American Wild Horse preservation Campaign

Please Oppose the BLM's Plan to Roundup Mustangs in Nevada's Flanigan, Dogskin Mtn. & Granite Peak Herd Management Areas

Capture Plan Will Leave Two HMAs with Just 10 Horses While Hundreds of Cattle Graze the Same Public Lands

Wild horses run on BLM lands north of Reno. BLM photo.

The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is accepting public comments on its plan to roundup and remove 287 wild horses from the Flanigan, Dogskin Mountain, and Granite Peak Herd Management Areas (HMAs) northeast of Reno, Nevada.
The action will leave behind just 10 horses in the Dogskin HMA and 10 horses in Granite Peak, while the equivalent of 872 cattle will be allowed to continue to graze these same public lands. Incredibly, the BLM claims that the removal of horses is necessary to restore the "thriving natural ecological balance," yet the agency proposes no reduction in cattle grazing to help achieve this goal.
Each time we submit comments on proposed roundups, we are building a strong record demonstrating that prevailing public opinion demands a change in the BLM's costly and cruel wild horse policy. Please be sure to submit your comments this week on the latest BLM roundup plan!

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BLM Barren Valley Roundup Begins

Helicopter Contractors, Rebuked by Judge for Mistreatment of Mustangs at Triple B Roundup, Begin New Capture Operation

First band captured on Sept. 11, 2011 at Barren Valley. Photo by Laura Leigh.

      The BLM has begun the roundup of wild horses in the Barren Valley Complex, a remote area in southeastern Oregon comprised of  three Herd Management Areas (HMAS): Coyote Lake/Alvord-Tule Springs, Heath Creek/Sheepshead, and Sand Springs.
The wild horses of this area are descendants of cavalry remounts and ranch stock and represent a unique piece of history. The BLM wants to remove 275 mustangs from this area in a roundup that will leave an estimated 449 horses behind in this nearly one million acre, public lands area.
The Barren Valley roundup is being conducted by the contractors known as "Sun J." These are the same helicopter wranglers who just completed the Triple B roundup. Their brutal treatment of horses there prompted U.S. District Court Judge Howard McKibben to issue an emergency injunction prohibiting the mistreatment of wild horses by helicopters at that capture operation.

Thanks to your generous donations, we were able to send more financial support to help keep wild horse advocate Laura Leigh of Wild Horse Education in the field observing BLM roundups. She is presently onsite at Barren Valley. Beginning today, AWHPC's Deniz Bolbol is also attending the roundup for over a week of public observation, thanks to a generous grant from our coalition partner the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).
Please check our website for updates from Deniz as she witnesses the capture of the Barren Valley mustangs.

                        

AWHPC Founding Sponsor      Advocacy Sponsor

The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign (AWHPC) is dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. Supported by a coalition of over 40 organizations, its grassroots campaign seeks:

    * A suspension of roundups in all but verifiable emergency situations while the entire BLM wild horse program undergoes objective and scientific review;
    * Higher Appropriate Management Levels (AML) for wild horses on those rangelands designated for them;
    * Implementation of in-the-wild management, which would keep wild horses on the range and save taxpayers millions of dollars annually by avoiding the mass removal and stockpiling wild horses in government holding facilities.

www.WildHorsePreservation.org