Wild Horse Conservation

About the show

A lifelong student and admirer of American wild horses, Scott Beckstead is a leading voice for wild herds in his role as director of campaigns for the Center for a Humane Economy and Animal Wellness Action. He grew up with horses on his family's farm and spent much of his childhood and youth on horseback in the mountains of Idaho. He reported on the increasing wave of wild horse round-ups (with more planned for this year) and problems inside the government corrals. Last summer, Beckstead said he and his group were trying to prevent the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) round-up of the Onaqui herd. At the site, he was emotionally moved by seeing the herd all move as one, and then saddened that he was unable to halt their capture. The horses lost their freedom to an agency that has grown out of control and beyond any sort of accountability, he remarked.

The government claims that the 80,000 wild horses (over 40 million acres) are too large of a population to sustain. The BLM is heavily influenced by the livestock industry, which wants the grazing land for their cattle and sheep (who outnumber the horses by 100 to 1), and they view wild horses as an "invasive species" akin to pests, he stated. The BLM has doubled downed on its campaign to rid our public lands of wild horses, "using the pretext of drought and climate change," Beckstead said. Their helicopter round-ups are particularly cruel, he added.

After the horses are captured, they are brought to a holding facility such as the one at Canyon City, CO. Nearly 150 horses died of an outbreak of equine influenza there, as they weren't vaccinated after arriving at the facility-- what should have been a standard procedure, he noted. Serious illness has affected horses at other facilities as well, he reported. "Conditions at the holding facilities are filthy, overcrowded, and disease-ridden," Beckstead declared. The BLM offers an adoption incentive program, which pays individuals up to $1000 a head to adopt up to 4 horses. After one year, they get a certificate of title, and "so, what's happening is unscrupulous adopters...after the year passes, they take the horses straight to the slaughter auctions and get paid again," he lamented.

UFO Hearing Update

In the first hour, George Knapp shared UFO updates and was then joined by investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell to discuss UFO footage and congressional hearings on the topic. Navy witnesses at the hearing said that either bokeh or infrared effects caused the visual footage of strange pyramid-shaped UFOs, and the objects were actually drones. Yet, how did these so-called drones have the capability to move at speeds that far exceed our ability, Corbell pondered. "They really want to label this something, push it under the rug, and walk away," he added. "It set a really bad tone for where this whole study is going to go...if they're already lying right to the faces of members of Congress," George commented. They also spoke about Skinwalker Ranch, and George's appearance in the season finale of the TV series, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.

KNAPP'S NEWS:

George Knapp shared recent items of interest, including articles about Steven Spielberg's UFO superstitions, and a new finding in a theory of consciousness:

Guests