Ranchers call for a roundup of wild horses on our public lands. Don’t let the cattle industry win
The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:
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.
As always, we are the last line of defense for America’s wild horses and we must keep fighting until their safety is assured.
—AWHC Team