I just got off the phone with one of our field representatives in Nevada, and he told me something that I have to share with you: This week, at the helicopter roundup in the Shawave Herd Management Area, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) employee complained to him about the House amendment we and our coalition partners worked to pass this month, which would require the BLM to spend $11 million of $21 million in additional Fiscal Year 2021 funding on fertility control.
The BLM employee asked:“how are we supposed to keep removing horses if your amendment passes?”… exactly. THIS, along with what our champions in Congress are telling us, is how we know what we’re doing has the potential to really make a difference.
At this time of year, it often feels like roundup season will never end. I know how difficult — and distressing — it is to see, and read, about hundreds of wild horses and burros being aggressively hunted down by helicopters, rounded up, separated from their tiny foals and captured all across the west.
By the end of the day on Thursday, the BLM had removed 913 wild horses as well as ALL of the 220 wild burros from the Shawave HMA in Nevada. Tragically, 8 wild horses and 1 burros have died so far from this roundup ALONE.
But here’s what I want to stress: We’ll continue to be right there with our wild horses and burros. Filming, documenting, relaying information to our lawyers standing by and our lobbyists on Capitol Hill. We will not stop until we’ve done everything in our power to ensure wild horse and burro management is humane, sustainable and cruelty-free.
PS — We’re going after those who profit off cruelty right where it hurts them most: their overstuffed hip pockets. The private companies contracted by the BLM to carry out these traumatic and overly aggressive helicopter roundups are making BIG money — most times more than half a million dollars per contract — to terrorize the wild horses and burros who call our public lands home. We know — and have proved — this money is better spent on humane, and scientifically sound fertility control measures and we’re this close to seeing Congress come around to the right side of history on this issue. Thank you for all you’ve done — and continue to do — to get us here.
It’s been a week of soaring highs, and crushing lows.
Last Thursday, we secured a huge legislative win for wild horses in the House of Representatives with the passing of a wild horse protection amendment requiring the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to implement humane and safe fertility control vaccine, PZP.
At the very same time, our hearts were breaking as we received daily updates from our field representative at a BLM roundup in the Swasey Herd Management Area (HMA) in Utah. He had the awful responsibility of observing and documenting the traumatic helicopter stampede, capture and removal of more than 600 of Utah’s federally-protected wild horses. There were many injuries, and two deaths.
I can honestly say that the abuses our observer witnessed at Swasey were some of the worst we’ve seen since AWHC began documenting roundups 10 years ago. And it’s far from over – more roundups are imminent in both Nevada and at Utah’s famed Sulphur HMA.
From July 15-July 24, BLM-hired helicopter contractors, Sampson Livestock, stampeded and captured approximately 603 Swasey wild horses, with the ultimate goal of reducing the 800-horse population to just 60 horses.
What we’ve witnessed in Utah is truly shocking:
A 5-year old mare crashing into a pen panel, breaking her neck and being dragged off in chains.
Terrified new foals being run-down by helicopters, falling behind and then being roped and dragged in.
Multiple stressed horses, exhausted from the exertion of a miles long helicopter stampede, one even collapsing before she could reach the trap.
Just-captured horses crashing into the panels of a dangerously small trap pen.
The BLM continued its daily assaults on the Swasey horses despite sweltering desert temperatures that exceeded 95 degrees — violating their own animal welfare guidelines — on more than one occasion.
I know some of this email is difficult and upsetting to read. It was difficult to write. But it’s worse to imagine a future where the BLM is allowed to forge ahead with its deadly, costly, unscientific approach to the management of wild horses on our public lands. The next roundups in Nevada and Utah are just around the corner and it’s critical that we forge full steam ahead with our work on Capitol Hill to reign in the BLM’s inhumane roundups. Our work continues, with your help, and we could not be more grateful.
It’s Deb Walker, AWHC’s Field Representative here at the Virginia Range in Nevada.
I want to share some good news with you this weekend!
