Raychelle McDonald speaks on behalf of Protect Mustangs at national Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board Meeting

Raychelle McDonald, Protect Mustangs' Spokeswoman, with Ginger Kathrens, Executive Director of The Cloud Foundation outside the Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board Meeting in Oklahoma City. March 4, 2013

Raychelle McDonald, Protect Mustangs’ Spokeswoman, with Ginger Kathrens, Executive Director of The Cloud Foundation outside the Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board Meeting in Oklahoma City. March 4, 2013

The Message

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Wild Horse & Burro Advisory Board my name is Raychelle McDonald. I am an Oklahoma actor and the Former Miss Black Oklahoma USA. I am here today to represent Anne Novak the Executive Director of Protect Mustangs who was unable to travel from San Francisco to Oklahoma City for today’s meeting.

Protect Mustangs is devoted to protecting native wild horses. Our mission is to educate the public about the native wild horse, protect and research American wild horses on the range and help those who have lost their freedom.

Anne Novak and Protect Mustangs would like to go on the record for the following:

We request you acknowledge publicly and on your website that all the wild horses on public lands or who are captive in short and long-term holding are native. There is scientific information proving wild horses are native located on our website. Just click on the button titled “Native Wild Horses“.

We request you return all the 50,000 native wild horses and historic burros in short and long term holding to the Herd Management Areas in the ten western states–as designated in 1971, Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act that protects these equids.

Wild horses are natives not pests as certain interest groups would like you to believe. Pesticides must NEVER be used on native species and current science proves wild horses are natives. The mustangers are working at the BLM these days–hiding behind inflated population guesstimates and feral beliefs. Meanwhile they are selling truckloads of native wild horses to alleged kill buyers like Tom Davis who bought at least 1,700.

We ask you to stop experimenting on wild horses also.

We request you NEVER sterilize nor put these native animals at risk of sterilization while in your care. Field sterilization is dangerous and inhumane and we ask that you toss that proposal in the garbage where it belongs.

We request you never kill native wild horses or burros as a means of “disposal”. Your agency has made fiscally irresponsible decisions to roundup and remove more wild horses than you are able to adopt out.

Today there is no alleged overpopulation. Witnesses have documented a sharp decline of native wild horses on public land. We are concerned they are being managed to extinction.

We request you use good science not junk science to manage native wild horses who create biodiversity on their native land.

We ask you to implement Range Design as the central management system regarding native wild horses and historic burros. Craig Downer is an expert in Range Design and we request you consult with him.

We would like the BLM to discover healthy holistic grazing programs for livestock to heal the land instead of ruin it. That might mean working with the Savory Institute.

We request you improve your adoption program by improving the marketing and customer service as well as have local gentling clinics for people to learn about native wild horses and perhaps adopt one.

We request you improve your transportation to adopters. For decades you delivered truckloads of native wild horses to alleged kill buyers. It’s time to improve transportation to legitimate adopters.

We ask that the BLM immediately teach and require all wranglers and personel working with native wild horses and burros to follow protocol written by a well respected natural horsemanship trainer to reduce the trauma to all equids in your care.

[The allotted 3 minutes was up and she was asked to stop. She closed with the following line.]

All Americans love native wild horses and want to see them protected.

Thank you.”

 

Wild horses sold to middle men for slaughter

Wild mustang weanling in holding. (Photos © Anne Novak, all rights reserved.)

“We request a freeze on all roundups until Congress can investigate and stop the BLM from selling wild horses by the hundreds to alleged kill-buyers,” states Anne Novak, executive director for Protect Mustangs. “Internal corruption needs to be flushed out fast.”

 

Today the press revealed a man who has purchased at least 1,700 wild horses from the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Program for $10 a piece. Dave Phillips reports in ProPublica, All the missing horses: What happened to the wild horses Tom Davis bought from the government?  It appears that the BLM is selling healthy indigenous wild horses to a known pro-slaughter kill-buyer to dispose of our living legends.

This needs to stop now.

Here are some articles providing some background about the BLM’s heinous wild horse traffic to slaughter . . . America’s living legends, betrayed by those entrusted to protect them under the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act.

