For immediate release:

Coalition boycotts meeting

Redmond, OR (April 13, 2016)—Americans are outraged. A government agency is experimenting and exploiting federally protected wild horses and burros. Advocates, unions and Native Americans are boycotting the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting in Redmond, Oregon today and Thursday. The primary stakeholder—the American public—is being ignored.

“Members of the livestock industry as well as members of the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board have suggested slaughter as a management tool for wild horses. Americans won’t stand for it. There would be an outbreak of protests nationwide. We will fight that abuse in the courts if the advisory board dare threaten the welfare of America’s wild horses.” —Stephanie Elias, community outreach organizer for Stop American Wild Horse Slaughter

“The Bureau of Land Management is usurping the caretaking role they have been mandated to uphold and are subjecting the mares in our nation’s wild horse and burro herds to pernicious and needless reproduction experimentation. The universities they are funding to do this research must acknowledge that this would never be of use or value in the domestic horse industry. I believe their agenda needs to be investigated before they are paid to do irrevocable harm to these horses. They have already changed the genetics and natural herd behavior. Ahimsa, do no harm, applies to animals as well as people. This is an abomination and must be stopped.” —Christine DeCarlo, Ph.D. in Zoology from Cornell, Advisory Board member for Protect Mustangs.

“The Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is useless, yet quite costly to the taxpayers. Circumventing the laws to protect America’s wild horses on public lands, this board represents ranchers who hold grazing permits on public lands only. The intent purpose of the WH&B Board was to protect and make sure wild horses remain safe and wild, and to regulate those ranchers who threaten, abuse, and even kill America’s wild horses. Not only does this board not protect the wild horses, their actual mission, but continues experimentation and using pesticides like PZP and GonaCon™ as birth control—darting the chemicals into wild horse mares. I speak for many Americans, in that humane principle’s and an ethic balance to manage our wild horses has been lost some time back. It’s time to restore them.” —John Cox, Oregonian and Vietnam Veteran

“The truth is, America’s wild horses are underpopulated on public land today. Even the National Academy of Sciences states there is ‘no evidence’ of overpopulation. The BLM’s arbitrary management levels (AML) are way too low for genetic diversity and survival. Fertility control and sterilization at this point endangers the survival of this cherished native species. Wild horses are indigenous to North America yet now the feds and special interest groups want to sterilize them and push them off public land. We offered to help adopt out all the pregnant mares from the last big Oregon roundup (http://protectmustangs.org/?p=8739) but our offer was ignored. The BLM doesn’t want to adopt out these wild horses they want to exploit them as lab animals. The advisory board is a joke. It’s biased towards slaughter, sterilization, pesticides for birth control and cattle as well as experiments.” —Anne Novak executive director of Protect Mustangs

“We want the burros to have the space they require under the law protecting them. In over a decade visiting the burro herds in the West, I don’t see any evidence of BLM’s claims of overpopulation. Everywhere I go it’s getting harder and harder to see burros and many have vanished all together. Why would people want to sterilize or inject the last surviving wild burro herds with pesticides like PZP for birth control? PZP is a slow road to extinction. What we need is creditable population counts for all the remaining burro herds. Advocates and BLM should work jointly for the census. Then we can find out what the real situation is.” —Carl Mrozek, filmmaker and contributor to CBS Sunday Morning

“The wild horse and burro program states that the number of adoptions have significantly gone downhill over a number of years because the market for them has decreased. But the truth is the BLM staff in charge of the BLM Internet adoption auctions do not make themselves available during the internet auction to process the applications required to bid. Since the BLM isn’t allowing employees to adopt loads of wild horses to sell them quickly for slaughter like they used to—adoptions have dropped. BLM’s forte is mismanagement whether it’s the horses and burros or their own staff.” —Afroditi Katsikis, founder of Tweet Equine

