Award winning Cinematographer Ginger Kathrens to join author R.T. Fitch and noted equine advocate Simone Netherlands in a wild horse and burro advocates press conference on October 29th during opening day of BLM’s Advisory Board Meeting.
Salt Lake City, UT (October 27, 2012) – The Cloud Foundation, Respect4Horses and Wild Horse Freedom Federation will hold a special press conference on the current state of America’s mismanaged wild horses and burros. The groups are calling for a halt to all Bureau of Land Management (BLM) roundups that are destroying the last of America’s wild herds at enormous and escalating taxpayer expense and an immediate investigation into credible allegations where stockpiled wild horses and burros are being sold to known kill buyers for eventual slaughter for human consumption abroad.
The media and the interested public are encouraged to attend this public press conference at the Radisson Hotel Salt Lake City Downtown (215 West South Temple) from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. on Monday, October 29th, 2012. The public press event will take place on the opening day of the BLM’s controversial Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting occurring, likewise, at the Radisson Hotel.
Currently the BLM has scheduled massive roundups of wild horses and burros throughout the remainder of this calendar year. Remnant herds of wild horses and burros live in 10 western states, including Utah, but their future is tenuous. The agency responsible for their protection and preservation, the BLM, is managing them to extinction. While the cruel and costly roundups continue, the BLM has no idea how many wild horses remain in the wild while pumping tens of thousands of captured wild horses and burros into both short and long term holding facilities. To date the BLM has stockpiled more than 48,000 + wild horses and burros in costly government holding, leaving millions of acres of legally designated wild horse and burro ranges empty.
Advocates are calling for the return of wild horses and burros to the 24 million acres of designated lands cleared since 1971. Only 180 of the originally identified 339 herds remain in the wild. Horse Welfare organizations estimate that currently we have less than 20,000 wild horses and burros remaining wild and free. The BLM continues to “zero out” herds each year without proper justification.
The groups, supported by advocates from coast to coast, will come together in Salt Lake City to demand the BLM call off all scheduled roundups immediately while an accurate and unbiased count is conducted as well as an investigation into the allegations of slaughter sales and the continued mismanagement of wild horses and burros both in the wild and in captivity by the BLM and their hired contractors.
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The Cloud Foundation (TCF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of wild horses and burros on our western public lands with a focus on Cloud’s herd in the Arrowhead Mountains of Montana. www.thecloudfoundation.org
Respect4Horses (R4H) is a horse welfare organization whose goals include providing information and documentation to educate the public, the media and legislators to promote changes in legislation to address current horse welfare issues such as horse slaughter and the roundups of our last remaining wild horses and burros. www.respect4horses.com
Wild Horse Freedom Federation (WHFF) is a registered, Texas non-profit corporation with federal 501(c)(3) status. WHFF puts people between America’s wild Equids and extinction through targeted litigation against governmental agencies whose documented agenda includes the eradication of wild horses and burros from public, federal and state lands. www.wildhorsefreedomfederation.org