#WildHorseWeek continues, and so do your opportunities to get your Senator’s attention.
As you know, a dangerous proposal is being circulated for mustangs and burros, and we must ensure that the Senate stands strong on our side and does not include funding language in the Interior Appropriations Bill.
Today, we urge you to speak up on social media.
What you can do:
1. Send these automated tweets to our Senate targets using the links below.
We are hearing that offices know where we stand, we just have to keep it up. Let’s make sure they hear us loud and clear.
Thank you and post away!
– The AWHC Team
P.S. If you haven’t already, please make a call to your Senator at 202-224-3121 and tell them to OPPOSE funding for the Cattlemen’s Association/ASPCA wild horse plan and SUPPORT legislative language to prevent USFS from selling wild horses for slaughter.
It’s here: #WildHorseWeek in Washington. Today, we unify wild horse supporters around the country to make our voices heard!
Mustangs and burros on our public lands are at risk, and we must ensure that the Senate stands strong to protect them. At issue is Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 spending legislation, which must reject a dangerous plan for mass wild horse roundups and must include a prohibition to stop the Forest Service from selling wild horses for slaughter.
What we’re asking you to do today: Make the call to your Senators by calling 202-224-3121. Ask them to please reject this misguided proposal.
Suggested message:
Hi, My name is __________ and I live in [town]. I’m requesting that Senator [name] OPPOSE funding in the FY20 Interior Appropriations bill for a Cattlemen’s/ASPCA plan to round up and warehouse over 100,000 wild horses and burros over the next ten years. I’m also asking the Senator to SUPPORT language in the bill to prevent the Forest Service from selling wild horses for slaughter. Thank you for your time.
Together, we’ll make our voices heard. Please pick up your phone today!
Congress returns to work on Capitol Hill this week after the August recess. Among the issues it will tackle: a dangerous proposal that could result in the roundup of more than 100,000 wild horses and burros over the next decade — that’s more than even exist today!
We must make sure that the Senate rejects the funding request to begin implementation of this devastating proposal.
Misleadingly billed as a “path forward,” the propsal is actually a road to destruction for America’s remaining wild herds. It’s opposed by grassroots organizations and groups with boots-on-the-ground experience protecting and humanely managing wild horses and burros in the wild. It advances the interests of the cattle industry — which seeks to clear the public lands of mustangs in order to maximize subsidized livestock grazing — at the expense of the public and our wild horses and burros.
That’s why we need your voice, and we need it now.
Tomorrow, we are launching Wild Horse Week in Washington — three days of actions you can take to oppose this plan. We’ll include a message you can phone-in to your senators, a way for you to create a storm on social media, and other actions to support our collective defense for our wild horses and burros.
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.
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.
Earlier this week, a federal court judge in California issued an order granting us the right to intervene in a lawsuit, filed by public lands ranchers, seeking the immediate round up and removal of 2,000 wild horses from the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory in the Modoc National Forest.
At the same time, our attorney is in San Francisco today, participating in court-ordered negotiations with the U.S. Forest Service on a separate lawsuit, filed by AWHC and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, to stop the agency from selling Devil’s Garden horses for slaughter.
The Devil’s Garden Territory is home to one of California’s largest remaining wild horse populations. Yet under pressure from local ranching interests, the Forest Service seeks to reduce the wild horse population to 200 – 402 horses, while allowing over 3,700 cows and 2,900 sheep to graze the public lands there.
The situation that has been unfolding in Devil’s Garden — from the roundups to the proposal to sell the mustangs without limitation on slaughter — represents one of the more serious attacks on wild horses by the public lands ranching industry.
Enough is enough. We’re waging two separate legal battles to defend Devil’s Garden mustangs from this existential threat.
Where does your member of Congress stand on protecting wild horses? If you don’t know, now’s the time to find out. And if they’re supporting mass roundups and sterilization, it’s the time to change their minds. Your Representative and Senators are back home for the August recess and will be holding town halls and taking meetings – so now’s your chance to speak up for our wild horses and burros! Learn how at the link below.
