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June 29 deadline for Nevada Wild Horse Range HMA!

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The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:

News & Alerts

Management (BLM) Southern Nevada District Office to protect hundreds of wild horses and burros from roundups within the Nevada Wild Horse Range Herd Management Area. We must act now to demand that the BLM manage Nevada’s wild horses humanely!

Only 800 wild horses are estimated to live within the more than 1.3 million acres of public land in this area, which is part of the Nevada Test & Training Range used by the Air Force. Due to military restrictions, the BLM actively manages wild horses on 484,000 acres of the range. According to the agency’s proposed 10-year management plan, over half of the wild horses in this range would be rounded up and removed. In addition, wild burros living in the area would be completely eradicated.

W3Schools

The BLM is currently accepting public comments on the management proposal and its environmental consequences. Now is the time to weigh in against the agency’s plan to reduce the population to an unscientifically low population limit that will leave just one horse per 3,250 acres and eliminate wild burros from the area entirely!

Key aspects of the BLM’s destructive plan include:

  • Removing all wild horses deemed “excess” over a 10 year period to achieve and maintain a population of just 300-400 horses;
  • Removing all wild burros from the area;
  • Applying untested IUDs for wild mares and other methods of fertility control after the low population limit of 300 horses is reached;
  • Maintaining an unnatural population of 60% stallions, 40% mares; and
  • Gelding a portion of the stallions, making them non-reproducing and destroying their natural behaviors.

Summer roundups are around the corner, and the BLM’s deadline for public comment is coming up even sooner than that. Make your voice heard by June 29 to defend the wild horses from the BLM’s cruel, costly, and unscientific mass roundup plans.

The wild horses and burros of the Nevada Wild Horse Range HMA need you to speak up for them today! Thank you for taking the time to act in their defense.

The AWHC Team

 

Our photos of the month [check them out!]

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The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:

Our team put together some of the most striking photos from this past month – ones that made us smile, and others that remind us why we work so hard to protect these icons every day.

Mustangs in their winter coats on the Virginia Range in Nevada, where our fertility control program is in its tenth month with over 830 wild mares inoculated with the PZP vaccine. Learn more about our program here.

AWHC joined with the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group this month to advocate for construction of a wildlife overpass for the famed Salt River wild horses in AZ. Learn more here.

Friend of AWHC and photographer, Mary Hone captured a series of photos of a wild burro youngster living her best life out on our public lands in California. Check out the series here. (Credit: Mary Hone Fine Art).

Just captured wild horses from the Eagle Herd Management Area in Nevada arrive at BLM holding pens in good body condition, despite winter conditions and BLM claims of overpopulation and starvation. Read more here.

 

Wild horses have long been misrepresented as a non-native invasive species, but respected scientists are working to change that narrative. Learn more about wild horses as a native species here.

Thank you,

American Wild Horse Campaign

We’re rising to the occasion

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The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:

News & Alerts

It’s difficult to overstate the threat to wild horses and burros posed by the Cattlemen’s Association/HSUS/ASPCA, et. al., and their mass mustang roundup plan. If it goes into effect, up to 20,000 horses and burros each year for the next three years will be rounded up and removed from public lands.

Over the next ten years, the total number removed from the range could be as high as 130,000 wild horses and burros. 

But thanks to dedicated supporters like you who have spoken out, signed petitions, and donated, this dangerous plan is drawing national attention and backlash:

Momentum is building, but we’re facing a major deadline to stop one cruel method that the plan allows — a brutal and outdated surgical procedure that BLM intends to use to remove the ovaries of wild mares. Many veterinarians have spoken out, but more are needed to convince Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to pull the plug on this inhumane surgery.

We need as many veterinarians as possible to sign this letter to Interior Secretary Bernhardt by October 18th — please forward it to your local vet today.

Mass Roundups & Surgical Sterilization Are Not The Answer

These wild herds are at risk of being destroyed forever. And this isn’t hyperbole — mass roundups would reduce wild horse populations to near-extinction levels. Surgical sterilization would destroy the mustangs’ natural behaviors, which make them truly wild and help them survive in the rugged West.

There are much better and far safer management options to maintain viable and healthy herds of wild free-roaming horses and burros on our public lands.

The National Academies of Sciences, in its 2013 Report to the BLM, made it crystal clear that roundups don’t work:

We’re Showing There Is A Better Way

Every single day, our darters are proving that humane management of wild horses in the wild is possible. And our PZP birth control programs are getting results.

