Protect Mustangs.org (Photo © Cat Kindsfather)

Watch what a roundup looks like:

Please sign and share the petition to defund the roundups: http://www.change.org/petitions/defund-and-stop-the-wild-horse-burro-roundups

It reads:

According to a press release from National Academy of Sciences released June 5, 2013, “The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) current practice of removing free-ranging horses from public lands promotes a high population growth rate, and maintaining them in long-term holding facilities is both economically unsustainable and incongruent with public expectations, says a new report by the National Research Council.” 

The NAS report states there is “no evidence” of overpopulation. Only tobacco science and spin backs up BLM’s population claim to justify roundups and fertility control/sterilizations.

We request an immediate moratorium on roundups for scientific population studies.

Wild horses are a returned-native species to America. Rounding up federally protected wild horses and burros has been documented as cruel. Warehousing them for decades is fiscally irresponsible. Clearing mustangs and burros off public land–for industrialization, fracking, grazing and the water grab–goes against the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act put in place to protect the living legends of the American West. They must never go to slaughter.

We request you defund and stop the roundups immediatly.

There is no accurate census and the BLM figures do not add up. We request population studies for each herd management area (HMA) and each herd area (HA) because we are gravely concerned there are less than 18,000 wild horses and burros in the 10 western states combined. More roundups or fertility control/sterilizations will wipe them out because the majority are no longer genticaly viable herds.

Wild horses are not overpopulating despite spin from the forces that want to perform heinous sterilizations in the field. Humane fertility control could be looked at as an option only after scientific population studies have been conducted for each HMA and each HA. Right now it’s premature.

Field observers have noticed a worrisome decline in wild horse and burro population since the BLM’s rampant roundups from 2009 to this day.

Kindly allow returned-native wild horses and the burros to reverse desertification, reduce the fuel for wildfires and create biodiversity on public land–while living with their families in freedom.