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Action Alert Wild Horse Education Laura Leigh Urgent!

Posted by on November 11, 2012

Laura Leigh posted: “URGENT : TIME SENSITIVEWe will add time sensitive action items hereONGOING ACTIONRight now there are two ongoing action items, stopping BLM from selling wild horses to kill-buyers and the Call for a Standard of Humane Care. You can take action”

New post on Wild Horse Education

ACTION items
by Laura Leigh

URGENT : TIME SENSITIVE
We will add time sensitive action items here
ONGOING ACTION
Right now there are two ongoing action items, stopping BLM from selling wild horses to kill-buyers and the Call for a Standard of Humane Care. You can take action by using the sample letters below.

Please join us and write BLM as they finalize plans for 2013 roundups… we will stand for this no more!
As BLM finalizes the 2013 roundup schedule (fiscal 2013 begins October 1) please join us in calling for BLM to adopt a significant Humane handling policy with ramifications for violations. As you send in comments on draft EA’s and the eco-sanctuary proposal please take the time to add this letter to your list. Our litigation is still active and we will update when there is news. We need your support to continue the case and investigations ~ thank you.
Below is a sample letter (short and simple) and suggested recipients.
Mike Pool, acting National Director: mpool@blm.gov
Amy Lueders, Nevada State Director at: alueders@blm.gov
Gus Warr, Utah lead wh&b program: gwarr@blm.gov
Amy Dumas, California wh&b lead: adumas@blm.gov
Fran Ackley, Colorado state wh&b lead: Fran_Ackley@blm.gov
Donald Simpson, Wyoming state director: dsimpson@blm.gov
Mike Mottice, Oregon assistant director: mmottice@blm.gov
Steven Ellis, Idaho state director: BLM_ID_StateOffice@blm.gov
Ray Suazo, Arizona state director: rmsuazo@blm.gov
Jamie Connell, Montana state director: jconnell@blm.gov
Dean Bolstad: National wild horse and burro management specialist: dbolstad@blm.gov
As the 2013 fiscal year “gather” schedule is finalized to remove wild horses and burros from public land I implore you to adopt a standard of humane care for operations and processing facilities.
In spite of public outrage, litigation and BLM’s own admission of inappropriate conduct documented in the Triple B team review the agency has failed to create humane handling policy for America’s Heritage species. Supposedly protected by an Act of Congress these animals are removed without an enforceable policy to ensure that all practices follow a humane guideline.
At the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting that took place in April of this year, Dean Bolstad gave a report stating that such a policy would be in place by July 2012.
It is unfathomable that an agency tasked with the protection of wild horses and burros on public land fails to operate without any standard for humane handling in place. No matter how you feel about wild horses and burros being on our rangelands one thing most people seem to be in agreement about is that they need to be handled in a humane fashion.
As a new schedule is announced I strongly urge you to adopt a humane care standard with clear parameters of operation and a clear policy to handle violations. Leaving these standards to be defined “on the ground” is clearly not working.
Sincerely,
(your name and contact info here)

Wild horses DO go to slaughter!

