TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress, BLM ‘No’ to Dangerous Sterilization Surgeries on Wild Mares!

Photo of Grey Mare taken by Gen Heywood at RTF’s American Wild Horse Sanctuary.

Dear Friends,

It’s time for us all to roll up our sleeves and go to work for wild horses.

We’re likely just days away from the House Appropriations Committee taking up wild horse and burro management as part of the Fiscal Year 2019 Interior appropriations bill. Last year, the same committee voted to approve an amendment that would have allowed the Bureau of Land Management to kill healthy wild horses and burros. Fortunately, members of the Senate stood their ground and kept that language out of the final Fiscal Year 2018 spending package.

This year, we’re guarding against not just attempts to kill wild horses and burros but to allow BLM to perform dangerous sterilization surgeries on them in the field.

Already, the BLM has included such surgeries among the range of options for wild horse management that it presented in a report to Congress. Now, the BLM – the very agency tasked by law with protecting our nation’s wild horses and burros — has proposed performing sterilization surgeries on wild mares as part of planned roundup in Oregon.

We need your help on two fronts to stop these inhumane, invasive surgeries before they start. We’re asking that you please call Congress and that you send, by June 4, a letter of opposition to BLM.

Take Action

Call your members of Congress at (202) 225-3121 (to find direct numbers, click here).

Urge your senators to:

* Oppose a new, quietly implemented BLM policy increasing the number of wild horses that can be sold to individuals and the frequency of those sales. This move will only lead to the slaughter of wild horses, something Congress has strongly rejected;

* Stand strong in Conference committee on the Senate’s language protecting wild horses and burros and on defunding horse slaughter, if the senator sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee (click to see a list of members).

For senators not on the Senate Appropriations Committee: Ask them to tell members of the Conference committee that constituents do not want them to waiver either on protecting wild horses or defunding horse slaughter.

* Support the SAFE Act (S. 1706) to ban slaughter and the transportation of horses for slaughter.

Urge your congressional representative to:

* Oppose a new, quietly implemented BLM increasing the number of wild horses that can be sold to individuals and the frequency of those sales. This move will only lead to the slaughter of wild horses, something Congress has strongly rejected;

* Oppose the House version of the FY19 Interior Appropriations bill because it contains an amendment allowing for the mass sterilization of wild horses and burros; instead, ask your representative to support Senate language on wild horses being considered by the House and Senate Conference committee, instead;

* Oppose the FY19 Agriculture Appropriations bill because it does not include the horse slaughter inspection defund language; instead, ask your representative to support the Senate language being considered by the House and Senate Conference committee, instead;

* Support the SAFE Act (H.R. 113) to ban slaughter and the transportation of horses for slaughter;

* Support the Horse Transportation Safety Act (H.R. 4040) to ban hauling horses on double-deck trailers under all circumstances.

Click here to send a letter to BLM opposing sterilization surgeries on wild mares. 

Thank you for being a voice for our wild herds – and for spreading the word about the threats facing them.

The RTF Team

 

Donate to the Wild Horse Defense Fund, which fuels our advocacy, lobbying, selective litigation and on-range monitoring of wild horse roundups