Urgent funding needed for legal action to save wild horses

MICHAELBLAKE Oscar

Please share and make a tax-deductible donation today! Protect Mustangs needs to act quickly and independently to FIGHT for America’s wild horses in court.

During the Pine Nut roundup case we brought the PZP/pesticide issue into the court room and ultimately stopped the roundup. Our Fort McDermitt case (READ Michael Blake’s declaration below) stopped sending more than a thousand wild horses to slaughter in 2013 and 2014. There are many important cases to win!

We donate our time but still need to pay the lawyer a reduced fee. Using lawyers on staff with other groups was a blessing at the time but doesn’t work anymore because there is so much to do QUICKLY! Please HELP America’s wild horses with a tax-deductible donation here: http://www.gofundme.com/qarve8 to fight for them in court today!

Did you know that Michael Blake (Dances with Wolves), RIP, joined our Fort McDermitt lawsuit in 2013 when we stopped 2 years of horrible roundups that were sending wild horses to slaughter?

This is what he wrote on August 21, 2013:

I, Michael Lennox Blake, declare and state as follows:

1. I am an author as well as a screenwriter. I have written several books and screenplays including Dances with Wolves, which was released to international acclaim in 1990. In 1991, I won every major award for my screenplay for Dances with Wolves, including an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Writer’s Guild Award, and the Silver Spur. I have also received public service awards including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award and the Americanism Award, in addition to many other awards during my life.

2. I reside in Sonoita, Arizona. I am a member of Protect Mustangs, and also am on the Advisory Board for Protect Mustangs. In a professional capacity I am an author and screenwriter. I support the work that Protect Mustangs does to protect wild horses and advocate for effective wild horse conservation on public lands.

3. I have visited Nevada for decades to see the wild horses, study them, and be inspired by them for my work. I have explored the lands of Nevada where the wild horses roam in freedom for inspiration and research for my work. I intend to return to these areas so I may continue to be inspired and do research for my work.

4. In 1992, I helped commission the first comprehensive aerial census of wild horses in Nevada. In almost every herd area, the horses were far less numerous than the BLM estimated. The final count in our survey was 8,324.

5. Protect Mustangs’ members are interested in wild horses, and I support their work to protect wild horses’ freedom and safety from cruel and harmful practices including but not limited to illegal roundups. Their mission is to educate the public about indigenous wild horses, protect and research American wild horses on the range, and help those who have lost their freedom. Protect Mustangs works to educate the public about the decisions and activities of the government that impact wild horses, and find solutions for wild horse conservation that does not include roundups and auctioning off wild horses for slaughter. Members of the public and horse advocates across the United States are interested in and support Protect Mustangs’ work to protect wild horses due to their recreational, scientific, spiritual, ecological, cultural, artistic, historical, iconic, and aesthetic values.

6. I wrote in my book Twelve the King:

But he and hundreds of thousand like him are gone now from this beautiful land, and for that reason alone I could not stop as I traveled over four hundred miles of Nevada roads. Something evil is still afoot in this land, and it has left its imprint everywhere. In all those miles of open, free country, the mark of evil is present in what is absent. The wild horses are missing from the land.

7. I have written extensively about the American West and find inspiration seeing and studying wild horses. If these unbranded, wild horses are rounded up and removed by the USDA Forest Service and/or the BLM on tribal land, or elsewhere by the Forest Service and/or the BLM, I will be harmed because I will no longer have the ability to study them or be inspired for my books, stories and other works.

8. Wild horses and their connection with the land in the American West inspire me to write. I have plans to spend time in the future using and enjoying these lands and studying free-roaming wild horses on public lands in the Owyhee HMAs and where the wild horses roam in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, as well as on tribal lands. The proposed gather on USDA Forest Service and tribal lands will forever remove wild and free-roaming horses that I rely upon in my professional and personal capabilities.

9. I derive significant satisfaction and happiness from the existence of native wild, free- roaming horses. Ensuring the continued existence and distribution of wildlife including wild horses in the West is of the utmost importance to me and has directly influenced my life a great deal. The West is far different than the East because the West still has wildlife—including wild horses that inspire me to write fiction and non-fiction.

10. If the Fort McDermitt Horse Gather proceeds as planned, it will prevent me and other members of Protect Mustangs from recreating, enjoying, studying, being inspired from, and writing about the wild horses in the area in the future. I am very unlikely to continue deriving benefit and inspiration concerning the wild horses in an area where they have been removed and herd numbers drastically reduced as is proposed by the Fort McDermitt Horse Gather and the 2013 Agreement between the Forest Service and Fort McDermitt Tribal Council. Our members share these views as well.

11. I have been studying and gaining inspiration from seeing wild horses in Nevada throughout my life. I have certain plans to continue visiting these wild areas of Nevada authorized for roundup, including the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, throughout my lifetime. For the aforementioned reasons I would be directly harmed should the unbranded, wild horses at issue in the Fort McDermitt Horse Gather be removed and the horses rounded up and be allowed to go to holding, auction, sale, or slaughter.

[End of Michael Lennox Blake’s declaration]

HELP build the legal fund today so Protect Mustangs can fight for wild horses in court. We are a unique group dedicated purely to the preservation of America’s wild horses. We need to act QUICKLY and independently to HELP SAVE wild horses with legal action. Please make a tax-deductible donation today and share this fundraiser: http://www.gofundme.com/qarve8

Thank you for taking action today to help save the wild horses!

Many blessings,
Anne

Anne Novak
Volunteer Executive Director
www.ProtectMustangs.org
Telephone: 415-531-8454

Pine Nut Wild Horses ©Anne Novak for Protect Mustangs

Pine Nut Wild Horses ©Anne Novak for Protect Mustangs