This alert is no longer active, but here for reference.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

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law 50 years ago by President Nixon to ensure a clean, safe environment. This crucial law acts as a safeguard for our public lands, and current efforts to drastically weaken it will have dire consequences for wild animals and the environment, including wild horses and burros. We must act now to protect America’s wild herds and our public lands! 

Under the guise of “streamlining” the NEPA, Trump’s Department of the Interior has laid plans to essentially “gut” the act with cuts and favoritism to special interests like Big Oil. Commercial enterprises notorious for their pollution and destruction joined together last November to send a letter to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). This letter asked for changes to NEPA which would increase their profits at the expense of wild animals and the environment.  Soon afterward, President Trump proposed such changes.

Environmental organizations all over the country are outraged as they see the writing on the wall. These changes will contribute significantly to the climate crisis, and decimate our environment, our public lands, and the animals who live on them. We joined these groups in co-sponsoring one of two National “Protect NEPA Day of Action” events that happened on February 11, 2020. 

Many of the planned changes to the act will be disastrous for wild horses and burros. Especially egregious is the expansion of the “categorical exclusions” list, which will allow an agency to declare an action as not warranting a NEPA review. This list of exclusions could include actions from the immensely destructive oil, gas, and logging industries, as well as wild horse and burro roundups, surgical sterilizations, and other management activities. 

Many successful lawsuits filed on behalf of wild horses and burros have been won due to existing NEPA regulations. If these proposed changes to the act are made, wild horses will no longer benefit from those protections. 

What YOU Can Do: 

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference.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