Our wild horses and burros are often the subjects of inaccurate, misleading, agenda-driven reporting. A recent example is Jason G. Goldman’s “Feral Horse, Fierce Controversy” that was published in the July issue of Alta, a magazine that promises “a celebration and examination of all things about California.” If you shopped at Whole Foods in California this summer, you will have likely seen this cover story on the magazine prominently displayed in the check-out lines. It’s a biased, sensationalized piece far below the journalistic standards that Alta says it aspires to. Read our response below.
The U.S. Forest Service is proposing rules that will significantly weaken its regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of proposed actions prior to making decisions. The Forest Service proposed rules would limit the opportunity for public input and make it easier for the agency to make decisions on proposed actions, like wild horse roundups, without analyzing the environmental impacts. Please read more and weigh in against the proposed rule change by clicking below.
Today marks the end of our Summer Roundup Campaign. Thanks to your support, we were able to exceed our fundraising goal – we’ll have what it takes to document fall and winter roundups and keep fighting to protect wild horses across the West.
Over the last few days, our field representative at the Pine Nut roundup has witnessed helicopters stampeding small numbers of horses for hours at a time to no avail. By the end of the roundup, which concluded yesterday, only 36 horses were captured in total. One beautiful black mare broke her leg and was killed as a result.
The few remaining Pine Nut wild horse families have evaded the trap, despite 90+ degree temperatures and days of relentless chasing. We’re sickened at this cruelty. We’re angry that these actions are taken at taxpayers’ expense.
Because of your generosity during this campaign, we have the funding to continue the fight. And, in the spirit of the Pine Nut mustangs still living free, that’s just what we’ll do.
We started this fundraising campaign to fuel our government relations team in educating Congress about the BLM’s inhumane practices, to support our litigation fund for roundup-related lawsuits, and to broaden our education and advocacy programs documenting how taxpayer dollars are being used and wasted.
As summer roundups continue into fall and winter, we’ll be there to hold the BLM accountable and raise our voices to keep wild horses and burros protected from undue harm and danger.
The BLM is seeking public comments on a roundup and removal plan for the wild horses that live in the Range Creek HMA in Utah. The HMA includes 55,000 acres of public and private lands, on which the BLM has set a wild horse population limit (AML) of just 75-125 wild horses. The agency seeks to remove over 200 horses and reduce the population to the low AML of 75, a density of one horse per 733 acres! The BLM’s plan also includes the implementation of fertility control, including the use of unproven IUD’s, and the skewing of wild horse sex ratios to favor of males. Please weigh in today against yet another roundup and urge the BLM instead to implement proven humane and sustainable wild horse management tools.
A massive reorganization of the BLM that involves moving its headquarters to Grand Junction, CO and transferring most of its Washington, D.C. staff out west — combined with the Administration’s installment of a lawyer who advocates for the sell-off of federal lands in the top agency post — is raising concerns about the future of our public lands and the agency tasked with managing and conserving them. The developments forbode further dysfunction within the BLM, increased control by local and corporate interests over federal public lands policy, and a growing threat to the environment and wild horses and burros. Read more below.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Forest Service announced its plan to conduct another roundup of California wild horses from the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory in the Modoc National Forest. At the same time, the agency released new census numbers showing far fewer mustangs actually live in the Forest than previously claimed by the ranching interests that have waged a propaganda campaign against the horses. The ultimate goal is the removal of most of these cherished California mustangs from the public lands that comprise the Modoc Forest. Read more below.
We know how much our western-roaming mustangs mean to you and we thank you for your unwavering support in our mission to preserve wild horses on public lands.
That’s why we’re excited to share with you our news about the ebook, Tales From Big Country.
Tales From Big Country features a 13-story collection by international bestselling and award-winning authors whose works have been published in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. From the big skies of Montana to perilous rides with the Texas Rangers, you’ll read tales of civilization in the lawless frontier, stories of Native Americans, fables of romance, horror, and everything under the sun.
With the dust barely settled after the Triple B roundup last week, we’re headed to the Pine Nut wild horse roundup in Nevada on Monday.
As I write this, tens of thousands of wild horses stand in government holding facilities, and we wait with bated breath for the BLM’s decision on whether or not it will proceed with gruesome sterilization experiments on wild mares.
