back to our previously scheduled program, but with lighter hearts and renewed enthusiasm for the things that really matter.

Dana Perino currently serves as co-host of FOX News Channel’s “The Five” (weekdays 5-6PM/ET). She previously served as Press Secretary for President George W. Bush. She is the author of the new book “Let Me Tell You about Jasper : How My Best Friend Became America’s Dog” (October 25, 2016). Ms. Perino joined the network in 2009 as a contributor. Click here for more information on Dana Perino. Follow her on Twitter@DanaPerino.

Source: Dana Perino: How I reset my heart (after a brutal election) — My visit to Mercy Ships | Fox News

Yellowstone and Montana are Killing the Last Wild Buffalo

More than 1,200 of America’s last wild buffalo have been killed this winter, and it isn’t over yet. Hunting along Yellowstone’s boundaries has taken the lives of more than 400 buffalo. Hunters are still in the field making kills. It’s a terrible time of year to hunt. The buffalo — like other wild grazers — have used up all of their fat stores, and are showing ribs and bony hips, waiting for the re-greening of the Earth so they can again replenish their huge bodies. This is also the time of year when the long, harsh winter takes her toll, too. There will be many buffalo who will not survive into spring, but the government is not accounting for these deaths in their mad rush to reduce this most significant and vulnerable population. Further, hunters are still killing adult female buffalo who will begin having their calves in about six weeks. All too often, BFC patrols make heartbreaking discoveries of finding fully-formed baby buffalo in their mother’s gut piles.

Additionally, Yellowstone National Park — shamefully complicit in Montana’s livestock industry’s war against wild buffalo — has captured close to 800 buffalo, all of whom have been or will be sent to slaughter. The trap is emptying quickly, though Yellowstone continues to attempt to capture. Recently, some buffalo have resisted these attempts, while others have not been so lucky. On Monday in Gardiner, BFC patrols documented as five Yellowstone wranglers on horseback tried to trap fifty-five buffalo; all but one got away, running to the hills for their lives. The unfortunate mama buffalo who was trapped caught the attention of another family group of twenty-two. Coming dangerously close to the trap, they sealed their own fate as the wranglers, hungry to capture, took advantage of the situation. Hundreds of wild buffalo are gone forever. BFC’s Mike Mease and Stephany Seay attended the second media tour of Yellowstone’s trap last Thursday, where we again witnessed Yellowstone park rangers, wranglers, and biologists doing the service of the Montana Department of Livestock as they loaded wild buffalo onto stock trailers headed for the slaughterhouse, then proceeded to move more through the trap. It has become business as usual for these buffalo abusers, just another day in the park. They tell us that they don’t like doing this, that they want slaughter to end, but their actions say something else. Yellowstone National Park is not without significant power, but they have shown they are without courage. They can stand up to Montana and refuse to participate. But they don’t. Their cold routine of capturing, testing, sorting, and shipping the country’s national mammal to a horrific death — as they don the image of this sacred being on their uniforms and rake in millions from the people who come to adore them — has become just another day at work. They attempt to put the task of change on the public, shirking responsibility for their part in these crimes. While it is true that a current Montana law – MCA 81-2-120 — is the driver behind the cumulative mismanagement plans and practices, Yellowstone should not have the luxury of of passing the buck. The world’s most well-known national park has astounding influence that they choose not to use. Instead, they kill America’s last wild buffalo. By the end of March, this should all be over.

Please continue to keep pressure on Montana and Yellowstone. Do not ease up. Be relentless and don’t accept their excuses. Laws, decisions, and management plans can be changed.
* Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk 307-344-2002
* Montana Governor Steve Bullock 406-444-3111

And contact your members of Congress to tell them that this must end once and for all. Congress holds the purse strings and can end the funding.

The coming of spring is beginning to benefit the buffalo, and we are thankful. The Gardiner Basin is swiftly losing all of its snow and the earth is beginning to turn green again. This is encouraging buffalo to migrate away from the vicinity of the trap and away from the boundary where hunters still wait. In the Hebgen Basin, west of the park, however, there is still a significant amount of snow covering the ground. It’s beginning to melt, and south-facing slopes are opening up, but with so much snow there’s still a long way to go. Buffalo here are making their living along creeks and rivers, eating the sedges that are exposed. Soon spring migration will begin in earnest, as family groups — hopefully by the hundreds — will make their way to their calving grounds around Horse Butte. BFC patrols will soon shift our focus to the highway, helping to warn motorists as the buffalo move through this important corridor to their birthing grounds. The Montana Department of Transportation has recently installed new 55mph signs for night time drivers, but without enforcement this change will not benefit buffalo very much. A few other mitigation measures have been or will soon be put into place as well, including new wording on three marquee signs that alert drivers to “BISON” on the road, as well as an incident alert for a mobile app to alert truckers and other travelers that they should expect buffalo on the road along this section of highway. These things will help, but safe passage infrastructure is the only thing that will make a real and lasting difference. Until then, and as we always are, BFC will be out day and night helping to warn traffic, trying to keep the buffalo safe.