“We need to restore wild horse and burro areas as well as protections promised in the 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Protection Bill. I would like to see Craig Downer’s Reserve Design succeed. Let’s keep in mind that wild horses are a ‘climax’ species and predators must be allowed as nature intended. Given a balanced ecology, which can be restored, wild horse population will self-regulate.” —Susan Leffingwell, director of Wind Dancer Wild Horse and Burro Preserve

“We the people of the Alaskan Tlingit Nation stand against the use of PZP and the sterilization of wild mustangs. Like the buffalo, the wolf, the bear and other animals the horse is just as sacred to our people as the bible is to Christians, the Koran to Muslims, Buddha to Buddhists. The use of PZP, ovarian ligation, or any form of sterilization would be considered sacrilege and an insult to our people and the majority of native people everywhere.” —Rudy Al James, federal tribal judge (Tlingkit Nation)

“PZP sterilizes our wild horses and destroys the wild mares’ reproductive organs. The pesticide disrupts the stability of the herds, causes fighting, still borns, birth defects, etc. and therefore we are against it.” —Tina Wooten, Salt River Wild Horse photographer and artist

“We have a lot to study and learn about America’s wild horses. If they are used as lab animals for experiments and sterilized then we can’t study their natural behaviors in the wild. —Anne Novak, founder of the American Wild Horse Institute

“Public land belongs to all of the American people not the livestock industry. There are 5 million cattle and very few Wild Horses. More than 80% of the American public wants our iconic wild horses to be wild and free—unencumbered by any government experimental birth control like the pesticides PZP, GpnaCon™, ovarian ligation or other heinous sterilizations. The livestock industry is the number one cause of global warming and is destroying America’s ecosystems and wildlife. Wild horses manage their own numbers and we want them left alone!” —Peter Souza, founder of the Wolf, Wildlife, Wild Horse Action Group (WWWHAG)

“As a person of Yaqui ancestry I am angered and saddened by the outrageous actions of our Government in their callous disregard and lack of respect for the wild mustangs in the western United States. These beautiful creatures need to exist unmolested and unfettered so they may live in harmony with nature, as it was meant to be. I implore you to cease your heinous acts of sterilization and blatant slaughter of these beautiful creatures in your grossly misguided efforts to control their population at the behest of disgruntled farmers or corporate interests.” —Debra Pavone (Yaqui Nation)

“As a collective of concerned union representatives, Native Americans and citizens, we strongly urge that the board and universities refrain from taking part in any practice of experimentation, sterilization or the use of PZP on any and all wild horses and burros.

We ask that you don’t play God, judge, jury and executioner.

Must we remind you that crimes against humanity also includes animals. It is not only wrong ethically and morally but once again it is wasteful spending of our tax dollars. The legal implications this can lead to will only cause millions of tax dollars to be wasted in the courts. PZP. sterilization and experimentation is bad for the economy, bad for the wild horses, bad for America and a bad idea!” —Randall Massaro, President of Unions for the Preservation of Wildlife

Alliance for Wild Horses and Burros

# # #
Media Contacts:

Randal Massaro randalmassaro@gmail.com  760-245-3635

Carl Mrozek eagleye11@gmail.com

Anne Novak: anne@ProtectMustangs.org  415-531-8454

John Cox: news@veteran-journalist.com  541-880-8992

Tina Wooten: ladyriver1963@yahoo.com

Stephanie Elias: sallenicrofwi@gmail.com  414-544-2015

Links of interest:

Fact Sheet: The Truth About PZP: http://protectmustangs.org/?p=8749

Feds want to use 11 million to experiment on wild horses and burros: http://protectmustangs.org/?p=8657

Protect Mustangs calls for an end to animal cruelty http://protectmustangs.org/?p=8739

BLM support group advocates to experiment of Americas free and wild horses (Ovarian Ligation) http://protectmustangs.org/?p=8384

BLM Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board Meeting http://www.blm.gov/live/

Protect Mustangs is a nonprofit organization who protects and preserves native and wild horses.