Tag Archives: wild horses

Do Something Wild This Summer — Save the Wild Horses!

Dear Humanitarian:

One of the most successful components of any grassroots campaign is the involvement of our youth and that couldn’t be truer than with our current efforts to protect America’s wild horses.  Kids, with their passion and honesty, are welcome and critical additions to spreading the word.  Anyone working on this issue has probably heard how massive letter writing campaigns by children all over the U.S. helped Wild Horse Annie get Congress to pass the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971.  Many adults fighting for wild horses today got their start at that time.  We need to reignite that passion because if we don’t act soon, the children of today might not be able to enjoy wild horses for much longer.

To help get more young people involved, AWI has turned its recent “Home on the Range?” ad into a coloring page for kids.  Our goal is to get this to as many children as possible so they can color it in and mail it to the Senators and Representative of the Congressional district where they live and to President Obama.  If kids are particularly enthusiastic they can also send copies to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and to us at the Animal Welfare Institute.

Continue reading Do Something Wild This Summer — Save the Wild Horses!

It’s Official! The Mustangs Are Going to Be in the Rose Bowl Parade on New Years Day!

Saving America’s Mustangs is thrilled to officially announce that the mustangs will be in the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day! Please watch on Saturday, January 1, 2011 at 8 a.m. (PST), along with 53 million spectators from around the world, as we celebrate the New Year at the 122nd Rose Parade. The parade is well-known for amazing floral floats, high-stepping equestrians, and spirited bands. We will get double the exposure as our national icons are featured in the equestrian side as well as the float side of the parade!

Accompanying our mustangs in the parade will be: our retired military service dogs, members of several Native American tribes, dancers, Active Military Personnel, Wounded Soldiers, and Veterans! A very patriotic tribute to our American heritage!

Please share this with your friends and family. We would love to wave to you in the stands as we trot by, but if you can’t make the parade in person, please watch it live on television!

Continue reading It’s Official! The Mustangs Are Going to Be in the Rose Bowl Parade on New Years Day!

A Slick in the Night, by Valerie James-Patton

July 29, 2010 – We keep hearing the upsetting stories from our wild horse advocates living in Nevada near the BLM wild horse holding facilities about wild horses being hauled in the middle of the night and disappearing. We hear it often.

We’ve been told by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), that’s to prevent the horses from getting overheated during the high temperatures in the hot summer months, but that doesn’t fly when we hear of it happening during the cold winter months.

When numbers from BLM reports don’t add up, and large numbers of horses are missing from the charts, all those stories of night-time hauls come to mind.

Continue reading A Slick in the Night, by Valerie James-Patton

We’ve Heard You – Get on Board the Pony Express by September 1st!

Dear Friends, Supporters, and Future Supporters,

We have heard you voice your complaints about the roundups.

We have listened to you share so many of your personal stories about your own adopted mustangs.

We have all sent thousands of letters via fax, email, and USPS to our Government officials, even to the point of their phone lines being unplugged and emails shut down due to the high volume of wild horse supporters on this issue.

We are doing all of these things daily, but there still has been NO change.

It’s time for the PONY EXPRESS!

I will personally hand deliver each and every letter that you write, via the Pony Express (one of our beautiful mustangs), to Washington DC. I am setting a goal of 20,000 individual letters to take with me. Americans, international supporters, animal activists, anyone who would like to tell President Obama, Secretary Salazar, and Bob Abbey that we aren’t going to sit by waiting until these roundups are over is encouraged to write. This is a very important issue to hundreds of thousands of people that have pleaded with our government to stop gathering our wild horses.  This way they cannot unplug their phones, make their website impossible to send a comment to, or delete emails. These are GOING to get to Washington. I promise you that!

Continue reading We’ve Heard You – Get on Board the Pony Express by September 1st!

How Do You Make 2000 Horses Disappear? Let BLM Manage Them.

July 27, 2010 – CHICAGO, (EWA) – As controversy swirls over the aggressive removal of horses from the range by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a more fundamental question has arisen over what is happening to the horses it already has in holding. Over the past several years, equine advocates have been scrutinizing the BLM’s horse population counts. Once again, the numbers don’t add up to their claims.

The BLM doesn’t make it easy to track horses being removed from the range or residing in short and long term holding. The taxpayers who pay for the removals and the subsequent care are not allowed to view the horses under the well worn excuse that they are being held on “private property”. Consequently, there are no checks and balances to verify information being reported.

It also raises a salient question. With 262 million mostly vacant acres under its control, why on earth is a federal agency such as the BLM wasting taxpayer’s money to lease private property?

Continue reading How Do You Make 2000 Horses Disappear? Let BLM Manage Them.

Join Congressmen Riding to Rescue of Wild Horses & Burros!

