A large contingent of wild horse and burro preservation advocates are attending the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Advisory Board Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, with high hopes of hearing something, anything, convincing them Director Bob Abbey will implement the reforms he promised in his agency’s Wild Horse & Burro Program.
Joined by throngs of online mourners both in America and abroad,
advocates held a candlelight vigil Friday night outside the hotel where
the meetings are taking place to commemorate the lives of the wild
horses and burros terrorized and killed by the BLM: the ones we know,
and the ones we will never know.
Humane observers — except for the occasional few who are closely
monitored — have little or no access to the round ups or holding
facilities where wild horses die from gather related injuries and
diseases, in some cases put down instead of being treated, or shot
because they do not “look right.”
It is a scandal on a grand scale how the Obama Administration is
destroying the nation’s wild horses and burros, that if the United
States had a truly free press it would be widely reporting it and the
individuals responsible exposed, prosecuted and removed.
However, the failure of the media has in no way deterred the people who work to preserve these magnificent and iconic animals.
In spite of the BLM’s lack of transparency, wild horse and burro
advocates have still managed to collect documentary evidence of the
agency’s cruel and destructive practices.
The Internet is abundant with videos, photographs and eyewitness
accounts of the trauma, injury and suffering inflicted on wild horses
and burros by the BLM and its contractors during roundups, capture and
holding.
A Mustang stallion, named Braveheart by humane observers, is dragged by a BLM wrangler, dying or already dead after breaking his neck trying to protect his mare and foal. Image by Elyse Gardner.
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