It’s been more than a year since our launch of the world’s largest humane management program for wild horses. If you have two minutes, I’d love to show you what you’ve helped us to accomplish here for the wild horses that call the Virginia Range home:
Our fertility management work at the Virginia Range is proving to the world that there IS a humane way to manage wild horse populations that DOES NOT require mass roundups, crowded holding corrals, dangerous sterilization surgeries, or slaughter.
Our hope is that our continued demonstrated success on the Virginia Range means our PZP fertility control program will be replicated across the West.
It’s because of support from people like you that wild horses like this little foal (born just MINUTES after we stopped filming the video above) stand a chance of living out a full, wild and free life on the Virginia Range.
Thank you for all that you do to keep our wild horses free, and wild.
In case you missed Grace’s update yesterday, we wanted to remind you that RIGHT NOW is your last chance to make sure your voice is heard by the Bureau of Land Management Southern Nevada District Office before today’s comment period deadline.
This summer, the BLM plans to round up and remove more than 5,000 wild horses and burros from public lands beginning on July 1st and ending September of 2020. At the same time, they’re laying the groundwork for these roundups to continue into the fall and next year. One of the large roundups still in the planning stages is in the Nevada Wild Horse Range; a more than 1 million acre Herd Management Area that is on land used by the military for warfare testing and training.
TODAY is our last chance to submit comments to the BLM’s 10-year management plan that would see over half of the wild horses in the Nevada Wild Horse Range rounded up and removed. In addition, wild burros living in the area would be completely eradicated.
All comments must be submitted by 4:30 p.m. PST TODAY.
It is estimated that only 800 wild horses live within the more than 1.3 million acres of public land in this area. Our wild horses, burros — and their tiny vulnerable foals — are depending on us now more than ever… and we have only hours left to speak up for them.
Last Saturday marked the official first day of summer, and with it, the beginning of a season that places our iconic wild horses and burros in the cross-hairs of a particularly cruel and inhumane roundup by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
This weekend, I know so many of our hearts, heads and screens are saturated with grief, fear and worry. I want you to know, however, that it’s not all bad news on the wild horse front. In fact, there’s cause for hope as we rally together like never before to protect and preserve our beloved wild horses.
I want to share a couple of these hopeful stories with you, but first to ask that you join me in getting your comments in this weekend in opposition to the BLM’s plan to round up over 400 wild horses and burros from the Nevada Wild Horse Range – the nation’s first protected habitat area for mustangs.
URGENT: TWO days left to speak up
This summer’s assault on wild horse and burro herds will be particularly cruel and inhumane — helicopter roundups in the sweltering desert heat will involve tiny, vulnerable foals who risk being literally run to death after miles-long helicopter chases. The BLM plans to round up and remove more than 5,000 federally-protected wild horses and burros from public lands beginning July 1 and ending September of 2020.
At the same time, the BLM is laying the groundwork for the roundups to continue into the fall and next year. One of the large roundups still in the planning stages is in the Nevada Wild Horse Range, a more than 1 million acre Herd Management Area that is on land used by the military for warfare testing and training.
We have only two days left to submit comments to the BLM’s 10-year management plan that would see over half of the wild horses in this range rounded up and removed. In addition, wild burros living in the area would be completely eradicated.
So far, more than 5,700 of you have submitted comments on the BLM’s plan. Now is the time to keep up the pressure, and turn up the volume.
Will you take three minutes now to do these three things? You can take these actions from the safety of your home right now:
If you haven’t already, TAKE ACTION now to demand that the BLM change its unsustainable, inhumane management plan for the wild mustangs of the Nevada Wild Horse Range.
Make sure your friends take action also! Nevada’s wild burros and horses need as many voices as possible to speak up before Monday.
Or, forward this email to a friend!
