Wednesday, November 12, 2008

11/12/08

How many of you, when asked about American western history, think of horses, cowboys and their horses, Indians and their horses. The American mustang is so much a part of this country's history, and it is being destroyed by our own government.

The government has allowed the Bureau of Land Management to so totally mismanage the wild horses of America. They have been rounded up, herds decimated or wiped out, resulting in injuries from the round up and injuries from forcing stallions together, and shipped off to holding pens. Now they have over 30,000 horses considered unadoptable, costing tens of thousands of dollars to support, and it is being proposed to kill them or send them to slaughter as 'excess horses'.

In the past eight years tens of thousands of mustangs have been removed from over 19 million acres of public land, often under the pretext that the land is unable to support them, but yet it can support the cattle that cattlemen lease the land for, for $2 a month for a cow/calf pair. Too many cattle are allowed to graze over-burdened rangelands while oil and gas drilling leases are handed out like candy, and 30,000 mustangs, supposedly protected by federal law, are incarcerated with a death sentance over them. Something is seriously wrong with this picture!!

In Montana, the BLM has used infertility drugs shot from dart guns, which caused problems from abscesses, bleeding, and swelling on the hips at the needle site in 76% of the mares darted. The drug itself has resulted in foals being born out of season, in the fall and winter. You might just as well as shoot them!

PBS has run a program following a Palamino stallion, Cloud, from the time he was born, and the website, http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/home.html, publishes news of the mustangs in his area of Montana and other places in the West.

Please help the American mustang by writing your representative and congressmen/women, (you can find your information at http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt)
and the BLM,
BLM Washington Office
Director James Caswell
1849 C Street NW, Rm. 5665
Washington DC 20240

and
BLM Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board,
Attn: Ramona DeLorme
1340 Financial Blvd, Reno, NV 89502

or email President-Elect Obama at change.gov