With tactical lawsuits, advocacy on the Hill, implementation of humane fertility control, and documentation in the wild, we continue with crucial actions to make roundups a thing of the past. That’s why, last week, we extended our fundraising goal to $100,000 to fight these cruel stampedes.
Here are some of the actions we take to end roundups:
With field representation and filmmakers on the ground at each roundup, we’re gathering footage for educational videos to share with the public and lawmakers.
On Capitol Hill, our legal team is educating key members of Congress to combat a dangerous plan to round up and remove up to 130,000 wild horses over the next 10 years. (That’s more than exist on the range today.)
With litigation funding, we’re building specific cases for roundup-related lawsuits — like our case to save wild horses near Caliente, Nevada where BLM is planning to remove 100% of the herds.
Donate today to take action with us. Your support is key as we continue asserting to stand as the last line of defense between our wild horses and burros and the corporate livestock industry that seeks their destruction.
It’s hard to fathom the shocking reality of roundups unless you’ve witnessed one. Helicopters stampeding terrified herds across public lands in the brutal summer heat. Foals separated from their mothers, often dropping to the ground due to exhaustion. Crowded pens pulsing with masses of wild horses, trapped within.
When the Triple B wild horse roundup concluded last week, 802 horses were captured. Fourteen wild horses died.
That’s why we work hard to keep representatives in the field — present for every roundup — so we can document the stampede and keep you informed, as gut-wrenching as it truly is.
Below are images and videos we captured of the recent Triple B roundup.
This documentation demonstrates greed and cruelty, a reality in which private ranchers and commercial interests dictate what happens to your wild horses roaming your public land.
Earlier this month, we set an ambitious fundraising goal of $50,000 to document the BLM’s roundup season, which began in Nevada’s Triple B Complex. That was before this week’s Senate hearing on the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program – a one-sided affair for cattle industry lobbyists, and not a single advocate for preserving America’s wild horses in the wild.
Thanks to you, we hit our $50,000 goal this week. The response from supporters like you has been an incredible boost during the hardest time of the year for wild horses. But to fight back against the stacked proceedings in the Senate – at the same time as the BLM’s terrifying and cruel roundups continue in the West – we’re now raising our goal to make sure everyone, from the American people to their elected leaders on Capitol Hill, sees how inhumane and unnecessary the BLM roundups really are.
Thanks to your support, we’ve been out at the Triple B roundup in Nevada these past few weeks — with heartbreaking photo and video evidence that will long outlast this roundup. Just over 800 horses lost their freedom at Triple B this month; 16 of them lost their lives. These include five tiny foals, one of whom was too weak to stand after withstanding a miles-long helicopter stampede and another who died of water toxicity, likely a result of the BLM’s failure to give the vulnerable baby electrolytes after an arduous run in summer heat left him stressed and dehydrated.
We’ll use this evidence for the battles ahead. This week’s Senate hearing wasn’t just about laying the groundwork for more roundups. The cattle industry lobbyists and BLM want money to surgically sterilize wild horses who remain in the wild, by castrating stallions and ripping out the ovaries of wild mares in dangerous and painful surgeries.
The cattle industry’s path forward leads to one place — mass destruction… of wild, free-roaming horses in the wild, and of those in captivity whose days will be numbered when the government funding to care for them runs out.
Six horses were in a kill pen in Oklahoma, one day away from shipping to slaughter, when AWHC supporters stepped in to save them. Yesterday, these lucky horses arrived in California, where they will spend the rest of their lives in a safe place.
The “Oklahoma Six” are four BLM mustangs and a quarter horse mare and foal – just three weeks old! Earlier this week, you helped us raise enough money to bail them out from the kill pen and transport them from Oklahoma to two of our great sanctuary partners in California.
Three of the mustangs are young and unhandled. One is a 2-year old filly who was in the BLM’s holding facility in Pauls Valley, OK less than three months ago. Their quick turnaround from wild and free on the range, to BLM holding pens, to the slaughter pipeline tells a cautionary tale about the ultimate fate of the thousands of federally protected mustangs that are rounded up and removed from our public lands each year.