Donate to our Roundup Fund: Today’s donation will keep our team in the field during roundup season, and give us the resources necessary to ensure that our legal team can challenge any attempts to block public observation:
UPDATE: Our Rescue Fund at Work
Good news stories may seem a little scarce these days; but they DO exist, and we want to share some silver linings (and some VERY adorable foal photos) with you. This will be a tough summer for our vulnerable foals, but in the Virginia Range, where we operate the world’s largest wild horse fertility control program, we’re working with a local coalition of organizations on the ground, and our tireless volunteers to ensure orphaned and injured foals receive the critical care they need so they can be adopted into forever homes.
Your generous contributions to the AWHC Rescue Fund are making this work possible, so thank you.
Thanks to your support, we’ve been able to provide volunteers in the field with life-saving emergency foal kits (see above). We’ve instituted a “red tag” system that keeps the kits stocked with critical medicine and supplies. Foals can crash rapidly, so being fully equipped with Equine IgG Seramune Oral colostrum, saline, Foal Lac milk, antibiotics, Vetericyn wound treatment and enemas often means the difference between life and death on the range. Thank you for helping us support the work of Wild Horse Connection, Least Resistance Training Concepts, LBL Equine Rescue and other local organizations by providing supplies they need to save precious foals in need!!
We are thrilled to announce that thanks to your grassroots support, AWHC was able to present local Nevada group LBL Equine Rescue, with a matching grant that helped them to meet their fundraising goal for a new foal nursery! The nursery will be fully equipped to provide round-the-clock care for foals in critical condition, and will even include sleeping quarters for volunteers working overnight shifts (young foals need to be fed every two hours).
The Least Resistance Training Concepts Large Animal Rescue Team is the busiest in the country. They’re on call 24/7 for every type of emergency, from rescuing horses stuck in cattle guards and barbed wire to coming to the aid of orphaned foals.
We were pleased to make a grant to LRTC from our Rescue Fund that supported the retrofitting of a decommissioned ambulance donated by a kind fire department. Now modified, the ambulance serves as an anchor and transport vehicle for foal rescues, a water rescue unit, support unit for complex large animal rescues and much more. We’re proud to support LRTC with this one-of-a-kind project that is setting the standard for large animal rescue worldwide!
These initiatives — made possible by you and your generous support of the Rescue Fund — have enabled AWHC and our team of volunteers to make life-saving interventions for foals, wild horses and burros.
Finally, allow me to introduce you to some of the fuzzy, thankful faces you’ve helped save this foaling season:
Rustler, Leela, Sinclair, Carte, Stitch, Goliath and all of us here at AWHC want to say a huge THANK YOU, and wish you a safe and happy weekend.
Grace Kuhn,
Communications Director
American Wild Horse Campaign
Last Saturday marked the official first day of summer, and with it, the beginning of a season that places our iconic wild horses and burros in the cross-hairs of a particularly cruel and inhumane roundup by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
This weekend, I know so many of our hearts, heads and screens are saturated with grief, fear and worry. I want you to know, however, that it’s not all bad news on the wild horse front. In fact, there’s cause for hope as we rally together like never before to protect and preserve our beloved wild horses.
I want to share a couple of these hopeful stories with you, but first to ask that you join me in getting your comments in this weekend in opposition to the BLM’s plan to round up over 400 wild horses and burros from the Nevada Wild Horse Range – the nation’s first protected habitat area for mustangs.
URGENT: TWO days left to speak up
This summer’s assault on wild horse and burro herds will be particularly cruel and inhumane — helicopter roundups in the sweltering desert heat will involve tiny, vulnerable foals who risk being literally run to death after miles-long helicopter chases. The BLM plans to round up and remove more than 5,000 federally-protected wild horses and burros from public lands beginning July 1 and ending September of 2020.
At the same time, the BLM is laying the groundwork for the roundups to continue into the fall and next year. One of the large roundups still in the planning stages is in the Nevada Wild Horse Range, a more than 1 million acre Herd Management Area that is on land used by the military for warfare testing and training.
We have only two days left to submit comments to the BLM’s 10-year management plan that would see over half of the wild horses in this range rounded up and removed. In addition, wild burros living in the area would be completely eradicated.
So far, more than 5,700 of you have submitted comments on the BLM’s plan. Now is the time to keep up the pressure, and turn up the volume.
