Wait, What Does That Stand For?
The subject line of the email that reached my inbox after hours yesterday certainly got my attention.
“BLM to host wild horse and burro event in Windom, Minnesota — by appointment only”, it read.
I thought that was odd, given what I thought Black Lives Matter stood for, at least based on their more recent events.
But in this case, BLM is an acronym for the federal Bureau of Land Management. And the event is a wild horse and burro placement event today and tomorrow, offering for sale some 60 so-called “excess animals” gathered from western rangelands.
The BLM’s Adoption Incentive Program was designed to help improve rangeland health in overpopulated areas. Pay an adoption fee of $25, and you can get up to $1,000 if you hold on to the animal for a certain period of time.
For 75 years, the Bureau of Land Management has been around, and naturally, you’d call it BLM. But they may want to rethink that in light of the…well, “other” BLM. Doesn’t matter who was there first.
We used to hear the acronym “DHS” and think “Department of Human Services”…but then the feds started calling the “Department of Homeland Security” DHS…and now it takes me a while to figure out which acronym is appropriate–and by that time, I’ve missed the point of the news story or conversation.
So go to Minnesota and support the BLM auction…but my guess is if you contact someone with the other BLM and say you want to buy a burro from them, you might not get an understanding response.
