Keep speaking up for our Wild Horses - Two Congressional hearings this week on BLM budget

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American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign <info

Keep speaking up for our Wild Horses - Two Congressional hearings this week on BLM budget

 

 

Last week, as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about his agency's Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, he faced serious questions from two Senators about the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) request for additional funds for its controversial and troubled wild horse and burro management program.

 

In her opening comments, Senator Lisa Murkowsi (R-Alaska) expressed her concerns over the Secretary's plan to continue to move thousands of horses off their western ranges to government holding facilities in the East. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) expressed her strong concern about the cruelty of the recent Calico roundup, in which over 70 horses so far have lost their lives and urged the Mr. Salazar to find a better way to manage this program.

 

As Secretary Salazar testifies again before two additional Congressional committees (House and Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittees), we need you to speak out again to keep the pressure on for cost-effective and humane reform of BLM's wild horse program.

 

Secretary Salazar's testimonies and the beginning of the appropriations process present the most important opportunity that we have this year to ensure that business-as-usual at BLM comes to an end.

 

TAKE ACTION TODAY:

 

Personalize, cut, paste and send the sample letter below to the Interior Appropriations Subcommittees in the Senate and the House, and to your House Representative and two Senators (visit www.congress.org to locate them).

 

DOI/BLM Wild Horse Appropriations

 

Dear Members of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee:

 

As a taxpayer, I urge you to critically evaluate Secretary Salazar's request for an increase in the budget for the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) highly controversial and troubled Wild Horse and Burro Program.

 

Currently, the BLM program relies on mass roundups and removals of wild horses in numbers that far exceed adoption demand. As a result, BLM has now stockpiled more wild horses in government holding facilities (33,000+) than are left on the Western range. This inefficient and inhumane policy costs taxpayers $44 million a year, and the price tag continues to grow as more and more horses are captured and removed from their natural habitats. (12,000 wild horses are targeted for capture and removal in FY 2010 alone.)

 

Allocating even more funds to this poorly managed program without serious requirements for reform would be fiscally irresponsible. Please ensure that any appropriations for BLM's Wild Horse and Burro program include these requirements:

 

? A suspension of roundups in all but truly emergency situations;

? A prohibition on the use of any funds to euthanize healthy horses or sell horses directly or indirectly to slaughter;

? Phasing out long-term holding and shifting BLM resources toward managing horses on the range in a humane and minimally intrusive manner as Congress intended;

? Suspension of any plan for the relocation of wild and free roaming horses and burros until Congress has a chance to review the program.

 

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

 

The AWHPC Team

American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign

www.wildhorsepreservation.org

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