A hard-earned victory for Oregon’s Warm Springs wild horse herd
The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:
Victory!
After years of fighting back in the courts and mounting public opposition, the Bureau of Land Management will not conduct cruel sterilization experiments on Oregon’s Warm Springs wild horses.
One of the most inhumane and cruel ways the Bureau of Land Management outlined as a way for “management” of wild horses is the ovariectomy via colpotomy procedure.
This procedure involves manually severing and removing a wild mare’s ovaries in an invasive and outdated surgical procedure that has been called “barbaric” by veterinarians and deemed by the National Academy of Sciences to be too dangerous for use in wild horses.
Not surprisingly, nearly 8 in 10 Americans oppose this procedure — and we’ve sued twice and successfully blocked the BLM from subjecting innocent wild mares to this cruel and risky surgery.
- In 2016, our lawsuit prompted the BLM to cancel its plan to perform ovariectomy via colpotomy on 225 wild mares — many of them pregnant – rounded up from the Warm Springs Herd Management Area in Oregon.
- In 2018, we sued again, when the BLM proposed to conduct the same experiments on the same group of mares, many of whom were now nursing dependent foals. This time, the court granted our motion for a federal injunction and the BLM again dropped the project.
- In 2019, the BLM resurrected the plan incredibly for the third time! We immediately brought the new proposal to the court’s attention, and just last week, the BLM informed the court that it would not proceed with the third proposal.
In each case, we built a coalition, marshalled resources and did what it took to stop these horrific experiments, which veterinarians confirmed would cause extreme pain, bleeding, infection, miscarriage and would interfere with the mares’ ability to nurse and care for their dependent foals.
But that doesn’t mean the BLM will stop trying to surgically sterilize mares. In fact, the agency right now is preparing a management plan for the Swasey HMA in Utah that includes ovariectomy via colpotomy as a management tool.
We must stay vigilant and ready to jump to action to continue to defend wild mares from this brutality. Our victories in Oregon prove that when we work together and fight back hard, we win.
Thank you,
American Wild Horse Campaign
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