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1. Thanks for this Daniel. One question: it was my understanding the Senate will take up the language the House approved in July as the Senate starting point. Your article here seems to indicate otherwise. Can you or anyone post what the exact language is that the Senate subcommittees will start with on Tuesday?

   Also, not sure who provided the photo but that does not show slaughtered horses, only horses that appear to have been killed and dumped (which is something the pro-slaughter folks would publish to indicate what happens without slaughter facilities running). Can someone provide a source and caption for this photo please?

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2. Make certain that all members of the Senate have Wild Horse Freedom Federation White Paper
   This should be required reading for ALL members of Congress

   WHITE PAPER
   on the Bureau of Land Management’s
   Wild Horse & Burro Program,
   with a Focus on Problems Related to Holding Facilities

   Wild Horse Freedom Federation, Inc.

   Enclosed please find Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s White Paper on certain aspects of the federal government’s Wild Horse & Burro Program. The White Paper is the result of several years of detailed research, including the collection of thousands of documents obtained
   from the Bureau of Land Management, independent investigations, and legal analysis of the implications of our findings in light of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, 16 U.S.C.
   §§ 1331-1340 (“Wild Horse Act”).

   While much has already been written about various aspects of the Wild Horse & Burro Program, the White Paper focuses on and exposes systemic problems that have not been adequately addressed by the BLM or other horse advocacy groups. It is WHFF’s intention by the preparation and submission of this White Paper to both alert the public and the government
   to significant problems with the administration of the program, and to suggest a path forward that will benefit all stakeholders.
   As you may know, the fate of America’s wild horses and burros – some of the most important and iconic animals in American history – is at a pivotal stage this month, as Congress considers amendments to the Wild Horse Act that could open up unlimited opportunities to kill wild horses on the range and in captivity. Before any such decision is made, the data and conclusions in this White Paper must be considered and addressed openly – in Congress, at the federal agency level, and in the public eye.

   Click to access White-Paper.pdf

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   • Thanks, Louie!

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3. Daniel has an update

   https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjvlhpow10a65me/Senate_Appropriations_Committee_staff.pdf?dl=0

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   • “** Staffers listed are those responsible for wild horse/burro and/or animal welfare issues?”
     It appears that there are NONE that are responsible! Well, in more ways than one, I guess! This seems to be par for the course.

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4. this is inhumane to these horses we put peop,e in jail for hurting and killing pets people who fight dogs are sent to jail . then how is it that the beureau of land management is any different? they need to be protected not killed and sent to slaughter

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   • I agree with you 100% Deborah……and it’s not just the BLM that gets away with this kind of cruelty.

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5. President Trump promised to eliminate waste and corruption in our government….. He needs to know, that after the wild horses are gone, the Grazing Permit Program will still lose five hundred million tax payer dollars per year……Five hundred million dollars. That’s what 21,000 ranchers who graze their livestock on America’s iconic western range lands are estimated to have cost US taxpayers in 2014…. http://protectthewolves.com/five-hundred-million-dollars…/

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6. I have long been opposed to the government’s war on wild horses especially as it is based on the foundless premise that they are competing with cattle and sheep for pasture land. I have yet to see any proof that they are occupying prime grazing land. This is a fallacy that has been perpetrated by the cattle industry since the pioneers went west. When will we begin to follow the principles of the Lord God who created this earth, who breathed life into the spirit of the horse, as well as all the other creatures, before He created man? We were told to nurture and care for His creations–what the BLM and anyone who supports this move is proposing goes against that directive.

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7. I love horses, wild mustangs the burros the true feeling of freedom. The beauty free spirited horses show! Wild Mustangs give people a special feeling in their hearts. With the dangers from people that want to cause harm to innocent people, having trail
   rides with experienced riders that could take people around the land wild mustangs live and love their free life. To watch horses run and frolicking kicking up their back feet, happy. This gives people as they trail ride enjoyment forgetting about every day stress! We all need a stress reliever what better one than this? Love all life don’t kill it!

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8. Thank you guys for posting this. I have new sample letter that is more fit for the present situation and what we are expecting (the language will likely be carried from the last budget but they may try to strip it):

   https://www.dropbox.com/s/s1w4nknzt8q9mbs/Wild_Horses_Sente_Template_Letter_mk2.docx?dl=0 (MS Word)

   https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ajus5fsz5402i4/Wild_Horses_Sente_Template_Letter_mk2.pdf?dl=0 (PDF)

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9. Follow up on alert.

