America's horses

An email from one of my riding friends begins: “I know this sounds like a small thing compared to Zimbabwe, Darfur, etc., but we are all parts of the whole . . . the wild horse is an endangered species.”

From the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign:

“The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board met on Monday. In our pre-meeting alert, we had expressed grave concerns over BLM’s plans, asking whether “kill authority” was next on BLM's misguided agenda. Lo and behold, BLM came out and announced it is now considering simply putting to death 'excess' wild horses! How did it come to this?

In 2001, BLM obtained a 50% increase in annual budget for implementation of an aggressive removal campaign. 24,000 horses were slated for capture, with no long-term plan for their welfare. Now, predictably, the federal agency finds itself in the untenable positions of warehousing over 30,000 horses (more than remain in the wild); the funding it wants to save by euthanizing our wild horses was wasted on years of unnecessary round-ups to cater to special interests.

6 million head of private livestock graze our public lands and BLM wants us to believe that 25,000 wild horses are overpopulating the range? Removals are based on flawed and biased data; BLM itself admitted at Monday’s meeting that not even its censusing techniques are accurate. In 2005, while in the process of rounding up thousands of horses supposedly due to poor range conditions, BLM eased public land grazing restrictions for private cattle.

BLM’s irresponsible approach to wild horse management created the problem, and the agency is now asking the American public to swallow a very bitter pill, all the while continuing to round up horses by the thousands (2,000 are slated to come off the Nevada range in the coming weeks alone).

America cannot let this stand. Congress is in recess for Independence Day week, but stay tuned for a national action plan next week. On behalf of America’s horses, thank you for your support at this critical time.”

--From The AWHPC Team

Sign the petition here.

The photo above comes directly from the website of the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. It's a gorgeous photo, and I wanted to make sure to depict the real thing.