Last week, U.S. government agency, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), finally backed down on its gruesome and dangerous plan to conduct sterilization experiments on over 200 wild mares at a facility in Hines, Oregon. It would have been a great victory for the horses and all the caring people like you who acted on their behalf, if it were not for the almost simultaneous unveiling of a devastating proposal to kill over 44,000 wild horses. Please join us to oppose this deadly plan, which would wipe out more than half of America’s wild mustangs.

The Bureau backed down on its barbaric and highly invasive mare sterilization experiments following a huge public outcry. Over 20,000 comments were lodged against this horrific proposal, including many thousands from In Defense of Animals supporters like you. The Bureau of Land Management initially chose to ignore public feeling and made to move ahead with the experiments, but was ultimately forced to cancel them because of lawsuits filed by four of our fellow advocacy groups. The suits ranged in scope from those seeking to stop the study completely or to allow the media and the public to observe them.

Within hours of the BLM issuing a statement backing out of the harmful experiments, which would have been celebrated as a victory for equine advocates, it followed up this welcome announcement with a bombshell that hugely overshadowed the fight to stop the sterilization proposal.

The National Advisory Board to the BLM announced that it recommends the mass slaughter of over 44,000 wild horses currently held captive in holding facilities. The horror of this new proposal and that the BLM advisory board should suggest this for a problem situation of the BLM’s own making is the culmination of years of mismanagement of America’s wild horses. Decades of roundups of mustangs to satisfy ranchers’ desires to graze cows and sheep on public lands as well as to allow mining interests to desecrate our wild open spaces and destroy the wildlife living on it has to be stopped. Its actions clearly demonstrate the BLM’s takeover by commercial interests that are interested only in the management of horses to extinction.

We cannot trust the BLM to not go through with this proposal. To date the agency has still not issued a statement to categorically assure the American public that this could and will never happen. The BLM continues to over-exaggerate the number of mustangs still living on the range as an excuse to round them up and ultimately send them to slaughter by the back door.

We will continue to monitor this situation for the wild horses closely, and protest every suggestion or proposal that would put the horses in harm’s way. If you have not already signed our alert, please do so now to protect these incredible horses before it’s too late.