returntofreedom.org
It is with great despair and disbelief that WAN shares the news that the House Appropriations Committee voted last night in favor of an amendment striking protections for wild horses and burros from the interior appropriations bill.
Specifically, according to Return to Freedom Wild Horse Conservation, the amendment removed language that would prevent the Bureau of land management (BLM) from destroying healthy, unadopted wild horses and burros.
The organization said a statement that the decision handed “a victory to those who profit from our land while blocking common ground solutions” and worse,
allows our tax dollars to be used to shoot innocent wild horses and burros.
As reported in the Press Enterprise, Suzanne Roy, executive director of the American Wild Horse Campaign, said in a statement following the vote that the appropriations committee “just signed a death warrant for America’s mustangs and it will lead to the wholesale destruction of these irreplaceable national treasures.”
returntofreedom.org
Roy reiterated that they would hold the members of Congress who passed the amendment accountable “for this public deception and unacceptable assault on our wild mustangs.”
Since the implementation of the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the Bureau of Land Management has attempted to maintain stable populations by rounding up and removing thousands of horses and burros from the wild, despite repeated directives that this was leading the program to financial instability.
As reported yesterday, the HSUS, HSLF, Return to Freedom and the ASPCA have long called for the agency to cease these actions and instead redirect money spent on capturing and holding wild horses toward available solutions, including judicious use of safe, proven fertility control on the range.
Robert Redford, Ed Harris, Elle Fanning, Ian Somerhalder and countless other equine enthusiasts were among those who joined the organizations in helping to draw attention to the threat posed to wild horses and burros.
