By reader request we have relaunched our two-sided “Freedom and Justice” t-shirts. They are available in several colors and sizes and feature the Freedom and Justice logo on the front, the preamble to the Wild Horse and Burros Act on the back. Thank you for helping support our work and wearing that support proudly! (click here to order)

Our request to our readers

Fish Creek is one HMA, one herd. The herd set to be decimated in a reckless plan that destroys years of planning, a $2 million dollar tax-payer investment to create a protocol to create a science based management strategy. The strategy was aimed to fix historic flaws (boundary, AML, identify critical habitat). Tt was a template based on the National Academy of Sciences Review (NAS review). The review identified flaws, the plan was to fix them. The plan finally began in 2015 and was cancelled under political pressure without true and just cause, before the on range component could truly begin.

For years BLM said that the plan would move forward. Our inquiries all met with “we will have info soon” and then went ignored. Now, BLM is set on a rushed and chaotic removal to destroy an actual protocol, before the fiscal year ends in October (things may change in the next budget debate).

Can you sign our letter to urge BLM to cancel the upcoming removal and work with advocates to get a long term solution back on track? (click to sign on)

Instead of moving forward to actually fix management, create a template for the few last remaining large herds we have left, lobby groups and backdoor deal making began. The deal making had in it’s sight a massive layer of new subsidies that will drive the broken program to collapse. (Stewart Alliance, “Path Forward”)

There are dozens of areas like Fish Creek out there; places we could begin to actually preserve and protect our wild ones. No new authority is needed in any bill or debate. No new tools are needed in any bill or debate. No new funding is needed in any bill or debate.

In order to “fix” the Wild Horse and Burro program BLM just needs to stop allowing bullies to determine how America’s public lands are managed and actually, simply, do their jobs responsibly and transparently.

The NAS has failed BLM on basic data, to justify any decision, since 1982. Inventory methods changed in 2014 and are being compared to numbers, under old methods. Any assertion of a national stocking level (AML) of wild horses is antiquated and scientifically, logically, morally, invalid. It was a number set to appease politics after the outrage from livestock that the federal government took jurisdiction in 1971 stopping mustanging (uncontrolled capture and sale for slaughter). It was never “science based.” That is not an opinion, it is the finding of the most respected scientific body in the world.

The flaws in the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program all have a deep root that extends into an adherence to illogical and politically motivated practices. These practices increase agitation in the public, and erode public trust and our public resources.

The actions BLM is taking, in a few short weeks at places Fish Creek, show sound practices are not an objective, satisfying politics that support efforts alive in debate in Congress to create a new list of subsidies and gut the 1971 law, is the objective.

The BLM Report to Congress will incorporate the politically twisted “Stewart Alliance” (Ten Years to AML, Path Forward, whatever it is being called now). The BLM will ask for the items on the lobby groups “wish list” and new authorities to carry them out. The impacts could be devastating and create another massive strain on the program and run any hope of achieving transparency, full public participation and preservation of wild horses an impossibility. The “plan” will run the broken program to collapse.

The plan is cloaked in politics that are very likely illegal. We wrote an article “Report Watch, part one” to give you some relevant background.

The Report will drop just before both the Fish Creek and Onaqui roundups, both removals have deep public interest. After these roundups the fiscal year ends, and the debate for funding in Congress will be at a full boil.

Before the roundups of these two herds, cherished by the public, please take action against the BLM move to gut the law and create more subsidies that are not needed. If BLM would just move forward with plans like the one originally intended for Fish Creek, the program would be solvent. That plan would have achieved science based management, valid AML and boundary lines and limited (or stopped) the roundup and stockpile method of current BLM mismanagement.

More info on the Report HERE.

You can find your representatives here: http://govtrack.us

Tell them:

The BLM Report to Congress on the Wild Horse Program expected in ten days, should be rejected and investigation for violations of law. These violations include infractions outlined in the Hatch Act. As a tax-payer you find the activities of BLM, influenced by lobby groups and employees themselves engaged in lobbying, an outrage.

The BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program should be frozen to the current budgetary allotment and no new authorities given until a full and complete probe into corruption has been completed.

We will bring you more info in our “Report Watch” on the what, why, when and how of the pending Report, and a full analysis when it drops.

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You can help keep us in this fight.

Additional reading: OIG Complaint Filed Against BLM Deputy Director