Stop the BLM's Dangerous Roundup and Sterilization Plan

Photo by Robert Hammer of Wild Horse Tourist

We need you to weigh in on NOW on a dangerous and potentially precedent-setting plan by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to manage the wild horse population in the Swasey Herd Management Area (HMA) in Utah through mass roundups, removals and several methods of surgical and/OR chemical sterilization of wild horses on the range. The goal is to reduce the Swasey wild horse population to just 60 wild horses on 120,000-acre, or one horse per 2,000 acres, on public lands where thousands of privately owned sheep graze every year. 

The 10-year plan includes surgical removal of mares' ovaries, an invasive and risky surgical procedure that AWHC and our coalition partners previously stopped through legal action when the agency proposed it as a research project in Oregon. Now, the BLM has abandoned all pretense of determining whether or not the procedure is humane and safe for wild horses or socially acceptable and is proposing to move forward with it as a management tool in Utah. 

Two Ways to Fight this Plan

1. Sign on to the petition below, which will be included with AWHC's comments on the Environmental Assessment of the plan. 

2. Submit your own comments through BLM's website until February 20, 2020.

Thank you for using your voice for America's wild horses! 

BLM Fillmore Field Office,

As a taxpayer who cares about our nation's wild horses and burros, I am very concerned about the proposed Swasey HMA roundup, removal and sterilzation plan.

I oppose the BLM's intent to manage a portion of the herd as non-reproducing via surgical sterilization of mares. The National Academy of Sciences warned that removing the ovaries of wild mares was "inadvisable for field application" due to the risk of bleeding and infection. 

Surgical sterilization is inhumane and will take the wild out of wild horses by destroying their natural behaviors. The BLM must drop these procedures from consideration.

I ask that the BLM instead pursue a more robust plan for the use of the humane, reversible and non-invasive fertility control vaccine, PZP in the HMA now to eliminate the need for removals in future. PZP is a scientifically-proven and cost-effective approach for reducing wild horse population growth rates and numbers over time that is recommended by the NAS and widely supported by mainstream humane and wild horse protection organizations.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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