Will you take three minutes now to do these three things? You can take these actions from the safety of your home right now:
If you haven’t already, TAKE ACTION now to demand that the BLM change its unsustainable, inhumane management plan for the wild mustangs of the Nevada Wild Horse Range.
Make sure your friends take action also! Nevada’s wild burros and horses need as many voices as possible to speak up before Monday.
Or, forward this email to a friend!
Donate to our Roundup Fund: Today’s donation will keep our team in the field during roundup season, and give us the resources necessary to ensure that our legal team can challenge any attempts to block public observation:
UPDATE: Our Rescue Fund at Work
Good news stories may seem a little scarce these days; but they DO exist, and we want to share some silver linings (and some VERY adorable foal photos) with you. This will be a tough summer for our vulnerable foals, but in the Virginia Range, where we operate the world’s largest wild horse fertility control program, we’re working with a local coalition of organizations on the ground, and our tireless volunteers to ensure orphaned and injured foals receive the critical care they need so they can be adopted into forever homes.
Your generous contributions to the AWHC Rescue Fund are making this work possible, so thank you.
Thanks to your support, we’ve been able to provide volunteers in the field with life-saving emergency foal kits (see above). We’ve instituted a “red tag” system that keeps the kits stocked with critical medicine and supplies. Foals can crash rapidly, so being fully equipped with Equine IgG Seramune Oral colostrum, saline, Foal Lac milk, antibiotics, Vetericyn wound treatment and enemas often means the difference between life and death on the range. Thank you for helping us support the work of Wild Horse Connection, Least Resistance Training Concepts, LBL Equine Rescue and other local organizations by providing supplies they need to save precious foals in need!!
We are thrilled to announce that thanks to your grassroots support, AWHC was able to present local Nevada group LBL Equine Rescue, with a matching grant that helped them to meet their fundraising goal for a new foal nursery! The nursery will be fully equipped to provide round-the-clock care for foals in critical condition, and will even include sleeping quarters for volunteers working overnight shifts (young foals need to be fed every two hours).
The Least Resistance Training Concepts Large Animal Rescue Team is the busiest in the country. They’re on call 24/7 for every type of emergency, from rescuing horses stuck in cattle guards and barbed wire to coming to the aid of orphaned foals.
We were pleased to make a grant to LRTC from our Rescue Fund that supported the retrofitting of a decommissioned ambulance donated by a kind fire department. Now modified, the ambulance serves as an anchor and transport vehicle for foal rescues, a water rescue unit, support unit for complex large animal rescues and much more. We’re proud to support LRTC with this one-of-a-kind project that is setting the standard for large animal rescue worldwide!
These initiatives — made possible by you and your generous support of the Rescue Fund — have enabled AWHC and our team of volunteers to make life-saving interventions for foals, wild horses and burros.
Finally, allow me to introduce you to some of the fuzzy, thankful faces you’ve helped save this foaling season:
Rustler, Leela, Sinclair, Carte, Stitch, Goliath and all of us here at AWHC want to say a huge THANK YOU, and wish you a safe and happy weekend.
Grace Kuhn,
Communications Director
American Wild Horse Campaign
We’ve got less than a week to spring into action if we want to weigh in on plans that will affect nearly 2,000 wild horses in the state of Oregon.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) have both proposed wild horse management plans to target four different herds in the state that could, if they move forward without opposition, result in the removal of thousands of wild horses.
Action Alert #1: Stop the BLM from Removing 1,850 Horses From Three Herd Management Areas Deadline: Monday, May 18th
The BLM is accepting public comments on a 10-year plan for three Herd Management Areas in Oregon’s Barren Valley Complex, covering nearly 1 million acres of public lands.
While the plan contains some encouraging components, including the implementation of humane, reversible fertility control before any roundups take place, it still calls for the removal of 1,850 wild horses over ten years.