National Geographic (May 5, 2005) Wild Horses Sold by U.S. Agency Sent to Slaughter http://bit.ly/IaLgoA

The agency’s mission changed in December, when Congress passed a bill that made it legal for the BLM to sell wild horses outright . . .

Since December the BLM has sold about a thousand wild horses under the new rules. The slaughtered horses were originally sold to the Rosebud Sioux Indians in South Dakota and to an unnamed Oklahoma man who said he wanted the horses for a church youth program.

The Sioux group bought 105 wild horses at a dollar apiece, then traded 87 of them to a horse broker, who sold some of the horses for slaughter. The Oklahoma man bought six at $50 apiece, according to the BLM. Slaughterhouses are known to pay hundreds of dollars for a horse.

 

Christian Science Monitor and cross-posted by The Seattle Times (March 2, 2005) Law allows slaughter of wild horses for meat  by Brad Knickerbocker http://bit.ly/K8DWIF

Now, a law signed by President Bush will allow the slaughter and export of horse meat form thousands of wild horses. Horse lovers are urgins reversal of the measure, which slipped into a recent federal appropriations bill by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont.

 

Chicago Tribune (Dec, 12, 2001) Adopted wild horses are still being slaughtered by Robert Gehrke http://bit.ly/IcWL2g story went viral

WASHINTON–Wild horses put up for adoption by the Bureau of Land Management continue to be slaughtered, in some cases within weeks of he owner gaining title to the animal, according to the latest BLM records.

The quick turnaround has critics questioning how aggressively BLM is enforcing a rule requiring adopters to swear that they don’t plan to sell the horse to slaughter.

‘Not only is the BLM not actually prosecuting people, but they’re not even doing the investigation to try to figure it out and it seems like they don’t want to know,’ said Howard Crystal, an attorney for the Fund for Animals, whose lawsuit led to the no-slaughter clause.

The Desert News (Dec. 12, 2001) Rules are not preventing slaughter of wild horses by Robert Gehrke http://bit.ly/IMYibB

The Deseret News (August 18, 1999)  Wild horses are going to slaughter, BLM says http://bit.ly/IMiyKq

Adopted wild horses are being slaughtered for meat or pet food at a rate that could top five per week, according to an employee of the Bureau of Land Management.BLM wild horse expert Lilly Thomas said once-wild horses adopted from agency land are being slaughtered at four major packinghouses. Speaking this week at a meeting of the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board in Salt Lake City, Thomas said she based her estimate on reports from a slaughterhouse near Fort Worth, Texas,…

 

Buffalo News (January 5, 1997) US effort to save wild horses leads thousands to slaughter as workers profit by Martha Mendoza http://bit.ly/IMb3Dn

A multimillion-dollar federal program created to save the lives of wild horses instead is channeling them by the thousands to slaughterhouses where they are chopped into cuts of meat.

Among those profiting from the slaughter are employees of the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that administers the program.

AP viral story (January 4, 1997)  Program to protect wild horses often funnels them to slaughter by Martha Mendoza http://bit.ly/IhtEds

NY Times (Jan 29, 1997) Report Acknowledges Wild Horses Are Being Slaughtered http://nyti.ms/IwGF1x

The Spokesman Review (December 12, 1986) Wild horses being sent to slaughter http://bit.ly/IatqoK

HELENA — The Bureau of Land Management has been shipping hundreds of horses to Montana ranchers under the government’s “adopt-a-horse” program, and some are going to slaughter, one of the ranchers says.

Since 1985, more than 1,800 horses rounded up on government land in Nevada and other states have been shipped to ranchers in eastern Montana’s Yellowstone Valley, according to figures supplied by BLM Associate State Director Marvin Lenoue,

Hundreds of other wild horses have been shipped to South Dakota, mostly to Indian reservations . . .

Some owners sold them to rodeos, he said and “some of those people sent them to slaughter.”

Lakeland Ledger (March 11, 1973) U.S. Probe Wild Horse Slaughter ~ story went viral http://bit.ly/Io6nC5

LA Times (March 5, 1973) Apparent Roundup of Wild Horses for Slaughter Probed http://bit.ly/JUlvvG

Federal authorities are investigating a blood-soaked cliffside in the high, remote mountains of southeastern Idaho where officials say a herd of about 60 wild horses was apparently rounded up and sold for slaughter.