Friends of Animals is appalled to learn that the Senate Appropriations Committee approved legislation in the fiscal year Interior Appropriations bill that includes $35 million for the atrocious wild horse population control plan put forward by a coalition that betrayed wild horses back in April.

That means the horrific plan included in the bill, which promotes a robust rangeland fertility control program, sterilization and massive, targeted roundups of horses and burros, is on its way to the Senate floor and WE NEED YOU to contact your U.S. Senators and tell them not to support this legislation, S. 2580, when it comes up for a vote. You can use this directory to contact them.

Other so-called wild horse advocacy groups have never been interested in keeping wild horses wild. And by wild we mean allowing them to flourish in their own way, not managing them by keeping them in small herd areas or limiting their population through forcibly drugging them with fertility control drugs. The BLM treats wild horses as pests because it caters to welfare cattle and sheep ranchers who resent wild horses because they want the forage for their doomed livestock.

PLEASE remind your U.S. Senators that horses have lost more than 20 million acres of habitat since the passage of the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971. If Congress really want to strengthen the Act, they should ignore the “unprecedented alliance’’ between so-called animal advocates and the meat industry and consider these options:

● Limit or restrict entirely cattle and sheep from grazing in wild horse Herd Management Areas (HMAs)

● Limit oil, gas and mining operations in HMAs

● Amend the Wild Horse and Burro Act to allow wild horses to be returned or relocated to Herd Areas in states where wild horses have been wiped out

● Protect natural predators such as mountain lions

● Adjust outdated appropriate management levels to accommodate more horses

In 2017, the U.S. Dept of Agricultures killing machine division, Wildlife Services, destroyed more than 1.3 million animals, including wolves, coyotes and bobcats, all of whom would be natural predators of wild horses, to “protect” livestock.

BLM is obligated to protect wild horses under the Act and has absolutely no authority whatsoever to experiment on wild horses with new and risky surgeries. In fact, Congress has expressly prohibited the use of funds for activities that would kill wild horses as sterilization experiments may do.

America’s wild horses have a target on their backs. We have more horse slaughter proponents in this administration than any other time in history. That’s why we need our members who care about horses to go to the wall for them.