Since the BLM has not prioritized roundups in this area for nearly a decade and the local BLM office has made an effort to utilize fertility control in local herds, this is a unique opportunity to support and expand fertility control programs to manage the horses humanely on the range.
Action Alert #2: Protect the Ochoco National Forest Horses Deadline: Sunday, May 17th
At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service is targeting a wild horse herd in Oregon’s Big Summit Wild Horse Territory in the Ochoco National Forest.
The agency is seriously proposing an “Appropriate” Management Level (AML) for the area as low as 12 wild horses. That’s right, one dozen.
At the highest level, the AML would be 57 — that would translate to just one wild horse per nearly 500 acres of public land. Meanwhile, the Forest Service allows as many as 2,200 (!) privately owned sheep and lambs to graze there for periods of time, all at taxpayer expense.
In its Environmental Assessment (which is required by law), the Forest Service admitted that the Big Summit wild horses could be in genetic depression and reducing their numbers substantially, as they are proposing, will worsen this, threatening the future of this herd.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Forest Service is also considering the use of dangerous sterilization procedures as a management tool for these protected wild horses.
Thank you for taking action. If you can also share this email with even one or two friends, you will help us build the response we need to defend thousands of wild horses in Oregon.
We’re 85% of the way to our $100,000 End of Year fundraising goal. If we raise $15,291 before midnight, ALL donations up to $100,000 will be matched!
This past year, we’ve mobilized in a way like never before on behalf of America’s wild horses and burros.
This year alone, we’ve:
Delivered 662,000 petition signatures in support of wild horses
Submitted 115,000 public comments on government decisions
Filed 28 Freedom of Information Act requests
Darted over 1,200 mares with the PZP fertility vaccine
And that’s only the beginning. AWHC has major plans for 2020 but our ability to get involved and expand our programs depends on hitting our End of Year fundraising goal.
Earlier this month, the Congress gave the green light to accelerate roundups in the West, which could result in as many as 20,000 wild horses being removed from public lands in 2020.
This comes at a time when the Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management is describing mustangs and burros as an ‘existential threat’ to the survival of public lands…. Even though wild horses aren’t even on 88% of those lands! We know what this scapegoating of wild horses will mean if we don’t stop it.
Many of you have reached out and asked why don’t we sue to stop this? Well, the answer is we are!
90% of the suits our legal team files we win — and our ongoing litigation is one of the most important ways we’re fighting back and setting legal precedents to defend America’s wild horses and burros.
California: AWHC successfully prevented the U.S. Forest Service from significantly reducing the size of the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory in California — One of the largest in the state.
Nevada: AWHC filed suit to challenge the BLM’s decision to permanently remove all wild horses from the Caliente Herd Area in Nevada without considering any reductions to domestic livestock in the area.
Oregon: AWHC sued the BLM in order to stop proposed cruel sterilization surgeries on wild mares. The court granted our request for an injunction, causing the BLM to cancel the experiments.
Utah: AWHC successfully defended wild horses in Utah from a rancher lawsuit that sought the removal of thousands of wild horses from public lands.
Wyoming: AWHC successfully intervened and successfully petitioned the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the State of Wyoming on behalf of in-state ranchers seeking the forcible removal of thousands of wild horses.
In Nevada’s Virginia Range, AWHC operates the world’s largest humane management program for wild horses and burros. The cornerstone of this highly successful program is the remote darting of wild mares with the scientifically proven fertility vaccine known as ‘PZP’.
No need for roundups, expensive and crowded holding corrals, or risky sterilization surgeries. And do you want to know how much it costs for a single mare’s annual PZP vaccine?
$30.
Compare that to the tens of thousands of dollars the Bureau of Land Management spends on the roundup, long-term holding, and contractor fees involved in the removal of a single horse.
Let alone the $5 BILLION figure the Acting Director of the BLM is citing as the cost of a plan to round up over 100,000 horses from public lands over the next decade.
At the beginning of the 1970s, our country came together to prevent the extinction of America’s mustangs.
