Action Alert: Urge Common Sense Solution to BLM for Wild Horses
This Action Alert comes from The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign.
COMMENTS DUE BY OCTOBER 6, 2016
The BLM Northeastern Great Basin Resource Advisory Council (RAC) is meeting in Ely, Nevada on October 6 & 7, 2016. This citizen advisory board has within its jurisdiction several of Nevada’s wild horse Herd Management Areas. Recently, this RAC sent a letter to the BLM supporting the removal of 4,000 wild horses from public lands in eastern Nevada and promoting surgical sterilization of wild herds. We must urge the RAC to recommend humane, socially acceptable solutions for wild horse management in Nevada, instead of promoting controversial, divisive and cruel management techniques that are not supported by the American people.
If you live in northeastern Nevada, please consider attending the meeting (see details below). For those who can’t attend, you can still make your voice heard by sending an email to the RAC to deliver a strong message that citizens across America want our wild horses protected on our public lands. Just personalize and send the letter at this link.
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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Carson City District Office in Nevada is accepting public comments on a “Landscape Project” that will directly impact the management of wild horses living in the Clan Alpine Herd Management Area (HMA), which overlaps with three livestock grazing allotments. The BLM is proposing to increase livestock grazing on the allotments while keeping the decade-old “Appropriate” Management Level (AML) the same. Worse yet, the BLM is proposing to geld stallions and skew sex ratios which will destroy natural wild horse behaviors and social organization of the Clan Alpine herd.
Bait and water trapping, which is less tramatic than the use of helicopters, is the preferred method to remove horses if necessary and to administer PZP birth control (if remote darting is not possible). However, the proposed removal of 20-30 horses annually to achieve AML is fiscally unsustainable costing $1 million to $1.5 million based on the BLM estimate to care for the removed horses in government holding facilities. The plan is a double whammy for U.S. taxpayers. First we pay for the removal and warehousing of wild horses so that ranchers can turn out more livestock on the public lands. They we pay to subsidize the below-market fees the ranchers pay to graze livestock on the public lands.
Aside from the unsustainable financial aspect of removing horses from the range, it is forever traumatic for each horse who will be robbed of his/her freedom and family. There is a better way … and we must demand that the BLM take it.
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