“Cloud the Stallion” Filmmaker Ginger Kathrens to Address Press Conference

"Cloud the Stallion" after capture by the BLM

Washington DC  – Wild horse and burro advocates from across the country will gather in Washington DC on September 29 to lobby on behalf of S.1579, the Restore Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act.  They will also ask Senators to halt the Bureau of Land Management’s devastating practice of “managing” wild herds into extinction.

The ROAM Act (S.1579), which recently passed the House, would restore the protections and lands given to America’s wild equine herds given to them in 1971 through the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act.  It was gutted in 2004 by the Burns Amendment.

A press conference will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. in Room 1334 of the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, DC.  The press conference kicks-off “Mustangs on The Hill,” a lobby day from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. when wild horse and burro advocates will meet with key committee members and Senators to encourage their support of the bill.

The event is organized by The Cloud Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of all wild horse and burros on public lands and especially the unique wild horses in the Pryor Mountain Horse Range in Montana. Cloud’s Herd, made famous through filmmaker Ginger Kathrens’ “Cloud the Stallion” series on PBS, was reduced to a non-viable herd with many beloved herd members removed from the wild earlier this month.

Congressman Raul Grijalva, co-author of the ROAM Act will address the group, along with filmmaker Ginger Kathrens, author Hope Ryden (America’s Last Wild Horses), Animal Welfare Institute’s Chris Heyde, and Crow Tribe Historian and Elder Howard Boggess.

A video of a recent roundup taken in Sand Wash, Colorado by Colorado photographer Carol Walker will be presented.

This significant event follows a public meeting of the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board to begin at 8 a.m. E.S.T. on Monday, September 28 in nearby Arlington, Virginia.  A record number of advocates for wild horses and burros are expected to address the Board with their concerns beginning at 3 p.m. E.S.T. The meeting will be streamed live, by the non-profit group Horse Power, in an effort to increase transparency of a Board that wild horse and burro advocates claim is stacked against America’s wild herds.

For information, contact 719- 633-3842 or visit thecloudfoundation.org