PLEASE Help Save Threatened Wild Horses and Burros!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In 1971, Congress unanimously passed a bi-partisan piece of legislation known as the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act.  UNANIMOUSLY!  How often does that happen?  Now, under the new budget, those horses are threatened again.  Despite promises to return government to The People, OUR government is preempting our wishes.  Hundreds of thousands of people have voiced their opinion that these horses and burros on public lands deserve federal protection.  The feds haven't done a very good job, but turning their care over to states could be disastrous.  Please help!  Please e-mail or call your legislators, the legislators designated in the post below, and the White House.  Remind them that the United States is a representative democracy and that they represent US!

The post below is from the American Wild Horse Campaign (https://americanwildhorsecampaign.org):

I'm sorry to have to give you some devastating news. In the wee hours of Monday morning, Congress released a 1,600+ page spending bill for 2017. Buried on page 804 is Section 116, which allows the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to strip wild horses and burros of federal protection and “immediately” transfer them to state and local governments for use as "work animals."

But with no definition of work animal, and no limit to the number of horses and burros that can be transferred, this language could provide a back door route to killing thousands of these national legacy animals. Although Congress added language prohibiting commercial slaughter and putting some restrictions on "euthanasia," signalling its intent to prevent the killing of healthy horses. However, ambiguities and loopholes in the language leave it open to abuse. Especially at risk are the older mustangs and burros, now protected under federal law. Under the language these majestic, elder animals could be killed simply due to "advanced age," a term that is undefined.

We can’t let this stand...Congress should not be allowed to undermine the will of the American people and a unanimously-passed Act of Congress - the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act - through a last-minute spending bill. 

We have just hours to make our voices heard... Please click below NOW to call and send a message to key appropriators asking them to strip this devastating provision that could result in the killing of thousands – and potentially tens of thousands -- of America’s cherished wild horses and burros.

If you do one thing for wild horses and burros, please do this now!

HOURS LEFT TO STOP CONGRESS FROM AUTHORIZING BACKDOOR KILLING OF WILD HORSES & BURROS

Over the weekend, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees restored language to the 2017 Omnibus spending bill that opens the back door to killing potentially thousands of wild horses and burros. The language amends the Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act by stripping them of their federal protections and transferring them to state and local governments ostensibly for use as “work animals.”

With no limit to the numbers transferred and no definition of “work animal,” the language provides a vehicle for delivering thousands, and potentially tens of thousands of wild horses and burros, into the hands of government agencies that actively push for mass roundups and slaughter of these national icons. The Section 116 language can be found on page 804 of this link. 

Congress did include prohibitions on commercial slaughter and some restrictions on “euthanasia,” signalling their intent to prevent the destruction of healthy wild horses and burros. However, the restrictions are not enforceable, there is no penalty for violating them, and the many ambiguities and loopholes leave the language open to abuse.  Especially troubling is a provision to allow the killing of “advanced age” animals, a term that is undefined and could result in the destruction of thousands of healthy middle- to older-aged horses and burros.

While defeating this language at this late stage is going to be difficult, the spending bill only funds the government for the next five months. So taking a strong stand now will set the stage for fixing this problem when Section 116 expires on September 30, 2017. 

What You Must Do NOW!

1. Please immediately call these numbers and voice your objections to the committees that approved this devastating last-minute addition to the spending bill. If you don't reach them this afternoon, please try again in the morning!

** Please remember: the best way to help the horses is to be polite! **

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Chair, Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee

DC office: (202) 224-6665

AK office: (907) 271-3735 

Sen. Tom Udall, Ranking Member, Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee

DC office:(202) 224-6621

NM office:(505) 346-6791

Rep. Ken Calvert, Chair, House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee

DC office: (202) 225-1986 

CA office: (951) 277-0042

Rep. Betty McCollum, Ranking Member, House Interior Appropriations Committee

DC office: (202) 225-6631

MN office: (651) 224-9191

Here’s what you need to say: “I am very upset that Congress has included language in Section 116 of the Omnibus spending bill that will strip up to 50,000 wild horses and burros of federal protections that were passed unanimously by Congress and have been in place for nearly 50 years. Unfortunately, restrictions put in place to prevent the killing of healthy horses and burros are not sufficient to protect these animals, and thousands that currently enjoy federal protection could be killed, or worse, enter the slaughter pipeline.  I urge your office to remove this destructive language from the Omnibus, and if unable, then it must be removed when this spending bill expires later this year.”

Cimarron - Edna Ferber

This is the story of Oklahoma.  It's told through the lives of Yancey Cravat, a dashing, charismatic lawyer, and his wife Sabra, a Wichita socialite.  They have a little boy they name Cimarron, Cim for short.  Yancey wants to go west.  He wants to go in the land run of 1889 and claim 160 acres for himself and his family.  Sabra's not so sure, but they pack up and go.  Yancey is outsmarted by a young woman during the land run and doesn't get the land he had his eye on.