Congress recognized that wild horses were “fast disappearing” and at one point, the wild horse population in Nevada fell below 4,000 (for reference: Nevada is home to the majority of wild horses today).
Thanks to years of activism and public pressure, Congress unanimously (!) passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 to save these American icons.
But right now, in 2019, the future of America’s wild horses and burros is once again in jeopardy.
The Bureau of Land Management could remove as many as 20,000 wild horses from public lands next year. At the same time, the livestock industry and two large animal welfare groups that sold out the interests of wild horses are lobbying in favor of a plan that would bring mustang populations to near-extinction levels over the next decade.
Our passionate volunteers, skilled attorneys and lobbyists, and incredible staff are taking a monumental stand in 2020 to defend the future of wild horses and burros against this threat.
We have an incredible opportunity, but it’s very time-sensitive and will require all of us working together and pitching in.
The Opportunity: A generous donor has committed to match every single donation up to $100,000 through the end of the year, but only if we meet one condition.
The Condition: We have to raise $100,000 in grassroots donations to unlock the full matching gift.
That gives us just three days to raise the funds to secure this major gift.
This year, we’ve made a lot of progress. The U.S. Forest Service is now prohibited from selling wild horses and burros for slaughter, California has enacted new horse protections, and AWHC now runs the world’s largest humane management program for mustangs — proving that there is a safe, cost-effective alternative to cruel roundups.
We also face significant challenges in 2020. Congress’ decision to fund accelerated roundups in 2020 could result in as many as 20,000 wild horses and burros being removed from public lands next year alone.
This holiday season, we hope you’re not too saddled with work or stressful travel plans and are enjoying some quality time with friends, family and loved ones.
On the topic of family, we wanted to introduce you to one of the newest additions to the Virginia Range in Nevada: Flurry.
Flurry really loves his mom, Empress — You can find them together exploring the wide expanses of the Virginia Range side-by-side.
Flurry was born recently during one of the first snow storms of the season, and he, his mom and the rest of his herd are doing well. We’ll be keeping a close eye on them, since Flurry, Empress, and their herd are wild horses currently documented in our precedent-setting humane management program.
It’s photos and moments like these that remind us why we’re in this fight together. Empress, Flurry, and all of America’s wild horses and burros deserve to be wild and free with their families.
As we gather with our families this holiday, we want to express our heartfelt thanks to you, our loyal supporters, for all you do to make freedom a reality for wild mustangs like Flurry. Each and every day, with your support, we work to make sure that Flurry and other wild horses have a future in which they can not only survive, but also thrive.
On behalf of everyone at AWHC, we are grateful to you for being part of the AWHC family. Our very best wishes to you and your loved ones, the happiest of holidays and a healthy and joyous New Year.
If you’re like me, the news that Congress is going to give the Bureau of Land Management $21,000,000 to round up as many as 20,000 wild horses next year broke my heart.
My name is Deb Walker and I’m the Nevada Field Representative for AWHC. In these moments of heartbreak and hardship, it’s important we remember why we’re in this fight and why we should continue to have hope.
For me, this is personal
When I was younger, I experienced my first glimpse of wild horses in Owyhee above Elko, Nevada. My dad and I were absolutely in awe watching the horses.
When I grew older, my husband and I made a habit of visiting northern Nevada to see wild horses (from a respectable distance). Every Thanksgiving, I would gather my camera, grab a coffee, and head out to go see them.
Fast forward to when I approached retirement from the Air Force. My husband asked me where I would like to go and retire. For me, that decision was easy: I wanted to retire in northern Nevada where I could live as close to wild horses as possible.
And it’s what ultimately motivated me to work with AWHC as its Nevada Field Representative.
What I do
I think my dad, who recently passed, would certainly approve of my work. I want my two daughters and my three grandchildren to have these experiences and make the same memories with the horses like I did.
That’s why the news about Congress giving the green light to accelerate roundups next year just motivates me to work harder. As the Nevada Field Representative, I get to work with a team of incredible volunteers in the largest humane management program for wild horses in the entire world.
