Photo by Tony Stromberg
Wild Horse Nation,
Congress has left for its August recess without deciding the fate of America’s wild horses and burros. This offers us a short window of opportunity to expand the number of ways we can draw attention to the plight of wild horses before members cast their votes in September.
The situation is dire, but we have numbers on our side. We know that polls consistently show that 80% of Americans oppose slaughter and a similar percentage support the conservation of wild horses.
Nevertheless, those numbers will mean nothing if we do not speak for the horses that cannot.
Our wild horses are fighting for their lives. It’s now or never: If we don’t speak up — right now – the brutal business of horse slaughter will return to the United States – and the Bureau of Land Management will be handed the authority to shoot tens of thousands of wild horses and burros. That will become the new management paradigm.
To recap: In July, the House Appropriations Committee voted both in favor of opening the door to horse slaughter’s return to the United States and allowing the BLM to kill healthy unadopted wild horses and burros – starting with 45,000 living in short-term corrals and long-term pastures. The full House has yet to vote. Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted against slaughter, but it has yet to take up the wild horse issue.
Underscoring the need to act: BLM has scheduled a number of roundups for the fall — including a 6,700-horse helicopter roundup in Nevada, the biggest in years.
What can you do?
- Schedule a meeting with your representative or senator or his or her staff. We’ve prepared a packet of information to help you. Find out more here.
- Write a letter to the editor or guest op-ed in your local or regional newspaper. Click here for tips.
- Call, call, and call again. Be polite, but be relentless. Dial the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 (if you reach a full voicemail, look for district office phone numbers on your senators’ webpages and call them) and tell your senators’ staff:
- I oppose any provision that allows the Bureau of Land Management to kill wild horses,
- I oppose any attempt to remove sale restrictions, opening the door for BLM to sell wild horses to kill buyers;
- I support the SAFE Act.
- I support a congressional mandate that proven, humane solutions be widely implemented including range and water restoration, enabling BLM to manage wild horses on the range.
Spread the word: Share our posts on Facebook; retweet us on Twitter; bend the ears of friends and family, colleagues and neighbors, and encourage them all to call Congress before it’s too late.
Those who wish to wipe wild horses from our public lands believe that this is their moment, that they can convince Congress that wild horses are dying on the range (they’re not) and that the fertility control has failed (it hasn’t: BLM has never spent more than 4% of its wild horse budget on PZP); they’re wrong.
This is our time to make clear that Americans will not stand for the mass killing of national icons for the convenience of a few. It is our time to reject this broken system of cruel, costly roundups, and to demand a future in which generations to come can see horses living wild on the range.
Join us. Take action.
Neda DeMayo and the RTF Team