Thank you to everyone who stepped up to save these horses and to Chilly Pepper – Miracle Mustang for transporting them safely from Oklahoma to California. Special big thanks as well to our board members Alicia Goetz and Ellie Price and their sanctuaries – Freedom Reigns and Montgomery Creek Ranch – for giving these six lucky horses a safe place to live out the rest of their lives.
If you are receiving this email, you are uniquely positioned to push back against a dangerous plan on Capitol Hill that threatens the future of wild horses.
Tomorrow, the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Public Lands, Forests, and Mining Subcommittee will hold an “oversight” hearing on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Program. Unfortunately, this hearing is completely stacked against wild horses and in favor of a plan that includes unprecedented mass roundups, surgical sterilization and stockpiling of mustangs in holding facilities.
When we fight back to protect wild horses, it makes a real difference. In a huge win for our grassroots movement, the Trump Administration just announced that it will not pursue lethal measures – such as euthanasia or selling wild horses for slaughter – to manage America’s wild horse populations.
We’ve battled for three years to stop Congress from authorizing the mass killing of wild horses and burros. As always, we are the last line of defense for these national icons. The Administration’s policy shift shows that when we stand firm, we win!
It’s time to savor this news, but we cannot rest, because the Administration continues to pursue inhumane sterilization methods – such as surgically removing the ovaries of mares – that not only place the health and safety of wild horses and burros at risk, but also will take the wild out of these wild animals by destroying their natural behaviors.
This victory gives us hope for the battles ahead – it proves that actions we take to stand up for wild horses and burros make a real difference in the lives of these cherished animals.
As I write this, our field representative is out on Nevada public lands documenting the roundup of the wild horses living in the Triple B Complex. Roundup documentation is crucial work to hold the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) accountable for the devastating impacts of its inhumane management program to wild horses on our public lands.
These wild herds are at risk of being destroyed forever. The BLM’s 10-year plan for the Triple B and Antelope Complexes includes removing thousands of wild horses from public lands and castrating 50 percent of the stallions who remain in the wild, destroying their natural behaviors – the very essence of their wildness.
Here’s how we’re working to stop this cruelty: Last year we filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Nevada challenging the plan. Our case is currently with the Nevada Court of Appeals.
We’re also in the field to photograph, report, and monitor the situation on the ground. Our photos, videos, and reports hold the BLM accountable by informing the public and our elected leaders about the cruelty that is happening to America’s treasured horses on our public lands.
In just days, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will send helicopters into the Triple B Complex in eastern Nevada to capture and remove 800 wild horses from the public lands they call home. Over the next 10 years, the BLM plans to reduce the wild horses in this area to one mustang per every 4,800 acres while allowing intensive commercial livestock grazing to continue on the public lands designated as wild horse habitat.
Since our earliest days of exploration, immigration, and refuge, the American Wild Horse has embodied the values of our nation.
Freedom. Independence. Honor.
These values are worth fighting for.
Thank you for supporting the fight for their future. You’re a crucial team member in our work to ensure the mustangs we all love and cherish stay wild and free.
From all of us at the American Wild Horse Campaign have a safe and happy Independence Day!
July is the hardest month for wild horses in the American West. That’s when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) begins its summer roundup season. It’s also the time of year when most bands have young foals and temperatures kick into the triple digits.
For hundreds of wild horses, July means the end of freedom. Families will be torn apart and chased for miles to the brink of exhaustion, then thrust into crowded pens where they’ll await a future in which the odds are stacked against them. And, this is just the beginning. Across the West, the roundups will continue through March.
Your support will help us hold the BLM accountable – and raise public awareness about what is happening to the wild horses and burros so many Americans cherish.
Our field observers are the eyes and ears for the public at roundups. We need resources to keep observers on the ground to document the cruelty that occurs at during these remote operations.
Our advocacy and policy programs address the underlying causes that perpetuate this inhumane and costly management practice.
Our fertility control programs provide a model for humane management that focuses on preventing large scale roundups in the future.
Our lawsuits challenge the BLM’s flagrant disregard of federal law protecting wild horses and the environment.
