AWHC Criticizes Secretive Wild Horse and Burro Summit in Salt Lake City

Organizers of 'Slaughter Summit' Shut Out Public; Suppress Scientific Alternatives to Killing Off America's Iconic Wild Horses

SALT LAKE CITY (August 21, 2017) – The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) today criticized advocates of slaughtering America’s wild horses and burros for convening a “summit” in Salt Lake City on managing America’s wild horse population. The taxpayer-funded event will be attended by public officials, but wild horse advocates and the public are barred from attending, with the press afforded only limited access to the proceedings.

This event appears to have been formed solely to build a case for lifting longstanding federal laws protecting wild horses, currently under debate inCongress. Scientists and others experienced in implementing alternatives to slaughter will not be allowed to attend the invitation-only event. Not a single representative advocating for the protection of America’s cherished mustangs will be allowed to provide a viewpoint rooted in science, research, or humanity. The secrecy surrounding this event is disconcerting; even its agenda is hidden behind a password-protected website.

“It is absolutely shameful that the organizers of this event are holding it behind closed doors, shutting the public and the wild horse protection community out of the process,” said Suzanne Roy, Executive Director of the American Wild Horse Conservation. “Excluding the public from an event attended by local, state, and federal officials violates the spirit, if not the letter, of Utah’s open meetings laws.

“Slaughter summit organizers know that 80% of Americans oppose killing off our nation’s wild herds, which is why they’re deliberately excluding the public from this week’s event,” continued Roy. “There can be no solutions to the wild horse controversy without bringing all stakeholders to the table. The largest stakeholder -- the American public – is being left out in the cold. But thepublic landsand the wild horses who inhabit them belong to all Americans, and all Americans must have a say in their management.”

Officials from the U.S.Congress, Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, State of Utah, and several Utah counties are expected to attend. Most attendees have ties to thepublic landsranching industry, which views wild horses as competition for cheap, taxpayer-subsidized grazing on federal lands.

Conference organizers are expected to scapegoat wild horses for widespread rangeland damage caused by far larger numbers of privately-ownedlivestockgrazing onpublic lands. Nationally, wild horses are present on just 17% of BLM land grazed bylivestock(155 million acres grazed bylivestock; wild horses live on just 27 million acres). In Utah,livestockgraze on 22 million acres of BLM land while wild horses live on just 2.1 million acres.

To learn more about this issue and to see answers to questions that won’t be asked at the summit, please access the American Wild Horse Conservation’s media kit athttp://wildhor.se/2whQYHo.

TheAmerican Wild Horse Conservation(formerly known as the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign) is a national wild horseadvocacyorganization whose grassroots mission is endorsed by a coalition of more than 50 horseadvocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations. AWHC is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage.