The Ultimate Betrayal: Ensuring the Safety of Wild Horses
Dear Friends,
I have devastating news. The Humane Society of the United States, ASPCA, and Return to Freedom, who made promises to protect horses, just betrayed America’s mustangs and burros.
Today, at the behest of those organizations and their cattlemen allies, the Senate Appropriations Committee funded a $35 million increase for the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program to support their unprecedented mass roundup, removal, and radical population suppression plan. There are no restrictions on how the BLM can spend the new money, so the agency is free to spend all $35 million in pursuit of its longstanding goal to reduce wild horses to extinction levels.
With this nearly 50% increase in the Program budget, it’s clear what the BLM will do -- round up thousands more wild horses with helicopters, ripping them from their families and homes on our public lands. Those who remain free will be subjected to brutal sterilization surgeries that will destroy their wild behaviors and threaten their very lives. The future of America’s wild free-roaming herds will be in jeopardy when populations are reduced to genetically non-viable levels.
Don’t be fooled by the deceptive promotion of the plan as “non-lethal.” The bill language prohibits slaughter for a year, but the plan makes that horrific outcome more likely as holding pens swell with tens of thousands more horses incarcerated at taxpayer expense and no guarantee of funding for their safety or long-term care.
With your continued support, we will fight those who have betrayed our wild horses and burros. We’ll fight them in court. We’ll fight them in Congress. We’ll expose the backroom deal that sold out our mustangs. We won’t rest. With your continued support, we won’t stop until our mustangs are safe.
In Freedom,
Suzanne