The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:
Wild horses & burros need your help!
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the US Forest Service, and the National Park Service have long treated these long-eared equids with disregard and deliberate misinformation campaigns. Cattle grazing, road-building, big game hunting, gold and lithium mining and other commercial uses erode their habitat and damage their access to water.
With Deb Haaland as Secretary of Interior, there’s a chance to change this harmful pattern. But it may not save their skins unless awareness leads to concerted action — and pronto.
In the spirit of Burro Awareness Month, we would like to share with you a guest blog about these incredible animals written by advocate and burro-extraordinaire, Charlotte Roe. After you read it, follow the link at the bottom to support America’s burros.
You may be familiar with the Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area (HMA) in Colorado because of the world famous stallion, Picasso who called this 157,000-acre public lands habitat home, and who died wild and free on this very land. Unfortunately, the surviving members of his herd may not be so lucky.
The BLM is currently planning to roundup and remove over 80% of the Sand Wash wild mustangs, leaving only a population 163 — about 1 horse per every 980 acres!
Adding insult to injury, the local organization, Sand Wash Advocate Team (SWAT) has worked tirelessly to implement a PZP program to humanely manage the Sand Wash mustangs — and it’s working. Instead of a costly and cruel helicopter roundup, the BLM should invest more time and resources to support SWAT’s efforts and expand the PZP program in the HMA. This would be more humane for the horses and more cost-effective for the American taxpayers.
We must speak up for wild horses! Please take a moment and act today for the wild horses of the Sand Wash Basin >>>
Photo: Mike Lorden
It’s unfortunately more bad news for the wild horses and burros that reside within the Calico Complex in Nevada. The BLM is targeting the estimated 1,700 wild horses and 70 wild burros for removal in this nearly 600,000-acre area.
The agency is also considering extreme manipulation of the wild horse and burro population remaining on the range by implementing unproven IUDs over scientifically proven PZP fertility control, unnaturally skewing the sex ratio in favor of males, and managing a fourth of the population as non-reproducing, including by castrating stallions.
This is not right. Please take a moment to speak up for this historic population of wild horses and burros >>>
Thank you for your support,
—The AWHC Team