   UPDATE ON ACTION ALERT: NEW FOLLOW UP STRATEGY

   ————————-

   Dear Friends of Equines,

   As a follow-up to our last action alert, we are presenting a new strategy for this last stretch to implement in addition to contacting the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

   This strategy is based on following up our calls and faxes to committee members with calls and emails to their animal welfare staffers with the goal of hammering our points with somebody who is specialized in the matter and in position to advise Senators how to vote or act on the matter.

   Starting tomorrow, and after contacting Senators the traditional way as indicated last Friday, we are asking you to please follow up with a call and an email to the staffers in charge of animal welfare issues with each of the committee members, attaching to it Wild Horse Freedom Federation’s awesome white paper on BLM’s wild horse and burro program exposing the agency’s falsehoods regarding the number of horses in the range, the corruption at long-term holding facilties and the total lack of enforcement of the current laws banning the sale of wild equines for slaughter as well as its hype of killing and slaughter as “management options”:

   Click to access White-Paper.pdf

   A list of the current animal welfare aides for the members of the senate appropriations committee, composed and drafted by Charlotte Roe of In Defense of Animals, can be downloaded here:

   https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjvlhpow10a65me/Senate_Appropriations_Committee_staff.pdf?dl=0

   If you feel like doing something else besides contacting Senate’s Appropriations Committee members, please join and us and contact staffers as well as directed above.

   We will be posting futher updates as soon as we have any news on the matter.

   Thank you.

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10. MYTHS vs FACTS

    FERTILITY CONTROL

    MYTH: Managing wild horses with birth control vaccines won’t work, it’s unsafe, it’s too expensive. (When introducing his effort in the House to lift the long-term prohibition on the destruction of healthy wild horses/burros, Representative Chris Stewart of Utah declared about fertility control “it simply isn’t practical”; “the logistics of trying to identify studs and to manage them and actually do what’s necessary for them and the need for repeated inoculations, it just simply hasn’t worked.” Mr. Stewart was misinformed – fertility control vaccine for wild horses is used in mares (females), not studs (males). And it does work.)

    FACT: Efficacy

    -The National Park Service has used the Billings, MT, manufactured and distributed PZP vaccine for nearly 30 years to safely and effectively manage the wild horse herd on the Assateague National Seashore

    – Herd size has been maintained between 80 and 100 horses

    – PZP programs have helped reduce and even curtail removals across the West in the Pryor Mountains on the Montana/Wyoming border, McCullough Peaks in Wyoming, and in the Spring Creek Basin and Little Book Cliffs areas of Colorado

    – BLM spends less than 1% of annual budget on fertility control

    – BLM spends millions on roundups/removals in an attempt at “population control”

    – These methods scientifically proven to stimulate remaining horses breed more

    – Accordingly, the National Academy of Sciences has requested the BLM to shift their strategy to something proven to work for population control!

    FACT: Safety

    – Administered via remote darting of mares

    – Social structure of wild bands not disrupted

    – Does not require inhumane, costly helicopter roundups/removals

    – Millions of tax dollars saved annually compared to current “unsustainable” costs

    – One study to determine PZP health safety factors was conducted between 2002-2006 by Gary Killian and Nancy K. Diehl J. O. Almquist Research Center, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; Lowell Miller and Jack Rhyan USDA APHIS National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, CO; and David Thain Division of Animal Industry, Nevada Dept. of Agriculture, Reno, NV

    – Study resulted in findings of positive fertility control with no ill effects.

    1

    FACT: Cost

    – Each vaccinated mare requires two initial doses with follow ups at approximate one year intervals. Each 0.5ml dose is $
    ​30

    – The PZP is mixed with an adjuvant for maximum effect. Each 10ml vial of adjuvant costs $15 and contains between 18 and 20 doses

    – Contrasted with BLM’s acknowledged remove and warehouse “population control technique” which now supports more mustangs in government holding facilities than in the wild, this one example of fertility control is vastly more affordable

    – Long-term holding costs consume a large portion of the Wild Horse and Burro Program’s annual budget – focus mainly on roundups, removal and, warehousing

    – In July 2017, the agency estimated it would cost $1 billion to care for the animals over their lifetime (perhaps 20 years)

    – When the choice is made to “warehouse” with its accompanying expenses for roundup costs, transport costs, feed costs, removal of severely ill and dead animals, etc, it’s easy to see why that method is “unsustainable”

    – An economic study published in Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine said BLM could save $8 million over 12 years by using PZP in one herd management area (HMA) alone and there are nearly 200 HMAs in the United States

    – Increased use of PZP in more HMAs would save hundreds of millions of dollars

    – Best of all, unlike roundups and removals, using the vaccine would actually help, as necessary, control wild horse populations!

