KILLING AMERICA'S
WILD HORSES & BURROS?
Demand A Halt To BLMs
Wholesale Slaughter Plans!
Over 33,000 Wild Horses & Burros
Need Your Voice!!!
Click Here To Tell BLM "NO"
This Is Not An Option!
BLM PROPOSES MASS KILLING OF
AMERICA'S WILD HORSES & BURROS
In 2001, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) launched one the most aggressive wild horse and burro removal campaigns every initiated and has removed over 75,000 wild horses and burros from public lands.
At the turn of the century, an estimated 2-3 million wild horses roamed free in America but through horse hunting and the easy money of capturing them for slaughter, populations had dwindled to about 17,000.
Due to the second largest public outcry and letter campaign ever received by the United States Congress, wild horses and burros became federally protected in 1971 through the passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. Yet, over the years, protections have continued to be stripped away as both land and populations have disappeared by the very officials that were charged with protecting and preserving them.
In 2004, Montana's Senator Conrad Burns shattered over 30 years of protection by slipping in a secret amendment in an appropriations bill that was 1,000’s of pages long and nobody bothered to read before signing it the day before the Congressional Thanksgiving break ~ President Bush then signed it into law.
The Burns Amendment, as it is now called, authorized the government to begin selling captured wild horses and burros again for slaughter “without limitation” until all “excess” wild horses and burros had been disposed of. These same government officials that have been reducing and removing our wild horses, burros and their protected habitat are the ones who decide what constitutes “excess”.
Public opposition to sending our wild horses and burros to slaughter caused Congress to require BLM to change their adoption contracts to include a non-legally binding promise that the new owner would not ship them to slaughter ~ though Congress has yet to repeal the actual law.
On June 30, 2008, with BLM reporting 33,000 wild horses are now being warehoused in government holding facilities, more than currently roam free, they announced they can no longer afford to feed the horses so aggressively removed at their discretion and have proposed either allowing our wild horses and burros be sent to slaughterhouses or BLM wants the authority to kill them outright in their pens.
The BLMs management of the Wild Horse and Burro Program has been under investigation by the Government Accountability Office for the last year with the final report due out in September 2008. A few key Congressman have demanded BLM halt any progress on mass killings until the results of the GAO’s report has been released.
While BLM continues to report 33,000 wild horses and burros still roam free, based on BLMs own population and removal numbers since 2000, an independent analysis of their statistics revealed only about 13,500 were really left when BLM issued their population figures in February 2008. Click Here to learn more.
Depending on the results of the GAO’s report and Congress’s response to it, the killing of tens of thousands of warehoused wild horses and burros may begin as early as November of this year.
Currently, BLM is accepting public comments regarding their new slaughter plans and the American public must speak up! The next month is absolutely crucial in deciding whether America’s wild horses and burros will continue to be protected and remain a part of our American heritage or if they will begin their final march to disappear forever.
Their protection has already been stripped to the bone on every level and if BLM isn’t stopped from killing thousands of horses now – nothing will stop them again.
Tell BLM “NO! THIS IS NOT AN OPTION!” by clicking the link above if our remaining wild horses and burros are to have even the slightest chance at life at all.
Please take a moment out to speak for those who can’t, to be counted as someone who wants to see wild horses and burros remain a part of the American scene and who opposes BLMs management and recent proposed killing policies.
Also please consider passing this along to everyone you know, as the more voices that are heard, the more the odds increase that our wild horses and burros will not be killed or slaughtered. Perhaps even write a letter to your local news station, newspaper or government representatives voicing your opposition to a long-standing history of malfeasance in the Wild Horse and Burro Program.
AMERICA'S WILD HORSES & BURROS
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
Photo #1: Wild Horse captured by BLM in September 2006.
Photo # 2: Wild Horses being driven to BLM capture pens by helicopters.
Photo # 3: Wild Horses being warehoused by the BLM.
Photo # 4: Historical photo of wild horse bodies after being driven off cliffs, a method used to eradicate them to reserve all food and water for cattle and sheep ranchers before wild horses and burros became federally protected from such abuses.
Photo #5: Historical photo of mass wild horse grave.
Photo # 6: Recent photo of horses being slaughtered in a Mexican horse slaughter plant, a wild horses or burros fate under BLMs deceptive "Instant Title" option they want Congress to finally approve.
9 comments:
They do need our help. Thanks for posting this
BLM MUST COWBOY UP
The Bureau of Land Management has rounded up thousands of wild horses. Now, it may kill them. As the granddaughter of a cattleman and resident of Nevada, the state with the largest number of wild horses, I'm interested in the West’s wild horses. I’ve researched non-fiction and fiction about them, witnessing gathers, branding, inoculatons, adoptions and the effects of contraception.
After seeing this complex subject from many angles, I've stood up for BLM staffers who know wild horses. But today’s BLM has ignored such staff. Instead, the decree's down from Washington to spend millions on flashy helicopter round-ups, then warehouse captured horses instead of assessing range conditions, taking accurate counts of wild and domestic animals on the land, and gauging the impact of all who use it.
The agency expects its annual $39 million budget to drop to $37 million.