In the span of five and a half months, our team of 14 volunteer darters in the Virginia Range in Nevada delivered more fertility control treatments to wild mares than the entire BLM, with its $80-million-a-year-budget, did in all of 2018.

Just last week in the Onaqui Mountains in Utah, AWHC’s darter worked with the BLM and the Wild Horses of American Foundation to dart 81 horses.

The fact is, PZP programs are getting results. We stand ready to work with the BLM to expand these programs so that wild horses and burros can live as nature intended — Wild and Free.

The BLM plan and these escalating roundups represent a historic threat to one of America’s greatest national icons. At this time, we’re asking if you could get your local vets signature on to this letter to Secretary Bernhardt by October 18th:

We will continue to keep you updated and thank you for your continued support,

The American Wild Horse Campaign

BLM gallops ahead with plan to remove mare ovaries

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The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:

News & Alerts

BLM Plans to Remove Mares’ Ovaries…Again!

Last week, Colorado State University announced that it is withdrawing from participation in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) mare sterilization research in Oregon. But the BLM is not letting the lack of academic affiliation stop it from proceeding with these barbaric experiments. Instead, the agency is just dropping CSU’s part in the study, which was to assess the harm to the horses from the study! Now the BLM will proceed without regard for or documentation of the pain and complications — including bleeding, infection and abortion — caused by performing the barbaric and risky surgery on wild mares. This is unacceptable, and we need to weigh in AGAIN to oppose the use of our tax dollars to fund these cruel experiments. 

 

BLM Doing Something Right in Colorado – Let’s Support It!

We criticize the BLM frequently for its mismanagement and mistreatment of our wild horses and burros, but when the agency is doing something right, we must acknowledge and support it. Such is the case in Colorado where the BLM is partnering with advocate TJ Holmes and a coalition of local groups to humanely manage the spectacular wild horses in the Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area. Thanks to a robust fertility control program, no removals have taken place in this HMA for a number of years and no removals are planned. Now we need to weigh in to support the BLM’s proposal to prioritize bait trapping over traumatic helicopter roundups should removals be necessary in the future. Please add your name to our comments by clicking below!

 

Administration Takes Aim at Laws Protecting Wild Horses and Burros

The current Administration is promoting rollbacks of legal requirements for environmental review, public participation, and information disclosure that could have severe detrimental impacts on efforts to protect wild horses and burros. As always, we the people are the line that stands between these cherished animals and destruction, and we must continue to let Congress know that Americans oppose this Administration’s dangerous efforts to weaken legal protections for our wild horses and burros and the public lands they inhabit. Learn more by clicking below.

 

Roundup Recap

The BLM’s cruel roundup in Wyoming’s Red Desert ended last week, with the permanent removal 1,4444 horses from our public lands. Ten horses died in the roundup, including six foals, four of whom were literally run to death. Currently, the BLM is removing wild horses and burros from several public lands areas via bait trapping in Utah, Nevada and California, but the helicopters will take to the air again soon. See the latest info on the roundups and find out which herds are targeted next by clicking below.

 

Something horrific could happen to horses in Oregon

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The following is from the American Wild Horse Campaign:

News & Alerts

The BLM is planning dangerous surgical sterilization experiments on wild mares in Oregon.

Warning: this may be hard to read.

In the proposed “ovariectomy via colpotomy,” procedure, a veterinarian makes an incision in the mare’s vagina, inserts his arm into the vaginal cavity, manually locates the ovaries and rips them out using an “ecraseur,” a rod-like device with a chain on the end. The painful procedure will subject mares to the risk of infection, hemorrhage and evisceration, and could cause mares in the early to mid-stages of pregnancy to abort their fetuses.

WE HAVE TO STOP THIS. Click here to submit a comment OPPOSING this cruel treatment.

It is crucial that we act now. The BLM has only provided ONE WEEK to send comments opposing the proposal. And if we don’t take action today, these experiments could mean living hell for helpless horses in Oregon. Can you take a stand for wild horses now?

The plan the BLM is proposing is being done without any academic affiliation whatsoever. The procedures they’re proposing is so cruel that in 2013, the National Academy of Sciences advised that the risk of infection “makes it inadvisable for field application.” There is no reason for believing that these tactics are less risky, expensive, or painful than other birth control methods.

It makes no sense, and yet unless we act TODAY, horses in Oregon will be put through these barbaric experiments. Submit your comment today.

Thank you for taking a stand.

Suzanne