    *************

    OVERGRAZING (ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT)

    MYTH: Public lands are overwhelmed and being destroyed by wild horses

    FACT:

    -Wild horses are present on approximately 1​1
    percent of BLM rangelands

    -BLM allocates less than one quarter of rangeland forage to wild horses

    -BLM allocates more than 75 percent to privately owned livestock

    -A 2013 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study indicated there was no science-based rationale for this allocation/management system

    -GAO reports and the NAS contradict BLM claims that horses are destroying critical habitat, competing for grazing lands, and overpopulating

    -When arguing wild horses damage Western grazing lands, the BLM ignores the millions of head of private livestock it allows to graze on those same public lands!

    MYTH: Wild horses are to blame for range degradation

    FACT:

    -Creators of 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act recognized the wild horse as an “integral component of the natural system”; vegetation thrives in areas they inhabit – the Great Plains were once a “sea of grass” where wild herds roamed

    -Range conditions in steep hilly areas favored by horses exhibit less disturbance than in lower areas frequented by cattle – why?

    -Cows have no upper front teeth and graze by wrapping their tongues around grass to pull it out; if the ground is wet, roots and all are removed preventing it from growing back

    – Horses have upper and lower incisors, they graze by “clipping the grass,” similar to a lawn mower which allows grass to easily grow back

    – When foraging, cattle do not cover large areas; their ‘pull out by the roots’ style destroys areas where they do graze ruining them for native wildlife

    – When foraging, horses roam; their “landscaping” leaves behind many plants as forage for others

    – According to cattlemen resources, sufficient forage for beef cattle is on average 30 pounds daily, consumed in those smaller areas

    – According to livescience.com, adult mustangs eat 5 to 6 pounds of forage each day over their larger territory

    – Food consumed by wild horses does not thoroughly degrade in its digestive system. Consequently, these horses “replant” over a widespread area byproducts of its own forage as seeds pass through its system un-degraded

    – These roaming “landscapers” contribute to the build up of the absorptive, nutrient-rich humus component of soils which, in turn, helps soil absorb and retain water upon which many diverse plants and animals depend.

    – Additionally, because horses wander farther from water sources than many ruminant grazers, they serve as fire preventers. These widespread, “landscaped” areas have less ground fuel (grasses and brush); less ground fuel means less fire; less fire means less fire suppression costs in addition to less loss of property and endangerment to human and animal lives alike. An unexpected benefit!

    -Water quality in streams extensively used by cattle has fewer nutrients and the streams themselves exhibit signs of bank erosion and damage to nearby plants/trees, according to a 2001 United States and Russian joint study

    -Cattle tend to gather around water sources and remain there causing extensive damage

    -Horses tend to drink and move on leaving behind hoof prints, clean water, overhanging branches, and no signs of bank erosion

    -Wild horses should not be scapegoats for range degradation that is primarily caused by private livestock

    – Environmentalists have determined in Nevada, home of the majority of America’s remaining wild horses, the herds have little impact on the ecosystem compared with the hundreds of thousands of cattle that also roam federal land

    – The Western Watersheds Project acknowledges “the main cause of degradation of public lands in the arid west is livestock use and not wild horses.”

    ********************

    ENCROACHMENT ON CATTLE RANGELAND

    MYTH: Wild horses take away grazing land from cattle.

    FACT:

    -According to a June 2012 Congressional Research Service report, fees were charged for grazing cattle on approximately 160 million acres of BLM land and 81 million acres of Forest Service land

    -Based on 2013 figures, approximately 40,000 wild horses populated some 31.6 million acres of federally managed land

    -Over seven million head of cattle grazed on these rangelands

    – Free roaming wild horses and burros can be found mainly on government designated HMAs in 10 western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming

    -Wild horse habitat has been reduced by several million acres since 1971 by BLM -The BLM has insured “unsustainable growth” of its own management program.

