BLM Working to Improve Wild Horse Management

Paws Up!
To the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for making positive reforms to wild horse and burro management.

Last year, the BLM asked for public commentary on their strategy to manage wild horses and donkeys and received over 9,000 responses. In response to our letters and emails, Bob Abbey, director, has announced new plans that are a clear step in the right direction. In addition to the new changes, “BLM will continue to oppose the killing or slaughter of wild horses or burros as a management practice.”

Photo by Jeffrey Edwards

The changes include increased fertility control, a reduction in roundups, and an effort to make care and handling more humane. Currently, the steps are small. For example, the BLM aims to reduce the number of horses and burros rounded-up to only 7,600 from 10,000 per year. However, with the help of a National Academy of Sciences study, BLM may continue to improve these and other numbers in the future.

Take Action: Write to Director Bob Abbey to thank him to listening to your and others’ letters. Urge him to keep working to help Mustangs through fertility treatment and other, humane, methods.

Bob Abbey, Director
Bureau of Land Management
1849 C Street NW, Rm. 5665
Washington, DC 20240
Email: Director@blm.gov

Source:
www.blm.gov/

Carriage Horses in New York

Photo by Paul Anderson

Carriage horses live and breathe in congested traffic and automobile exhaust. At the end of their shift, they are penned up in small stalls that provide little space for movement or comfort. New York City is often thought of the place to go for a carriage ride, especially around Central Park. The joy the riders experience does not carry over to the horses pulling their carriages. Urge New York City Mayor Bloomberg to set an example for other cities where carriage horses live lives of deprivation and degradation; urge him to shut down the horse carriage industry in his city.

The Honorable Michael Bloomberg
Mayor
City Hall
New York, NY 10007

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Horse Slaughter

Paws Down!
To those involved in the Summit of the Horse who want to revive the horse slaughter industry in the United States.

According to a news source, “Less than four years after the last equine slaughterhouses in the U.S. closed down, an unlikely coalition of ranchers, horse owners and animal-welfare groups is trying to bring them back.

Photo by NHES

“The group, gathering in Las Vegas…for a conference called Summit of the Horse, aims to map out a strategy for reviving an industry that slaughtered as many as 100,000 horses a year in the U.S. before it was effectively shut down by congressional action in 2007.”

Why do these people want to reinstitute horse slaughter? Too many horses are being abandoned when owners can no longer care for them physically and financially yet do not want to pay euthanasia costs. Instead of making a commitment to these magnificent animals, owners are looking to cut their costs by literally requiring their pound of flesh. Other, more compassionate individuals suggest “providing fee hay to economically strapped owners, opening low-cost clinics to geld horses to reduce breeding, and requiring anyone buying a horse to pay an up-front fee to cover euthanasia by a veterinarian when needed” is a far more humane solution than sending horses to their deaths in slaughterhouses.

Take Action: Write your federal legislators (house and senate) urging them to reject any plans to reopen horse slaughter plants in the United States. Also, check to see if you recognize any of the companies or organizations that sponsored the summit. If you do, consider a boycott of their services and write the sponsor a note explaining your disappointment.

Source:
www.ktnv.com/
http://online.wsj.com/