Action required: Wild horses on brink of destruction
The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:
Right now, the Senate is considering partial funding for a plan that, if approved, could mean the beginning of the end for free-roaming horses and burros. The plan, ill-conceived and full of dangerously vague language, is hidden within the Interior budget bill and it’s on track to be negotiated in September.
Take action now: Sign our petition to protect America’s wild horses and burros.
What is this plan? It’s a ten year attack on wild horse populations, and nothing short of a surrender of the decades-long fight for fair treatment, humane management, and preservation of our nation’s wild horse and burro herds.
The plan is billed as a compromise between the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, other livestock lobbying groups, and the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS), the ASPCA and Return to Freedom, but there’s nothing in it for wild horses.
In fact, it calls for the roundup of 130,000 wild horses and burros over the next decade – more than exist today on the range. This will triple the number of wild horses and burros incarcerated at taxpayer expense, at a cost of close to $1 billion over the next decade, without any guarantee of long-term funding to ensure safety from slaughter for these cherished animals.
And there’s more. Herd numbers will diminish beyond minimum viable populations, gruesome sterilization experiments for wild mares will remain on the table, and herds left on public lands will be manipulated with unnatural sex ratios that will wreak havoc on social organization and dynamics.
We’ve seen the power Americans have to affect change at a national level. We must band together to demand an absolute NO to this disastrous plan.
Thank you,
– AWHC Team