While everyone is distracted, committee members in the U.S. Senate are making life and death decisions for wild horses and burros on your behalf.

You can use your voice for the voiceless before it’s too late! Read the sample letter below to help you with phone calls, faxes and emails:

Dear Senator Feinstein, Senator Murkowski ,Senator Blunt and Senator Udall:

We realize you are about to decide on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wild horse and burro budget for 2017 on behalf of the American people.  The BLM has been influenced by the livestock, oil and gas and other mining interests stating that Herd Areas are designated for multiple use, conveniently and illegally ignoring the fact that wild horses and burros under Sec. C get ‘devoted principal presence of their range areas’. We ask that you stand up for them.

Will the BLM use Americans’ tax dollars to kill off our wild horse and burro herds since the BLM’s own Advisory Board has recommended that 45,000 wild horses and burros be destroyed?  This suggestion is disgusting and against the law and against the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 passed to protect these incredible national treasures.

Therefore we ask that all BLM monies be specifically utilized for the following usages.

1.)  First, American tax dollars be allocated to maintain, feed and care for all the wild horses and burro’s in holding.

 2.) Get an independent headcount of all wild horses and burro’s in holding and on public land with public and press participation to insure that the head count is accurate as requested in this petition (https://www.change.org/p/u-s-senate-investigate-the-wild-horse-burro-count-in-captivity-and-freedom) This will insure BLM cannot skew their numbers for more BLM monies.

3.) BLM is required to start implementing a return wild horse and burro policy to their Herd Areas with a drop food and water program when necessary. This will greatly reduce spending five dollars a day on feeding the more than 13,000 wild horses and burros warehoused in feedlot settings known as short-term holding.

4.)  BLM must return the 22 million acres to the Herd Area’s of the original 53 million acres designated to them which they have removed without any congressional approval.  The BLM is blatantly lying to the public saying they have not removed any Herd Areas.   Removing thousands of wild horses while removing their Herd Areas and allowing for livestock grazing beyond their legal limits puts undo pressures upon the land that would otherwise not exist were the wild horses and burros management program being followed as the original law intended.

5.) Do not transfer federally protected wild horses to states, cities and counties. It would result in them being sold into the slaughter pipeline when the WILD horses don’t do well as “work horses”. We see the cruel fiasco looming in South Dakota when wild horses have been impounded by the state. They are planning on selling them at a livestock auction with kill-buyers licking their chops.

6.) Stop the BLM propaganda machine to fool Americans paid for with tax dollars. The BLM has misinformed the American public about wild horses and burros saying they are overpopulated and destructive to the environment when in fact they are nature’s top soil enhancer and are designed to protect the plants they need for survival. Keep in mind that wild horses are indigenous to the Americas.

7.) Due to the BLM’s illegal selling off at least 1,700 healthy wild horses to a private kill buyer who made thousand of dollars at the expense of taxpayers losing thousands of dollars, we feel you need to take charge and protect the lives of innocent captive wild horses and burros.

Protect Mustangs is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of native and wild horses. www.ProtectMustangs.org