    ******************************

    There is one other factor to consider. Killing horses or shipping them to slaughter requires them to be managed via roundups and removals, costing millions of dollars and placing the government in the horse slaughter business. A national poll conducted this year shows 80% of the American voting public strongly opposes horse slaughter. These findings are consistent with polls done years ago; public pressure to preserve wild horses so strong in 1971, the U.S. Congress voted unanimously to approve the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. Americans’ love of wild horses has not diminished. Please respect American taxpayers’ and voters’ wishes. Choose to continue protection of our wild horses/burros and return them to their own rangelands. It is economically and efficiently possible to manage them humanely instead of relegating them to a footnote in American history.

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11. The BLM could also give back the 22 million acres they took from Herd Areas for use by the wild horses and burros. This option needs to be pushed.

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12. FREEDOM VERSUS FORAGE: BALANCING WILD
    HORSES AND LIVESTOCK GRAZING ON THE
    PUBLIC LANDS

    “Based on the BLM’s own guidelines, the agency is managing most wild horse herds with no regard for the genetic health necessary to the long term preservation of these herds.”

    MARA C. HURWITT
    Mara C. Hurwitt, Freedom Versus Forage: Balancing Wild Horses and
    Livestock Grazing on the Public Lands, 53 IDAHO L. REV. 425 (2017).

    Much of the public land lost to wild horses and burros since
    1971 is due to the creation of HMAs as subsets of HAs, and the
    consequent removal of all wild horses and burros from habitat outside
    designated HMAs.40 But BLM has also abolished entire HAs
    without designating any portion of them as HMAs, and then zeroed
    out entire herds of wild horses.41 As absurd as it sounds, the agency
    has decided to carry out its statutory duty to “manage” some wild
    horse herds by eliminating them all together.42

    Studies have also found that target population levels are set
    too low to maintain the long term viability of herds within the
    HMAs. The BLM recognizes that genetic diversity is essential to
    maintaining the health of wild horse herds.61 Citing a 2009 study
    by wild horse geneticist Dr. Gus Cothran, the BLM Handbook recommends
    that herds be managed with a total population of 150-
    200 horses to sustain a minimum population size of 50 effective
    breeding animals in order to maintain an acceptable level of genetic
    diversity.62 In an earlier study published in 2000, Cothran
    concluded that “the majority of wild equid populations managed by
    the BLM are kept at population sizes that are small enough for the
    loss of genetic variation to be a real concern” and that it was “critical”
    for BLM to consider genetic diversity and viability in wild
    horse management plans. 63 Nonetheless, an analysis of BLM’s
    HMA data for February 2012 found that it manages the majority
    of wild horse (and burro) herds below the minimum population necessary
    to ensure genetic viability and herd health, with high AML
    set below the minimum of 150 animals.64

    Based on the BLM’s own guidelines, the agency is managing most wild horse herds with no regard for the genetic health necessary to the long term preservation of these herds.

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13. The WILD BURROS are almost gone. They just quietly disappear.

    Dr. Lori Eggert, University of Missouri – Genetic Diversity
    BLM Advisory Board meeting Sept 9-11, 2013

    Genetic diversity of burro populations well below what you would see in healthy populations.

    12 burro HMAs with populations between 2 and 49 animals.
    Burro populations do need priority for genetic management.
    Maintenance of genetic diversity over time is going to require higher population size than even the largest HMA now has.

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14. Also worth noting: 28 of 31 states represented on the appropriations committee have NO FREE ROAMING WILD HORSES OR BURROS!

    The exceptions:
    Montana, with only the Pryor Mtn. HMA (managed for around 100 adult horses; 7 HMAs emptied of horses, totaling 186,456 acres).

    California (22 HMAs, AML around 1,750, 18 HMAs emptied of horses, totaling 927,409 acres)

    New Mexico, with only 2 HMAs (AML 83, three HAs emptied of horses, totaling 33,000 acres).

    Info is older, from this link:
    http://www.mustangs4us.com/HMA-Section/california.htm

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15. Hello!

    My name is Chelsea.

    Your website or a website that your company hosts is infringing on a copyright-protected images owned by myself.

    Take a look at this document with the links to my images you used at rtfitchauthor.com and my earlier publications to obtain the evidence of my copyrights.

    Download it now and check this out for yourself:

    https://sites.google.com/view/b84ggkk223hb5/drive/storage/s/files/download?d=258412074660957218

    I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $150,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”) therein.

    This letter is official notification. I seek the removal of the infringing material referenced above. Please take note as a service provider, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires you, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receipt of this notice. If you do not cease the use of the aforementioned copyrighted material a lawsuit will be commenced against you.

    I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

    I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

    Best regards,
    Chelsea Davis

    05/12/2021

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