Since April, our team administered more than 1,200 PZP fertility treatments to wild horses — that’s almost double the number the BLM, with its $80-million-a-year program budget, did in an entire year!
Together, we’re proving that there is a more humane and cost-effective way to manage wild horse populations that does NOT require roundups or risky sterilization surgeries.
That’s why, despite this week’s disappointing news, I am hopeful about what we can accomplish together for our wild horses and burros in the New Year.
Thank you for being a part of our AWHC family,
Deb Walker
Nevada Field Representative
American Wild Horse Campaign
As the dust settles on the Fiscal Year 2020 spending agreement reached by Congress this week, we wanted you to know that the fight is far from over and that there will be ample opportunities for us to defend wild horses and burros in the New Year.
We also want to highlight two significant positives that were included in the spending bill that are a direct result of your advocacy and leadership from key officials in Congress.
Congress attached strings to the $21 million budget increase for the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program
The spending bill states that the additional funding will not be made available until 60 days after BLM submits a report to Congress detailing its plan for future wild horse management. This is a direct result of alarm bells raised by House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raul Grijalva, Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Chair Deb Haaland and ten of their colleagues about increasing the agency’s budget by nearly 30% without following proper oversight channels.
While we remain disappointed that Congress awarded the BLM millions more tax dollars without strict requirements to prevent BLM from using all the funds to round up and sterilize wild horses, this new provision is a significant improvement over previous versions of the spending bill. It gives the House committee with oversight over the BLM — the Natural Resources Committee — a chance to scrutinize the plan and, potentially, take steps to rein in the BLM, before funding is authorized.
Huge thanks for this major development goes to Grijalva, Haaland, Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler, and their colleagues who formed this bipartisan effort to protect our wild horses and burros by signing a letter to request proper oversight.
Forest Service Wild Horse and Burro Slaughter Ban
Another positive development in the FY 2020 spending bill is language that prohibits the U.S. Forest Service from destroying healthy wild horses and burros and selling them for slaughter. Previously, Congress prohibited the BLM from lethal management of wild horses and burros, but the ban did not extend to the Forest Service, which manages a much smaller but still significant number of federally-protected wild horses and burros in the West.
The expanded prohibition is a direct response to the Forest Service’s threat to sell California wild horses for slaughter and a result of the leadership of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein — a long time champion of horse welfare — and U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu, Dina Titus, Grijalva, and California State Assemblymember Todd Gloria who worked with AWHC to pass legislation to improve protections for California’s horses from slaughter.
Everyone who contacted their elected officials over this past year to seek protections for our cherished wild horses and burros should take a moment to appreciate the fact that our grassroots advocacy is working. Although this work is a marathon, not a sprint, and there are disappointments along the way, we are making progress on the road to saving America’s iconic wild herds.
So, as we fire up our legislative and legal teams for the challenges ahead, we want to thank you for staying strong and committed. You are the key ingredient to our successful advocacy for our wild horses and burros, and together, we remain the last line of defense between these beloved animals and their destruction.
Yesterday, the House and Senate unveiled an agreement on the fiscal year 2020 spending legislation. The final bill rejects the efforts of bipartisan lawmakers to prevent federal funds from being allocated toward cruel sterilization surgeries and accelerated roundups.
The vast majority of Americans, from both parties, oppose these surgeries and roundups.
But, this bipartisan effort to protect wild horses and burros was rejected in favor of a backroom deal cut by Washington D.C. lobbyists for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the Humane Society of the U.S., the ASPCA, and Return to Freedom that seeks federal funding for the roundup of as many as 20,000 wild horses and burros from our public lands next year.
This week marks the 48th anniversary of the signing of the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, and the spending bill unveiled yesterday marks a sweeping and unparalleled betrayal of these beloved and iconic animals by groups that say they want to protect them.
But we’re not giving up! The words of then-President Nixon in his signing statement for the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act stand as true today as they did in 1971.
“Wild horses and burros merit man’s protection historically … as a matter of ecological right–as anyone knows who has ever stood awed at the indomitable spirit and sheer energy of a mustang running free.”
