Broken Arrow, Broken Hearts

The following post is from the Youths’ Equine Alliance.

A new low has been reached when the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) refuses to help find homes for horses – something that is mandatory of their job.

On October 17th, we were able to attend the one-day only public tour of the Broken Arrow Holding Facility where 2,744 wild horses and burros are held captive. On that day, we took as many photos as we could and tried to capture the tag numbers of each horse photographed.

Later, we used social networking to begin finding homes for the horses we saw – successfully. Our efforts were even featured on Wild Horse Education’s website where you can find the names of the 4 women who took the lead on the adoption efforts (one of them was our director.)

Please, click on the short video below to see and hear what Denise documented on the day of the tour. You simply will not believe it.

Now, here is the truly awful part: after finding so many adopters, the facility manger, John Neill, refused to provide a simple list of the horses and tag #s that were adopted through our efforts. We had to file a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) application and are still awaiting a response.

Even worse, a few days later, Mr. Neill told 2 of the women who were helping to post pictures that they needed to stop posting pictures because it was causing too much work for his guys.

The bottom line: These 4 women found somewhere between 20-30 adopters in 2 weeks! Last year the entire BLM only adopted out 282 horses and burros.

I haven’t forgotten the horses and burros at Broken Arrow and I refuse to. Please help us to fight this by helping us do what we do best: raising awareness! Thank you so much for all of your support and encouragement!

The Mustang Gals were able to go see the petroglyphs and also the wild horses in Cold Creek because of supporters like you! It is the good times like that that keep us going through the hard times like this.