A Message From The Animals Voice

Wild Horses in Nevada Are Dying of Thirst

America’s wild horses are at this very minute being so mismanaged by the U.S. government that they are dying of thirst in the Nevada desert.

For years now, America’s wild horses have been illegally eradicated from public lands in violation of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act, which protects wild horses as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.”

With the help of a gullible media and American public, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is now claiming that wild horses are overpopulating the range at a rate of 20% and are therefore unable to sustain themselves during Nevada’s current drought and therefore must be removed — even though our recent in-the-field investigation has revealed the rate is closer to 10 or 12% and that there’s plenty of water in Nevada for cattle AND horses.

What the BLM isn’t telling us is that our public lands — maintained with our tax dollars and held in trust for all Americans — are being leased to cattle ranchers at below-market prices so they can turn a profit. This means subsidized grazing for MILLIONS of cows — and the fact remains that ranchers want what is left of America's wild horses to be competely removed to make room for yet MORE cows on OUR public lands (see Laura Moretti's investigative report, America's Misfits).

It's been a slow but steady eradication. Federal protection requires that wild horses be “managed in viable herds” on 305 designated Herd Management Areas by the BLM. However, horses have so far been TOTALLY removed from over half of these once-protected areas (and a subsequent Associated Press investigation found that the BLM’s adopt-a-horse program results in about 90% of adopted wild horses going to slaughter).

While there may be less than 30,000 wild horses left on America’s public lands, the BLM is — RIGHT NOW — using the drought as its latest excuse, removing yet thousands more to join the 22,000 already languishing in government holding pens, most of them unable to be adopted (due to age, appeal, etc.).

So while wild horses are left to literally drop dead in the desert (next to well-managed cows thriving on the other side of the fences), the BLM is busy removing horses from desirable areas that even THEY admit are healthy, thriving and sustainable.

BLM is also not telling the public that it’s LESS costly to manage horses IN the wild by turning on the water sources that were turned off when the ranchers removed their cattle for sale, and so it is therefore claiming that it doesn't have the necessary funding to both roundup AND care for wild horses in its possession. In this vein, it is asking the Dept. of the Interior for a one-time kill authority to destroy the animals.

We were just in the Nevada desert. We explored more than a dozen Herd Management Areas by both air and ground. We counted horses, adults and foals. We documented the water sources. We have the evidence. Horses are dying of thirst only because the Bureau of Land Management is allowing them to. Do not be fooled: It is CHEAPER to give the dying horses water than to remove, adopt and care for them.

In fact, under the law, it is REQUIRED!

The BLM's management policy is simply to remove wild horses — under any excuse — because it's in the best interest of cattle ranchers to do so (and BLM is comprised of cattle ranchers). What we're demanding is that the BLM manage wild horses as is REQUIRED by it to do so under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Act — and that means to manage wild horses IN THE WILD!

You must act RIGHT NOW to
stop such cruel mismanagement and
these unfounded and illegal roundups.

Please send us a letter, in your own words, expressing your feelings about the wild horse situation. Once we have accumulated an influential amount of letters, we will present them to key figures in both the U.S. Congress and media as part of our campaign to stop wild horse roundups and force the BLM into managing wild horses ON the public range — which includes turning on the water!

Send your letters to:

The Animals Voice
1354 East Ave., #R-252
Chico, CA 95926

You can also write letters to the following government agencies expressing your feelings about illegal wild horse roundups. Send your letters, as well, to your local media and congressional representatives. Let us know about your responses.

Gale Norton, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240
(202) 208-3100

Kathleen Clarke, Director
Bureau of Land Management
1849 C Street NW Rm. 406-LS
Washington, DC 20240
(202) 452-5125
Fax: (202) 452-5124
email: info@blm.gov

For more information, contact The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, a joint project with The Animals Voice of the Return to Freedom Wild Horse Sanctuary: 1-877-853-4696.

To help spread the word, please download and print our Wild Horse Flyer to your computer, then photocopy and distribute. Thank you!