Then, as today, the American people stand firmly on the side of protecting America’s majestic public horses and the public lands they live on.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY:
Arm yourself with the facts. The groups that are behind this devastating funding bill are using deceptive language to justify their actions. Learn the truth by clicking here.
We reached out to you about a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in Congress who are taking a stand to champion language during budgetary negotiations that would help protect wild horses and burros next year.
Led by the Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, Raúl Grijalva, these lawmakers are working to prevent federal funds from going toward inhumane sterilization surgeries and accelerated mass roundups (which is being supported in a plan called the ‘Path Forward’).
Thousands of you reached out to your members of Congress (thank you!) and news of this bipartisan mustang protection effort has been carried across the nation, including in The New York Times.
We have terrible news. 15 more wild horses from Fish Springs have lost their freedom, and the community is heartbroken. Beloved and well-known stallions, Rocky, Shadow and Rusty, and their families are no longer free and are incarcerated in BLM holding pens near Reno joining Samson and his family.
Worse, the BLM refuses to hear the will of the people and is intending to leave the…
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is currently conducting a roundup at the Desatoya Mountain Herd Management Area located approximately 77 miles east of Fallon, Nevada.
The BLM plans on permanently removing 431 wild horses from the area with the intention of leaving just 127 in the herd (leaving one horse per 1,273 acres of public land). Our field representative was on the ground and joined local advocates in warning the BLM to properly flag ALL barbed wire fencing to prevent scared wild horses from colliding with it.
Our warnings were not heeded and terrified wild horses fleeing helicopters crashed through multiple barbed wire fences as a result.
This is just further proof that these roundups are unnecessarily cruel (and entirely unnecessary)!
AWHC’s field representatives are sometimes the only eyes, ears, and oversight on the site of roundups throughout the West. But AWHC does more than just document these roundups, our legal counsel just filed a complaint with the BLM over this recurrent problem and we intend to hold the agency accountable.
We’re also working to make roundups a thing of the past by demonstrating that there are safer, far more humane and cost-effective ways to manage wild horse populations (in fact, we’re implementing the world’s largest humane management program for wild horses right here in Nevada).
We know these photos are heartbreaking and the news of these roundups can be disheartening. But we can’t lose hope — When we lose hope, our wild horses lose their voice and their chance to live in peace in the wild.
With a heavy heart, we have sad news to share with you.
The Bureau of Land Management set up a trap outside the Fish Springs Herd Area near Gardnerville, Nevada to remove wild horses over the Thanksgiving holiday. Unfortunately, an entire family of wild horses lost their freedom as a result. Two treasured stallion brothers and four generations gone in a flash.
This is Samson.
Samson is a beautiful and respected stallion, known and loved by the local community — And known internationally among the tens of thousands of people who keep up with him and his fellow Fish Springs horses on Facebook.
After being caught in the trap, Samson and his family were loaded onto trailers and shipped to BLM holding pens near Reno. Soon the family could be separated by the BLM and sold off to the highest bidder.
We know Samson and his family belong together and deserve to be free. That’s why we’re organizing a national petition drive to keep them together and return them to the wild.
Samson’s family includes his brother Jet, and his mares Old Momma, her daughter Apple, Apple’s daughter Dumplin’ and Dumplin’s baby little Sam (pictured together below). Old Momma has been on the Fish Springs Range for more than 20 years and wants to go home.
They lost their freedom because one resident called the BLM to formally complain about these wild horses on his property.
The local community pressure was enormous, calling on the resident to remove the trap, which he finally did.
The very person who called in the complaint with the BLM regrets doing so and wants Samson and his family to stay together on their home range in Fish Springs.
P.S. — The BLM’s removal of Samson and his family shows, once again, the heartlessness of this agency’s wild horse and burro management policies. Please consider supporting our work to fight these policies and keep wild horses and burros in the wild by making a donation (every dollar makes a difference in this critical fight!)
