Happy National Public Lands Day!
The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:
Today is National Public Lands Day, celebrating the magnificent landscape that is home to our nation’s beloved wild horses and burros.
The conservation of our public lands — and the wildlife that inhabit them — is a proud statement of what Americans care about and our desire to protect what’s wild, free … and vulnerable.
A century and a half ago, the U.S. supported almost two billion acres of public lands.
Today, that number has been reduced to 640 million acres. Along with this dwindling of the public landscape is the systematic elimination of space for America’s wild horses and burros, which now inhabit less than 27 million acres of public lands in ten Western states. Worse, the federal government is determined to shrink wild horse and burro habitats and population numbers further, while giving 97% of those lands — your lands — to the commercial livestock industry for cattle and sheep grazing that we, the taxpayers, subsidize.
In short, with 64,000 wild horses removed from those lands and held in captivity — at a cost to taxpayers that could approach $1 billion dollars over 5 years — America’s wild horses and burros are in crisis.
There is a better way to manage our nation’s wild horses and burros on public lands where they belong: www.
On this National Public Lands Day, we hope you will have the opportunity to venture out and enjoy the beauty and splendor of our public lands and the wild horses and burros that grace them. If you can’t see them in person, then we hope you will enjoy this video of wild horses roaming free.
Happy National Public Lands Day!
Yours,
Suzanne Roy
Executive Director
American Wild Horse Campaign