What you can say in defense of America’s wild horses
A Wildlife Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Fund for Horses
May 2021

Our tax dollars have been misused to remove the horses/burros off our public lands to be replaced with millions of cattle and sheep for far too long.

Wild horses - whose spirits have not been broken...

America’s wild horses are a national treasure, belong to us — the citizens of America — and have a federal law in place solely to preserve and protect them. However, this law is continually ignored and violated in a wide range of ways while the federal government looks the other way.

Wild horse lovers and advocates are often called upon to take action and speak up on their behalf. The Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Times below is a job well done. Newspapers limit the number of words you can use in a Letter to the Editor, and because the writer’s letter below is precise, succinct and impactful. We hope it will inspire you.

Letters to the Editor, The Seattle Times

Re: “Wild horses adopted under a federal program are going to slaughter” [May 15, Nation & World]

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has reached a new cruel low with its Adoption Incentive Program (AIP), paying unscrupulous people to “adopt” wild horses and burros who then sell them to kill buyers all while telling the public they don’t send them to slaughter. Our tax dollars have been misused to remove the horses/burros off our public lands to be replaced with millions of cattle and sheep for far too long.

The BLM is preparing more roundups, leaving very few behind, and wants to use all kinds of birth control, some untested, as reported by the American Wild Horse Campaign. That is a recipe for extinction. A 2017 Public Policy Polling national survey found that 80% of Americans want Congress to keep anti-slaughter protections in place. Our voices are ignored in favor of the ranching industry that thinks it owns our public lands.

If taxpayers want this cruelty to stop, I urge them to contact their senators, representatives and the Department of Interior and tell them to rescind the AIP immediately, stop the roundups and reduce the ranchers’ grazing allotments. The millions of livestock are the ones degrading the landscape, not the thousands of horses/burros.

Gayle Janzen, Seattle

The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (WFRHBA) was established in 1971 to protect wild horses and burros on federal land, placing them under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS).

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