Wild horse in holding

UPDATE: Currently there is an investigation into this situation in the OIG. WHE asks that you send the letter to Congressman ISSA, at the below listed address, asking for a Congressional Investigation.
BLM MUST STOP SELLING WILD HORSE TO SLAUGHTER:
TAKE ACTION NOW TO STOP WILD HORSE SLAUGHTER
AND HOLD THOSE RESPONSIBLE, FULLY ACCOUNTABLE
What many have long feared has now been confirmed. The Public has long suspected that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been slipping horses “out the back door” to slaughter buyers. We now have proof of this very ugly truth. In the last 4 years BLM, under the Department of the Interior (DOI) sold at least 1700 Federally Protected Wild Horses to one man, knowing that there was a high likelihood of them shipping to slaughter brutally in Mexican slaughter houses. BLM actively solicited the sales, including free transport to the kill buyer.
Link to the sad truth:
http://www.propublica.org/article/missing-what-happened-to-wild-horses-tom-davis-bought-from-the-govt
It is time to repeal the Burns amendment that allowed this to happen.
It is time for a full investigation and for those who are responsible for this to be held accountable.
You can take action.
CALL, EMAIL, WRITE! Do it now, do it every day until we get the needed reforms.
COPY AND PASTE ***THE LETTER BELOW*** AND EMAIL IT (better yet, write your own) and send to all the below Federal Agencies and your own Senators and Congressmen;
Federal Bureau of Investigation washington.field@ic.fbi.gov
Address: 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington DC 20535
Department of Justice AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Address:  950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington DC 20530-0001
Darrell Issa, Chairmen of the Congressional Committee on Government Oversight and Reform
http://issa.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=597&Itemid=73
Phone: (202) 225-5074
Fax: (202) 225-3974
Address: 2157 Rayburn House Office Building Washington DC 20515
The President
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
Phone: (202) 456-1111
Address: The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington DC 20500
Your Congressman and Senators can be located here
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt
SAMPLE LETTER YOU CAN COPY PASTE AND SEND TO THE OFFICIALS LISTED ABOVE:
***************************************************************************************
Federal Officials,
At least 1700 of our federally protected (protected from death in the Act) wild horses were sold by the Bureau Of Land Management (BLM) in the last few years to one man and most likely ended up brutally slaughtered for human consumption in Mexican slaughter houses. Not only were they sold to a known killbuyer, the BLM actively solicited the sales and provided free transport to the slaughter buyer.
This was done even though the congressional funding for the Wild horse Program currently contains a provision barring BLM from selling them into slaughter. BLM states repeatedly and emphatically that they do not sell to slaughter or sell to those who will sell to slaughter. Public trust has been seriously violated.
Here are just two of the many Statements from the BLM that they do not sell to slaughter~
1.     Joan Guilfoyle, division chief for the Bureau of Land Management’s wild horse and burro program. August, 2011. “The mission is for wild free-roaming horses and burros to be a continuing living legacy of the American heritage.” She added that BLM sells horses only to those who have “pledged” to treat them humanely and not sell them for slaughter. “As a matter of fact, BLM prosecutes people who do that,”
2.    Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey, January, 2011. “They’re part of our nation’s heritage, and they need to be protected. We are not entertaining the use of slaughterhouses or selling horses for slaughter at all. Secretary Salazar and I have consistently stated since taking on our current roles that we do not support, nor are we willing to incorporate into any wild horse or burro strategy, that we pursue the euthanasia of healthy wild horses and the unlimited sale of older horses. Having taken the position that slaughter is not a viable or acceptable management option for America’s wild horses or burros which are removed from BLM managed land, then we must be willing to pursue other alternatives that address the challenges we have when managing wild horses and burros.”
Congress passed the Free-roaming wild Horse and Burro Act to prevent these very types of abuses to wild horses at the requests of many Americans to preserve and protect, not slaughter. The slaughter of wild horses allowed by BLM is a complete breech of the public trust. Slaughter sale was never the intent of the Act passed by congress backed by the American people. This is a crushing outrage to those of us who believe in our government and freedom. It is not possible that BLM and the Department of the Interior (DOI) did not know where these horses were going; they simply turned a blind eye.
It is time and the public expects a full and thorough investigation into this matter, where the orders to sell came from, who is responsible for the sales and hold all those responsible for slaughter sale our wild horses fully accountable. Secondly we must repeal the amendment (Burns Amendment), the law that allowed this to happen. The Burn’s amendment, a potentially illegal and unconstitutional amendment, that was slipped in late in the night before a recess as a rider to an Omnibus Spending Bill, without the knowledge of Congress and with no chance for debate our public comment. This outrage MUST BE REPEALED.
These are America’s horses, and all too often the government has forgotten that they are simply “representatives” for the people, Americans do not want wild horses brutally slaughtered.
In these hard times, remember us, Middle America, the lands and the wild horse we own. These horses represent how America was built, the rugged tenacity of the people of our nation. In these difficult times Americans need something to feel good about. Fully investigate this tragedy and repeal the “Burns amendment” that has allowed this to happen and restore the original intent of the Wild Free roaming Horse and Burro Act.
Sincerely,
YOUR NAME and ADDRESS HERE
****************************************************************************************
How this wild Horse slaughter issue came to light.
Stone Cabin roundup, February 2012; Reporter Dave Phillips meets with Laura Leigh to discuss the wild horse situation. Philips and Leigh discussed many aspects of the BLM Wild Horse and Burro program, spending hours together. Leigh explained that we suspected (based on things she had heard and witnessed) that wild horses were being sold off to slaughter and to get to the truth he needed to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act request) the “bulk sales receipts” of wild horses sold by BLM. Dave Phillips pursued that and was quite shocked at what he received in the FOIA requests. This confirmation spurred him on to pursue the investigation further.
Wild Horse Education, in concert with Philips, has been assisting the gathering of information for the article to shed light on this tragedy.
Transparency is crucial for the horse’s safety. BLM has never disclosed to the public in any transparent way, where all the horses are, where they have gone, and what has happened to them.
Wild Horse Education’s ongoing “First Amendment” law suit calls for “FULL DISCLOSURE” of “ALL” the horses and burros “from the range through to their ultimate destination”. The public MUST be allowed to KNOW.

Laura Leigh | November 10, 2012 at 6:14 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/p1sfxY-Ai

http://wildhorseeducation.org/2012/11/10/action-items/
more horse info at www.windwildhorse.com

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