They're justified in worrying, but in his June 30, 2008 press conference, BLM Deputy Director Henri Bisson Said the agency may kill wild horses as a “magic bullet for budget problems" and his words seem to have become a BLM mantra.
During a NPR broadcast, Susie Stokke, Nevada’s Wild Horse and Burro Program Manager agreed that though BLM spends millions on many programs, aggressive management of wild horses is “the magic bullet” for BLM budget shortfall.
Sally Spencer, Marketing Director for the same program, echoed them both, saying BLM "hasn't yet exerted its full powers" over mustangs, but may as a “magic bullet” to balance BLM’s budget.
BLM’s budget covers expenditures on hundred of programs from abandoned mining sites, to grazing lands, and sage grouse, but instead of charging higher usage fees for events like the Burning Man bacchanalia, they've tagged wild horses as the “magic bullet” to the bureau’s budget mismanagement.
Why? Neither Stokke nor Spencer answered directly, but made vague references to range damage.
Wild horses are ordinarily a self-regulating species, but predator “control” aimed at increasing game herd sizes and manipulation of water for domestic livestock have made that impossible. Even under these unnatural conditions, horses aren’t responsible for the bulk of range damage. Prove it to yourself by following a herd of domestic livestock to water, then returning an hour later. Stand at the edge of the playa before Burning Man and return a week later. Look at land about to be mined and come back a year later.
Federal lands are used, sometimes irresponsibly, by many Americans. BLM needs to cowboy up and make
those who do the damage fix it or pay for it, not cross its fingers and hope wild horses will magically balance the budget with their lives.
Sincerely,
Terri Farley
Phantomstallion.com
We need to change back to the way the original Wild Horse and Burro act started out. This is part of our history and sorry to say but the government has messed it up.
I agree that BLM needs to Cowboy up.
Please, remove the cattle and other domesticated species from our federal lands and return the wild horses to their home.
Enough is enough - stop trying to dupe us and stop hurting our wild horses.
We the people pay for them!
Terri thanks so much for that most informative and enlightening post and I'm grateful to have those like yourself willing to stand up and be a voice for your people and for these precious historic Icons who are as much a part of each of us as anything we could ever know!
How long do they have to hear that "we the people" of our great America, want to keep this part of our American Heritage in tact? We have voted and voted and signed countless petitions! Don't you folks get it yet!! Don't you hear our voices yet? What gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies? You haven't God's permission to do this horrible murder! Leave them all alone and be what they are. Part of our own history!!
LET THE HORSES AND BURRO LIVE!!!
Or pay the greatest consequence and that will be your souls, as well as your conscious! Pray for guidance and don't do this thing to our beautiful countryside! We do need this from you today! Commit to be kind. Terri Farley said Cowboy Up, not Copter Up You BLMorons!
Infuriated by disgust!
lj (jock4hire)
Horses are being trucked, and killed in a horrific way every day....thousands, because of over breeding. Now we have the free roaming.
cattle grazing, money it's despicable. BLM managing horses isn't penning them up and killing them, or sending them to auctions and feedlots. More for the disgraceful horse slaughter business. I am furious over the horse situation in the United States. Our government officials are allowing this to happen to an American Icon. BLM fix it, that means let them go and get people that know more about them and won't let cattle interfere with their lives. I am furious, I am heart broken...Save the Horses
1) Terri Farley, thank you for your eloquent note.
2) People, please read the Adobe report (link above) on statistics regarding wild equines and the big game and sheep/cattle businesses supported by the BLM in their actions against our horses and burros.
Then, post a factual comment on the BLM feedback through the link here.
3) Contact your congressional representatives. With the presidential election, the current world-wide economic crises, and other issues, our fight is on the back burner. We have to fan the flames and turn up the heat on BLM.
SAVE OUR HORSES and BURROS!
Enough is enough! You promised to protect our wild horses. You promised to MANAGE them. Manage does NOT mean gathering them in holding pens without thought to their ultimate end. Now because of your MIS-MANAGEMENT you
want to slaughter them. Just wiping them away to cover your failure. If a commercial business was run like your DEPARTMENT you would have gone bankrupt a long ago.
What kind of business is the BLM running anyway? Your department should put the wild horses and burros first and not take pay offs from people who want to take
over their home ranges. This is a blatant case of conflict of interest. They want the land and you control the horses. It's easy to just take them all the horses in and sell the land rights to the Cattlemen, the oilmen and whoever else has cash in hand. Oops, too many horses now? Let's sell them off and then just forget about them like they were nothing but meat for foreign tables. Maybe no one will notice.
If the BLM could only put OUR (the American Taxpayer) interests first, you might be able to succeed in your jobs. Now, The BLM is saying to the American Public
and the whole World that you didn't and can't do your job properly. These animals do not belong to the BLM. These animals belong to us, the Citizens of
the United States. You were hired to PROTECT them not order the deaths of thousands of healthy animals.
To date you have failed! Can you do better? Show us you can live up to your title of BUREAU of Land MANAGEMENT and actually do your job. Or are you just another Slaughter House like the ones the American Public voted to close. If you can't do your job, then you should be replaced by someone who can.
Deborah C Cole
WHat is wrong with these individuals torturing and slaughter any animals like that. I hope you all are being tortured by your souls and go to hell, at which torture begins for you.
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