Eleventh Hour Action for Wild Horses

From Front Range Equine Rescue:

The link below will give you some information about the upcoming meeting (November 17) where BLM will again promote and possibly decide its horrific plan to kill and/or sell to slaughter wild horses in government holding facilities.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27738672/

Please continue to leave messages for your Congressional representatives, call your local media and respond to “comments” on news articles on the internet. The public outcry must become deafening for our horses.

And:

This link is to the GAO (Government Acct’g office) recommendations; see the final one. Feel free to contact Robin at the number provided with your thoughts and humane recommendations. One simple solution would be to raise the nominal $1.35 per animal unit fee charged to livestock permittees on our public lands to cover the cost needed to feed wild horses (and burros) in holding facilities.

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-77#recommendations

If the cost could be raised, I'd like to then argue that Wild Horses should be allowed to roam free for the same cost! We may only have until tomorrow to sway the BLM, so make the next few hours count!

Tell the BLM to stop mismanaging wild horses

From Front Range Equine Rescue:

Dear Friends:

As you know the BLM proposed a massive killing of wild horses in holding facilities as a way to manage their budget. The next BLM Advisory Board meeting has been scheduled for Monday, November 17 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Reno, Nevada.

Written comments pertaining to the meeting can be sent to Bureau of Land Management, National Wild Horse and Burro Program, WO-260, Attention: Ramona DeLorme, 1340 Financial Blvd., Reno, NV 89502-7147.

Written comments must be submitted by November 12 (close of business). Ramona’s number is 775-861-6583.

Please contact her to express your opposition to any plan to kill wild horses (they call it euthanasia) in holding pens. BLM has been presented with both short and long term strategies to help the horses by numerous wild horse advocates. We have no indication they plan to implement any of these suggestions.

Ideas to suggest:

Raise the cost to public land permittees from the meager $1.36/acre that they pay

Expand the range back to areas where wild horses were allocated usage per the 1971 Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act

Let wild horse herds back into zeroed out areas

Start a “sponsor a wild horse” program where the public can donate to help feed horses in holding facilities

Fire those at management level who grossly mismanaged the BLM’s budget for the wild horse and burro program; use their salaries to help pay for the horses’ needs

Offer any other constructive ideas you have and express your concern over the proposed killing. Let them know how important wild horses (and burros) are to the American people.

For the horses,

Hilary T. Wood

President/Founder

www.frontrangeequinerescue.org

P.S. – Our attorney, a long time wild horse advocate, will be attending the meeting to express our views.

Saving America's Symbols: Mustangs

Saving America's Symbols is a new article series I'm starting, featuring some of the most influential and prominent species in North America, such as Bison, Bald Eagles, and the American Mustang. Many of these animals are the backbone on which our nation was created and as such deserve our respect and continuing protection. I'm starting with the Mustangs because we're coming up on foaling season soon. Its been a strange, hard, changeable winter all over the country this year, and I doubt the Mustangs are fairing any better than the rest of us. For wild horse herds all over the southwest and in their northern ranges of Montana and Oregon and some in Alberta and British Columbia late spring and into the summer is the foaling season. For the Buruea of Land Management and other entities set with 'managing' the mustang herds this is also the height of roundup season.
During the summer of 2006 Front Range Equine Rescue (sister charity of the Cloud Foundation to save wild horses) published heartbreaking accounts of roundups that took place in Utah and Nevada. Chased by helicopters with days old foals running along side, panicked horses stumbled, broke legs, trampled foals, and collapsed from exhaustion to perish in the desert, or be rounded up later and hauled by truck to pen sites. A corraled horse panicked and broke its neck when it crashed into the fence, and another kicked a foal that had gotten mixed up with the adult horses, killing it. Even unborn foals were lost, when stress caused the mares to abort their babies. In 1971, the United States Congress recognized Mustangs as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West [...] that [...] contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people.” Is this the way we treat such living legends?
Anyone familiar with horses, wild or otherwise, has heard of the Burns Amendment. This illegal appendix to the 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act virtually gutted protections for these animals, as well as impacting the lives of countless domestic horses. Further plans by Mustang management calls for using birth control on mares over 10 years of age to help hold down the population. While this is a less expensive route than the barbaric roundups (conducted at the taxpayers expense, I might add) it will still help to contribute to the downfall of one of America's most recognizable symbols of freedom. Wild Mustangs have been pushed into isolated rangelands in some areas, far seperated from other herds, and birth control would only weaken their already compromised genetic diversity. These beautiful animals, once desenced from Andalusians, Arabians, and some of the most graceful and intelligent breeds in the world would become the 'weeds' that western ranchers have long held them to be.

For more information, or to donate to FRER's campaign to save our Mustangs, visit:
http://FrontRangeEquineRescue.org

http://www.wildhorsepreservation.com/issue.html (Warning, this website contains disturbing photos taken by press and onlookers at Wild Horse Roundups)

When I was 13, a 30 year old adopted Mustang taught me how to jump high, and how to dream. If Bandit is still alive today he'd be in his forties. Where ever you are I still love you, Bandito.