So he and Sabra, Cim, and their little black servant boy, Isaiah, keep going.  They end up in Osage, a dirty, muddy, gun-slinging tent town.  There are Indians!  Sabra is horrified and wants to go home.  But Yancey is determined to stay and open a newspaper.  So they stay.

Sabra does her best and after a while, she becomes more comfortable with their life there.  But she still hates Indians.  She works at the newspaper, she organizes social clubs.  Yancey defends the underdog with fiery oration.  He wants to go another land run, but Sabra refuses.  He leaves her and their two children, Cim and Donna, and doesn't return for five years.

When he comes back, dramatically, as expected of him, he finds that Sabra is running the newspaper and doing pretty well with it.  But then he's off again to fight with the Rough Riders.  Then back in a few years, older and less charismatic each time.  As he fades, Sabra grows stronger.  Oil is discovered, there's a new oil run on the land, and lots of dirt farmers become millionaires overnight, but not Sabra.  She ends up as a politically savvy Congresswoman from Oklahoma, owner of a newspaper empire.

There are so many stories within this story that I won't begin to tell you about all of them.  On the way west, Cim was briefly lost.  When he marries the daughter of an Osage chief, Sabra wishes he hadn't been found that time.  The book is full of the racial hatred of the time, social snobbery, and ethnic stereotypes.  It's also the story of how strong some women are.  Ferber makes the point that the west couldn't have been settled  by sombreros alone, that bonnets were necessary, too.

The copy of the book I read, not the one in the photo, was a multi-novel volume.  I also read Show Boat and So Big.  All three told of women who realized they had to be strong to survive in a time when women were not expected to be strong like men.  The men in the three books leave their women, either by abandonment or death, and the women must take charge of their lives for their sake and the sake of their children. 

'... those four-footed kings without which life in this remote place could not have been sustained  -  horses of every size and type and color and degree.'

'Here a horse was more valuable than a human life.  A horse thief, caught, was summarily hanged to the nearest tree;  the killer of a man often went free.'

We are an ungrateful country with a short memory.

http://www.wildhorsepreservation.org

America's Wild Horses

I'm feeling guilty.  I should be at the farmers market handing out pamphlets asking people to sign on-line petitions or make phone calls to try to stop the US government from eradicating wild horses and burros on public lands, animals they are legally obliged to protect.  Yesterday, I couldn't help a trapped sparrow.  What good am I?

So I'm asking you to help.  In 1971, Congress unanimously passed (how often do they do that?!) The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act to preserve and protect American wild horses and burros.  These animals are the descendants of the animals who transported people and goods to expand our country and who transported lawmen and ranchers and anyone else who wanted to go from one place to another before trains and cars and airplanes.

Today the ranchers, with the help of the government, are shoving the horses and burros off the public  reserves set aside for the horses and burros.  Ranchers don't share well.  People are eating less beef, so the ranchers' answer is to graze more cattle.  They're not very smart either.  They graze many of their cattle on public lands, for which they pay the government about  $20.00 per steer per year for the privilege of destroying public lands and the wild horses and burros who are supposed to be given preference.

Cattlemen say there are too many horses, although cattle outnumber horses by more than 50 to 1 on public lands.  The Bureau of Land Management (a division of the Department of the Interior) responds by rounding up more horses and burros, often using helicopters, killing or injuring many of them in the roundups through stress, and stashing the horses in holding pens.  They already kill many by quietly adopting out horses to people who truck them to Mexico to slaughter, although they're not supposed to do that either.  Recently, over 70 horses died while being transported from one holding pen to another.

Horses are herd animals, living in strict family groups protected by a stallion.  The roundups tear families apart, upsetting the functioning of any remaining herd, and stressing all the horses.  Horses can die from stress.  Holding pens kill horses, too.  The horses are given only minimal care.  Horses are not meant to stand around all day.  To keep their guts working, they need to move.  One day soon, they'll decide it's too expensive to keep the horses and they'll kill them.

When the law was passed in 1971, there were almost 300,000 wild horses and burros.  Today, there are fewer than 30,000 free-roaming horses  -  and they're still being rounded up.  There are now more horses in holding pens than there are on the ranges.  Over 50% of the land designated for them in 1971 has been taken away from them.  This is a betrayal of the government's custodial agreement and a misuse of taxpayer dollars.

If you are a taxpayer, you should know that hundreds of millions of your tax dollars are being wasted in these roundups, in paying the owners of the holding facilities, and in restoring the ranges that the cattle overgraze.

If you are a human being with any bit of compassion, I beg you to get involved.  The government is ignoring the hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world who have been protesting for years.  They're only listening to a handful of ranchers.  Please add your voice to save the horses and burros.  Or soon the horses will be gone.

     American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign

     Return to Freedom

     The Cloud Foundation

Thank you.