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For Immediate Release
"Dances with Wolves" and "Phantom Stallion” Authors Speak Out Against Wild Horse Roundups
Writers ask public to write Obama to request immediate moratorium
San Francisco, CA (December 30, 2009)—In a special press conference Michael Blake, Academy Award-winning author of Dances with Wolves and Terri Farley, author of the popular Phantom Stallion book series, join together at 5 P.M. in the Rex Roth Room at Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter Street in San Francisco to protest the dead-of-winter roundups of wild horses on Nevada's Calico Range. The two authors want the American public to hear their stories and stand up for the wild horses and burros before they exist only in books. They ask the public to write President Obama requesting a moratorium on wild horse and burro roundups until the American public can work with Congress to create a sustainable plan to protect our legends of the West.
Less than one percent of humans who live in America have ever seen wild horses running free according to Blake, "I have spoken with many of the few who have and each has said the view they made will never be forgotten."
The Nevada roundups have special meaning to Blake, whose new book, Twelve, the King, is a tribute to the wild stallion he adopted. Blake explains, "After surviving a brutal capture in Nevada, he never had anything put on his back and was given all-access to the ranch."
Farley will speak on the importance of wild horses to modern children, of the Bureau of Land Management's lopsided science, and share eye-witness accounts of riding the Calico range. A land of sagebrush, pinion pines and snow-capped peaks, the range is not only the setting for her popular Phantom Stallion series, but the site of multi-million dollar roundup in progress because the BLM insists the horses have damaged the range.
"BLM must cowboy up and make the corporate ranchers pay for the damage their livestock has done to the range," Farley said. "Nevada is wild horse country, and you only have to look at the galloping mustangs Nevadans voted onto their state quarter and mustang license plates to see that most of us want it to stay that way."
Farley and her fans fear that if BLM continues its winter roundup of thousands of wild horses, 80-90% of Nevada's wild horses, and adds them to the thousands already in captivity, the days of free-roaming horses will end.
"The last truly wild horse may already have been born," Farley says. "Though Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar claims moving wild horses to Eastern and Midwestern pastures will preserve them forever, these sterilized and shelved horses are treated more like strawberry preserves than a living legacy of the West."
Blake's Dances with Wolves praises the gritty beauty of the real old West just as his upcoming On the Road with Michael Blake takes an honest and admiring look at today's West, and he agrees that the West's wild horses must be left to run free.
"As remarkable as a distant sight of wild horses can be it remains the tip of a glorious iceberg. The actual lives of wild horses reveal to humanity the privilege having a life on the planet earth and how vital it is to respect the privilege."—Michael Blake
"Since humans first huddled around campfires, stories have been told of wild horses with wind in their manes, fire in their eyes and freedom in their hearts. Those horses eluded capture, and scorned the comforts of civilization. Americans have insisted they want their wild horses to live that way, forever."—Terri Farley
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Photos of Calico Wild Horses- Oct. 2009- available to press (http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/index.php/news-events-a-media/photo-galleries/235-calicophotos)
12.28.09 LA Times: Controversial Roundup of Wild Horses Underway (http://bit.ly/6Rygdz)
12.28.09 USA Today: “Activists Decry Wild-Horse Roundups”
Michael Blake, author website
Terri Farley, author website
The Rex Hotel
12.27.09 Las Vegas protest CBS story + AP article “Wild Horse Advocates Protest BLM Roundup Monday”
12.27.09 Wild Horse Advocates Protest BLM Roundup Monday in Las Vegas (AP story & CBS report)
12.17.09 Washington Post: Federal Judge asked to block Nevada wild-horse roundup (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121604454.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics)
12.12.09: San Francisco Chronicle: Secret Winter BLM Roundup Takes Place without Public Notice (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/12/state/n095216S07.DTL)
12.8.09 New York Times: US Plan for Wild Horse Round-Up Faces Opposition
Unified Moratorium letter and 190+ Signatories
Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971
Craig Downer, wildlife ecologist: interview on upcoming Nevada roundup (http://vimeo.com/7135462)
Frequently Asked Questions on Wild Horses (http://www.wildmustangcoalition.org/id44.html)
Photos, video and interviews available from:
The Cloud Foundation
719-351-8187
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