BLM Seeks Public Comment on Plan to Rip More than 1,000 Wild Horses Out Of Wyoming | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

“This is Your Chance to be a Voice for the Horses…”

Destruction of Wyoming’s Adobe Town herd by the BLM ~ photo by Carol Walker of Wild Horse Freedom Federation

The Bureau of Land Management offices in Rock Springs and Rawlins are launching a 30-day public scoping period prior to preparing an environmental assessment on proposed deadly wild horse stampedes in the Salt Wells Creek, Adobe Town, and Great Divide Basin Herd Management Areas.

The war on Wyoming’s last remaining wild horses is allegedly scheduled to begin in the fall of 2017.

Written comments should be received by April 4, and should be e-mailed to blm_wy_adobetown_saltwells_hma@blm.gov. (Please include “2017 AML Gather” in the subject line).

Mailed or hand-delivered comments can be made during regular business hours (7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. local time) at: BLM Rock Springs Field Office, 2017 AML Gather, 280 Highway 191 North, Rock Springs, WY 82901.

To verbally express your disdain, please contact the BLM at 307-352-0256.

For more details on how the BLM plans to destroy wild horse families and strip them of their freedom visit (HERE)

Source: BLM Seeks Public Comment on Plan to Rip More than 1,000 Wild Horses Out Of Wyoming | Straight from the Horse’s Heart

New Rule Tightens Canadian Horse Processing Imports | TheHorse.com

By Pat Raia
Mar 15, 2017

Beginning in March 31, all horses imported from the United States into horse processing plants in Canada must be held in U.S.-side feedlots for a minimum of six months. The regulation is intended to address food safety concerns expressed by European Union (EU) buyers.

While some equine welfare advocates hope the regulation will increase paperwork and decrease profits for exporters of horses into Canadian processing firms, others believe the rule won’t reduce the number of horses exported for processing every year.

Under the new regulation, exporters must certify in writing that the U.S. horses exported into Canada for processing haven’t received any drugs within the prior 60 days. But said horse welfare advocate Jerry Finch, founder of Habitat for Horses, the horse-processing industry has long had a reputation for falsifying paperwork connected to exported horses.

“False documentation (has) been a proven fact for years, yet nothing is ever done about it, so any such regulation is nothing more than a PR effort to make the consumer believe they are receiving the very best horsemeat available; like so much of the food supply, the image of wholesome, healthy, and safe food is a far cry from the reality,” said Finch. “The killer-buyers simply sign the form, the buyers for the slaughterhouse sign it, and done deal. A horse bought at the racetrack in Kentucky on Monday will still be in the food chain by Wednesday.”

The Canadian regulation mirrors one long in place at processing plants in Mexico, which did not eliminate the EU’s food safety concerns. After a 2014 audit, the EU’s Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) banned the sale of horsemeat processed in Mexico on grounds that exporters falsified processed animals’ medical and drug treatment records.

An uptick in sales to Russian and Chinese markets resulted, said horse processing proponent Dave Duquette. He expects the same after the Canadian rule become effective.

“All the ban did was up sales to Russia and China–and they don’t have the same welfare (regulations) as the EU or that we do,” Duquette said. “The regulation is a (horse) welfare issue, and it lessens the welfare of horses.”

Tom Lenz, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACT, said that an estimated 5 million horses are processed for human consumption worldwide each year.

“The last time I checked, China was processing roughly 2.5 million horses a year for food,” he said.

Meanwhile, the number of U.S. horses exported to both Mexico and Canada has stabilized between 130,000-150,000 per year, he said.

“I don’t see that changing much,” Lenz said.

In any case, Lenz said import/export rules won’t make tracking the number of U.S. horses exported for slaughter any easier in the future.

“It’s my understanding that starting this year the U.S. Department of Agriculture is no longer keeping track of the number of horses exported for slaughter,” Lenz said. “So, we really won’t know in the future if the numbers are increasing or decreasing no matter what regulations are established on either the Canadian or Mexican side.”

About the Author

Pat Raia

Pat Raia is a veteran journalist who enjoys covering equine welfare, industry, and news. In her spare time, she enjoys riding her Tennessee Walking Horse, Sonny.

Source: New Rule Tightens Canadian Horse Processing Imports | TheHorse.com