This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

Two of the largest national animal organizations have been duped into a dangerous deal that will harm thousands of wild horses and burros. The catastrophic plan requires cruel roundups of up to 20,000 wild horses this year alone, and also in subsequent years, and additionally opens the door to potential disgustingly barbaric sterilizations that often kill horses. We must stop this cruel plan in its tracks now! 

The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) have collaborated with ranching lobbyists to produce this appalling proposal. Tragically, by the time they realize they have been duped, it will be too late for America’s wild horses and burros. 

The deal was brokered between ASPCA, HSUS, Return to Freedom, and known entities that vilify wild horse herds: the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the American Farm Bureau, U.S. Representative Chris Stewart, the Wildlife Society, and the Public Lands Council (the lobbying group of public land ranchers), among others. Not one representative of wild horse advocacy groups with significant knowledge of the wild horse on-range management issues was asked for input on this disastrous proposal. 

ASPCA and HSUS are inexperienced in negotiating with these callous wild horse and burro opposition organizations. These giant humane organizations may mean well, but have now fallen for vague language and the “hope” that BLM will miraculously change, despite its abysmal track record. 

Their catastrophic plan would actually require the Bureau of Land Management to remove 15,000 to 20,000 wild horses this year, and again in subsequent years. Removing horses from their legally-protected lands involves chasing terrified animals over long distances, which causes some animals to lose their lives. If they survive, they are split from their families and kept in seemingly endless confinement with no shelter until they are adopted or sold to dubious buyers, often ending in shipment to slaughter. 

This plan also mandates the Bureau to implement “population growth suppression methods,” which would allow use of its favored options of surgical sterilization and non-reproducing herds which may include ovariectomy via colpotomy for females which is a highly dangerous procedure nothing like a spay surgery for animal companions. Horses and burros are immobilized before suffering intense pain and distress as their insides are brutally hacked to pieces. Complications regularly occur, and many horses and burros die as a result.  

Many of the wild horse and burro advocacy organizations who originally signed onto the much more effective and humane unity statement plan a year ago, including In Defense of Animals, have now signed onto a letter to the members of the U.S. House and Senate Appropriations Committees in opposition to the new proposal. 

The Wildlife Society has already asked its supporters to support this horrifying request for funds to decimate wild horse and burro herds. We must not let the horses be harmed! 

What YOU Can Do: 

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.