Adelina, granddaughter of Red Raven & Blue Sioux - June 2010

New Letter Calling on Salazar to Stop the Roundups

Wild horse and burro champions, Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Congressman Nick Rahall (D-WV), are currently circulating a letter that will be sent to Secretary Salazar with a cc to BLM Director, Bob Abbey.

Please take time today to ask your Congress person to sign on to this letter and show their support for protecting wild horses and burros on our public lands. Take this opportunity to contact your Congress person – the public’s voices must be heard and Secretary Salazar needs to place an immediate moratorium on roundups and removals of our wild horses! However, please do not contact Congressman Grijalva or Rahall or the House Natural Resources Committee (except to send letters or emails of support).

Find your Congress person’s contact information at www.votesmart.org. Currently this letter is only being circulated in the House but ask your Senators to start a letter on the Senate side as well.

Continue reading Join Congressmen Riding to Rescue of Wild Horses & Burros!

Update from Cloud’s Mountaintop & Action Alert

Prince & Cloud spar

Dear Friends of Cloud and the wild horses,
Makendra and I just returned from a great five days in the Pryors with the wild horses. We sighted band after band in the broad, flower-covered meadows near Tony Island and the Dryhead Overlook in the Custer National Forest. As is their pattern, the wild horses had migrated to this higher elevation area where show still dotted the slopes above a snow crater surrounded by boulders. The meadows have exploded with purple lupine in football sized flower beds. Due to cool temperatures and moisture the flowers were delayed and the height of the bloom coincided with our visit.

One of the first bands we saw was led by the grullo stallion, Lakota and, to our surprise, we discovered, he was a new father. The little dun colt, still unsteady on his legs, had clearly been born that morning to Mariah, Cloud’s palomino sister.  Last month, I thought Mariah was just fat. Even after the birth she still looks alike a beach ball.

Continue reading Update from Cloud’s Mountaintop & Action Alert

Tell Government to Fix Fertility Control Proposal for Idaho Wild Horses

The Department of Interior (DOI) continues its business-as-usual mismanagement of wild horses and burros, catering to ranchers and other commercial interests. This week the DOI’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is carrying out a dangerous summer roundup in northeastern Nevada. IDA filed an administrative appeal on this Tuscarora Complex roundup – we’ll keep you informed of the results of that action. For an update click here.

Please act today on a new BLM proposal to manage wild horses in Idaho by using contraceptives. While this proposal is a step in the right direction, we have grave concerns regarding the artificially and dangerously low number of horses allowed in these Herd Management Areas and the use of helicopters to round up the horses. Please click here to tell the BLM that this proposal is a good first step, but changes are needed to ensure the safety and well being of the horses.

In Defense of Animals
3010 Kerner, San Rafael, CA 94901
Tel. (415) 448-0048 Fax (415) 454-1031
idainfo@idausa.org

Update on Wild Horses, Roundups, Letters to Obama, Interviews with Madeleine Pickens

Dear Friends and Supporters,
Unfortunately, the BLM summer roundups have resumed and the current death count of the horses at Tuscarora is now nearly two dozen.  However, on the upside, it has been a really busy week in the media for our horses getting the attention they deserve. Saving America’s Mustangs’ spokesperson Jerry Reynoldson and I spoke on the Thom Hartmann Radio Show about the BLM roundups yesterday. The link to the video of the interview is below. Also, George Knapp did a fantastic investigative report into the Tuscarora Roundup. Please take some time to view both and please keep generating awareness to each and every person that you can.  Already this month we have had 10,466 letters sent out to President Obama and our government officials imploring them to suspend the roundups. Thank you all so much for joining us in this special cause! Let’s set a goal of 12,500 letters sent by the end of July. Please keep forwarding the Take Action links on www.savingamericasmustangs.org to your friends and contacts. The American horses need us to prevail… and we will do just that!

Continue reading Update on Wild Horses, Roundups, Letters to Obama, Interviews with Madeleine Pickens

Cut Livestock Subsidy to Fix Agency Budgets

July 15, 2010 – TUCSON, Ariz. – Conservation groups sent a letter to the Obama administration today detailing how the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service can meet the president’s June 8 directive to cut 5 percent from agency budgets: reform or eliminate the money-losing, habitat-destroying public lands livestock grazing program.

“Instead of trimming the budget, the agencies should start by cutting their losses,” said Greta Anderson, Arizona director of Western Watersheds Project. “The fee has failed to keep pace with inflation, failed to cover even the administrative costs of operating the grazing program, and incentivizes destructive grazing practices on public land. In a time of budget crisis, it makes good economic sense to address these issues.”

The two agencies charge a paltry $1.35 monthly fee for each cow and calf that the livestock industry grazes on public land in the West. That’s far below private market rates and far short of providing enough revenue to correct the ecological damage caused by grazing.

Continue reading Cut Livestock Subsidy to Fix Agency Budgets