AWHC Welcomes New Director Stone-Manning and Calls for Reforms to the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program

Leading wild horse advocacy NGO welcomes new Director Stone-Manning and calls for reforms to the BLM’s mismanaged Wild Horse and Burro Program

Washington D.C. (October 28, 2021) -- Today, the American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) (AWHC) welcomes the leadership of new Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director, Tracy Stone-Manning, who was sworn in yesterday. Representing nearly one million supporters and followers nationwide, AWHC is calling upon the first confirmed BLM director in nearly five years to prioritize reform of the agency’s mismanaged Wild Horse and Burro Program, which now costs taxpayers upwards of $120 million a year and is decimating the West’s iconic wild herds, which 80 percent of Americans want to protect.

Stone-Manning is taking the helm of an agency in the midst of a $1 billion mass wild horse and burro roundup campaign that aims to drive wild populations back to the “fast-disappearing” number that prompted Congress to protect them in 1971. She faces increasing public opposition to the roundup plan, including from environmental groups, like the 3.7-million-member Sierra Club, which have criticized the scapegoating of wild horses and called for removal of commercial livestock from public lands where wild horses and burros live.

“We strongly urge Director Stone-Manning to take the reins of the BLM’s mismanaged wild horse and burro program. Her leadership is urgently needed to achieve a more humane, long-term, and sustainable strategy for managing our nation’s wild horses and burros,” said Holly Gann Bice, AWHC’s Director of Government Relations. “The American Wild Horse Conservation stands ready to assist. Through collaboration, the BLM can adopt a new strategy that will inspire public confidence in the agency and will benefit our nation’s cherished wild horses and burros and taxpayers alike.”

AWHC is the nation’s leading wild horse advocacy organization with a supporter and follower base of nearly one million people. AWHC implements the world’s largest humane wild horse fertility control program which has become a model for humane management of wild horse herds in the West.

Among the issues, AWHC urges Stone-Manning to immediately address the following:

• Ending the cash incentive adoption program that’s sending truckloads of wild horses and burros into the slaughter pipeline.
• Redirecting resources away from inhumane and costly roundups toward scientific and cost-effective in-the-wild management with fertility control.
• Addressing bias in resource allocation by reducing commercial livestock grazing within wild horse and burro habitat to conserve healthy and sustainable wild equid herds.
• Bringing accountability and compliance to roundups by requiring cameras on helicopters, traps, and holding pens during roundups.
• Providing meaningful public observation of government capture operations.
• Strengthening the agency’s Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program guidelines and making them enforceable.

About AWHC

The American Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign) (AWHC) is the nation's leading wild horse protection organization, with more than 700,000 supporters and followers nationwide. AWHC is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse and burros in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. In addition to advocating for the protection and preservation of America's wild herds, AWHC implements the largest wild horse fertility control program in the world through a partnership with the State of Nevada for wild horses that live in the Virginia Range near Reno.

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