Take Action Now: Your Help Needed to Protect America’s Wild Horses
HorseBack in July, we informed News Alert readers of the crisis that was brewing around America’s wild horses. A division of the U.S. Department of the Interior called the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in charge of caring for and maintaining our wild herds. However, in recent years, the BLM has allowed wild horse populations to boom while simultaneously eliminating their access to millions of acres of grazing land. Since the 1980s, the agency has been thinning the herds by rounding up wild horses and adopting out as many as possible to the public. In 2001, the BLM had 9,807 horses in captivity—this summer, that number climbed to over 30,000. With adoptions down and hay prices at all-time highs, the BLM has been feeling the pinch of paying to board and feed all these animals—and its proposed solution is to euthanize thousands of healthy horses.
In October, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its long-awaited review of the BLM’s wild horse program—the first such analysis in 18 years—which we had hoped would condemn killing the animals and promote solutions such as strategic birth control or herd relocation. Unfortunately, the GOA did not investigate certain issues that Congress specifically requested it to, and the report indicated that the BLM has the right to euthanize the horses in its care and/or sell them for slaughter without first getting approval from Congress.
Please take action and help these horses! Write letters to your U.S. senators and representative, urging them to pressure the BLM to live up to its responsibility to protect, not end, the lives of these horses. Look up your legislators’ addresses and if you have the resources, please consider adopting a horse from the BLM. The agency holds adoption events all over the country and online—check out the National Wild Horse and Burro Program website for schedules and information.
Leena Hedman
Thank you for the info, Mel!!
mlgkats replied
you are so very welcome :)