Feds to begin capture of nearly 2,000 wild horses next week, despite receiving over 10,000 protest letters

Rock Springs, Wyoming (September 30, 2010) (CRWE Newswire) The Western Watersheds Project, a leading environmental organization, has joined the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign to oppose the massive roundup of Wyoming mustangs set to begin next Wednesday or Thursday (October 6 or 7).

The groups today expressed outrage at the Interior Department’s plan to proceed with the wild horse roundup in the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek Herd Management Areas (HMAs) despite overwhelming public opposition to the proposed capture plan. According to the groups, the Interior Department has received over 10,000 letters from American citizens urging a halt to the roundup and the implementation of strategies to keep horses on the range as an alternative to mass removals.

“This latest wild horse roundup is just another example of the Interior Department’s utter failure to fairly balance the uses of our public lands, while awarding the lion’s share of resources to livestock and other commercial industries, ” said Jonathan Ratner, Western Watershed’s Wyoming Director.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) intends to capture - via helicopter stampede - 1,951 wild horses, or 80 percent of the estimated mustang population living in the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek HMAs. Nearly 1,600 of these wild horses will be permanently removed, with the majority slated for lifelong warehousing in government holding facilities at taxpayer expense. BLM claims that this vast, 1.7 million acre range can support no more 610-800 adult horses in Adobe Town and 251-365 in Salt Wells Creek. Meanwhile the agency allocates up to 13 times more water and forage within this public lands area to privately-owned livestock than to wild horses.

In joint comments on the Environmental Assessment for the capture plan, the two groups called for a halt to the capture plan and the implementation of management strategies that will keep wild horses on the range, breaking the BLM’s unsustainable cycle of mass removals and stockpiling of wild horses in government holding facilities.

“The Interior Department cannot management healthy horses on healthy ranges when privately-owned livestock vastly outnumber wild horses in these specially designated wild horse areas,” said Suzanne Roy, campaign director for the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign. “The Department ignores cost-effective and humane management options and continues the mass removal of wild horses from our public lands in service to the livestock and other commercial industries.”

Wild horses comprise a small fraction of grazing animals on public lands, where they are outnumbered by livestock nearly 50 to 1. The BLM has recently increased cattle grazing allotments in areas where wild horses are being removed. Livestock grazing is authorized on 160 million acres of BLM land, while wild horses are restricted to just 26 million acres, which they must share with livestock. The Interior Department intends to remove 12,000 wild horses and burros from public lands in Fiscal Year 2010, with a similar number targeted for next year as well. Currently, the government warehouses more than 38,000 wild horses in government holding facilities, a number that now exceeds the population left on free on the range.

Western Watersheds Project (WWP) is a 501c3 organization that is devoted to protection of public lands, values, watersheds and wildlife in the American West. WWP has over 1200 members, many of whom recreate on portions of these lands and enjoy their scenic beauty, wildlife and other attributes.

American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign is a broad-based coalition of 40 public interest groups, environmentalists, humane organizations and historical societies representing over 10 million supporters dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable free-roaming herds for generations to come. For more information, see www.wildhorsepreservation.org.
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For More information Contact Suzanne Roy

Campaign Director American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign
919-697-9389 919-697-9389
sroy@wildhorsepreservation.org
www.wildhorsepreservation.org
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