Thank YOU! Zinke resigns, but more work to do!

By Laura Leigh on December 15, 2018

Fish Creek

We want to thank all of our readers that have helped to keep the pressure on the investigations into the Department of Interior. Ryan Zinke, former Secretary of the Interior, has resigned.

Washington Post: President Trump announced Zinke’s exit via Twitter Saturday morning… Administration officials concluded weeks ago that Zinke was the Cabinet member most vulnerable to congressional investigations once Democrats took control of Congress in January.

This was not unexpected. We told you that we felt he would leave by the end of the year. We did not expect it to be announced via Tweet.

The probe into Interior must not stop with Zinke.

The Interior dept. is not “one man,” it is a web of politics in the friends and family club. The activities that happened prior to Zinke’s appointment, the ones that landed him in that chair, include ties to a faction that has used intimidation and threats to gain control.

The House probes, when they begin next year, must include the wild horse program and the extremely dirty politics that have even swept away mandatory penalties under the law, under the rug. Many of these individuals have long standing ties with the pro horse slaughter movement and “Summit of the Horse” has been a hub for the “who’s who” of corruption.

Ryan Zinke carried horse slaughter as a Congressman from Montana. Those ties extend deep into a group that funded the takeover of Mahluer and Bunkerville.

John Ruhs, former Nevada State Director, was also rewarded for his service to this corrupt mechanism and promoted to the DC office; first as an acting Deputy Director and then, after an extremely embarrassing moment defending the report on National Monuments to Senator Martin Heinrich, was slipped over to run Fire and Aviation (keeping Ruhs in the highest career level for his pension). The move to head Fire and Aviation really upset Congressman Amodei who had a very close relationship with Ruhs in NV and he became vocal, even swearing, at a county meeting.

The report on National Monuments gained a lot of attention and was proven to be a litany of manipulation and fabrication to forward agenda.

The report presented earlier this year to BLM on the Wild Horse and Burro Program is simply a shopping list with flimsy manipulation justifications, the same as the report on National Monuments. (please read here)

This report was crafted by the “Summit of the Wild Horse,” an event that so not one pro wild horse group present. This summit was a glossy finish on a pile of years years of manipulation by those that aid and abet extremism; including John Ruhs.

We know the nations attention is going to turn to Zinke’s proposed, as yet unannounced, replacement and Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, who will take over in the interim.

The broad brush of the big picture is critical and anyone stepping into this position will have identical connections, yet may not be as arrogant and blatant as Zinke, and will deserve an incredibly hard look. If the former Senator from NV, Dean Heller, throws his hat in that ring we hope that Heller’s ties get a good probe.

Those that sit in any position of power, and abuse that position for personal gain, violate the law. Many of them have cause extreme degradation of the landscape, misuse of government funding and real fear in those that have been subjected to their whims.

Wild horses are often a footnote and that has been a critical error; the wild horse program has almost been built, not to manage wild horses, but to satisfy a political base and is used, so often, in the card game of politics. This has had serious ramifications to a public resource, wild horses, and to those that do all they can to work toward the law (both public and internal).

We believed Zinke’s resignation would come in the last week of 2018. We thank you again for all the FAX’a and calls you have made the last two years. Over 30,000 of or readers signed onto support the probe into Interior. That probe does not end with Zinke departing.

Several advocacy groups welcomed his departure Saturday, even as they pivoted to attack Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, who will take over in the interim. (Washington Post)

But the frame Zinke built needs dismantling. The actions of those individuals prior to their move up the ladder must not be allowed to remain.

Brian Steed, Deputy Director of BLM, was the former Chief of Staff of Chris Stewart (R-UT) and helped author the “kill and spay” we see in Appropriations battles before he left his post in Stewarts office and it is not based on science and data, it;s based on dirty politics. Steed was appointed by Zinke and given the authority of the Director of BLM (a potentially illegal move in and of itself).

John Ruhs was moved up the ladder after gifts to the Grass March, Summit of the Horse, removing mandatory legal penalties for those involved in the livestock industry after infractions against wild horses, a list of creating a volatile environment on the ground that has an amazing paper trail including conducting, dirty, government business through Facebook private messaging.

Any action, policy, protocol. memo proposed under Zinke must be given serious scrutiny. Removing his face off the leadership chart does not delete his actions.

As an organization that has attempted every single legal option to create an honest, sound and safe environment for our wild horses we know that will never be possible within the current system that has been empowered to completely ignore you, lie to you and intimidate you.

That will not stop with the departure of Ryan Zinke. The investigations can not stop into the “House built by politics and friends and family” that is entrenched in land management agencies.

Laws mean absolutely nothing in public lands management. Only if you catch it, bring it forward, have the fortitude to withstand the backlash and litigate is the law even part of “management.”

The House will switch political control in a few short weeks. We will have several action items for you, again. There are many that use these politcal games for personal gain and speak one way in public and another in private as they move agendas forward that hurt wild horses over and over again. This exists on all fronts; “boots on the ground,” do they mean their Valentino boots they wear at cocktail parties?

We sincerely thank all of you that have walked these very dark last two years with us. We have a few more miles to go… there will be more in our personal year end message soon.

Be careful out there.

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