Target: Tracy Stone-Manning, Director of Bureau of Land Management
Goal: Amend or abolish mustang roundups to prevent tragic deaths.
A beautiful stallion affectionately known as Mr. Sunshine spends over 30 harrowing minutes fleeing from a helicopter. The pursued animal breaks his rear leg and is “euthanized” shortly thereafter. Four of Mr. Sunshine’s wild and free companions die from broken necks, and five small foals succumb as well. In all, an estimated 36 horses perish. These are the latest tragic results of a controversial mustang roundup that takes place annually in Nevada. The event, in which helicopters and other means are used to corral the state’s nation-leading population of wild horses, are sanctioned and carried out by the federal government.
The Bureau of Land Management seeks to gather up around 2,500 horses in this region each year and chase them into makeshift corrals, apparently by any means necessary. They claim the roundup is in the interest of ecological preservation, but critics believe the agency is more beholden to ranching special interests that view the mustangs as competition for their grazing herds. The use of helicopters and the roundups continuing despite extreme heat have drawn particular scrutiny.
A federal judge has joined the ranks of individuals questioning the practice. By the judge’s dictate, the bureau must now submit legal justification for the roundups to continue in their current form. Another measure, introduced by a congresswoman from Nevada, would prohibit the use of helicopters in favor of more humane and safer methods.
Sign the petition below to demand this agency of conservation take the necessary steps to conserve one of the nation’s most precious natural wonders.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Secretary Vilsack,
“He tried to buck off the searing pain and then struggled on three legs. He was then pursued to the far side of the valley and shot. The incident took longer than 30 minutes to resolve,” she said. “These barbaric, cruel, intentional acts must end.” Before the Bureau of Land Management submits its reasoning for continuing mustang roundups, consider this stirring eyewitness account of just one tragedy resulting from this event. Nevada is home to fully two-thirds of the entire nation’s wild horses, and these animals deserve better than being hunted down with broken bones, snapped necks, horrendous barbed wire gashes, and other preventable injuries or deaths.
This agency has not fully explored humane alternatives like autumn bait-and-water trapping, nor has it truly undertaken a data-driven analysis of if this practice is even necessary. Until detailed and well-informed reforms take place, suspend this controversial event that is becoming more synonymous with eradication than preservation.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: American Wild Horse Campaign
This has been going on for years. It’s hellish trauma for the horses, many are killed in the round up, others die due to being held, infected and sickened by holding horses in pens for great lengths of time. Wild horses have lived in their land for centuries. They have their own families just the same as we do. It’s the cattle ranchers, industrial mage parks, human sprawl, and more which makes the horses a problem. BLM has been using helicopters, which pollute the air more than planes, to round up these horses. Due to their extreme fear many break legs and are shot to death, colts die as they can’t keep up. families broken apart to never see one another again. The BLM’s adoption policy was a death trap. People would be paid $1,000 per horse they adopted. The people would then sell the same horses to slaughter houses in Canada or Mexico. This program was evil from the start, based on money as is usual in these matter, and still horses suffered slaughter. Get the BLM out of the helicopters and leave the horses on their land until a better way is found with this issue.
FUCK ALL THOSE INVOLVED BASTARDS!
HELL WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU AT THE END OF YOUR WORTHLESS EXISTENCE!
HEAR HEAR!!! I couldn’t agree more!
Dear Secretary Vilsack,
This country which claims to be the ‘number one’ in the world, is as barbaric as the rest of the ones known as Third World countries.
Let’s hope your Highness changes the rules of the game
Thank you!
Not only ‘claims to be the number one in the world’ but it reacts in the most savage, ignorant and careless ways when it comes to establishing rules to protect the environment and the poor animals.
The BLM will NOT be satisfied until it has removed ALL the wild horses and burros off the grazing lands. These lands are then handed over to the BLM’S fat-assed, money-grabbing ‘friends’ the ranchers for their cattle or sheep. These innocent, defenseless horses and burros are then, very quietly, sold to the BLM’s other fat-assed, oney-grabbing’friends’ the Kill-Buyers, who then send these animals onto horrific journeys to Mexico or Canada where they will face the utmost heinous atrocity possible-slaughter. Come on citizens, its time to PROTECT the very icons of America before they are extinct, exterminated, gone forever. BLM absolutely stinks.
For the 3 people that laughed at this article I hope you burn to death slowly!!!!!!