Dear Friends of Wild Horses & Burros, Innocent 6-month-old nursing foals were ripped away from their mothers after being captured in the Reveille Roundup near Tonopah, Nevada this week. The trauma of roundups and destruction of wild families is animal cruelty paid for with tax dollars. It’s brutal for the little ones especially to be chased by choppers, then only days later shoved down alleys made of scary metal panels and pushed into a dark metal box and squeezed and squeezed and then terrorized by people shoving things in their mouth, shaving their neck with a buzzing stick, branding them, sticking them with needles and tying a dangly plastic number where they swallow. . . The BLM is separating wild foals from their mothers forever because they decided it’s “time to wean them”. This is not the way it is done in the wild. They are different—wired to stay with their mothers longer than domestics. They need her for their holistic development. A few days ago these 6-month-olds were nursing in the wild. . . smelling sage all around them and feeling safe with mama nearby. Now they are terrified. They miss mama’s milk and comfort when they are cold. They miss her love. These little ones are so afraid and so sad. . . Their mamas also worried . . . The “weanlings” call out for their mamas but no one can save them from the cages. They are all alone. BLM should have put the Reveille wild horses further out in the wild if they really were an alleged “nuisance” to local ranchers. If water was an issue then they should have created a better water source. These youngsters were the future of Reveille. They guaranteed the herd would have genetic diversity needed to survive environmental hardships. Will the herd survive now that BLM has damaged the herd structure? When BLM takes the majority of the herd away, drugs the mares with PZP (pesticide) they hurt the herd. BLM is damaging genetic viability and that’s not fair for this small herd of wild horses who deserves their freedom and their place in the ecosystem. You can read our position in the New Zealand paper here: http://horsetalk.co.nz/2014/11/03/american-wild-horse-advocates-seek-freeze-roundups/#axzz3IQryyVlf Please adopt if you can to keep the Reveille mustangs out of holding facilities with no shelter or shade. There is an onsite adoption at the Tonopah Rodeo Saturday November 8 in Nevada Info: http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/info/newsroom/2014/november/battle_mountain__reveille.html You can also find them at BLM’s Ridgecrest corral in southern California http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/ridgecrest/whb.html until the BLM ships them off. Everyone is encouraged to meet with or email their elected officials requesting they intervene by putting a freeze on roundups for scientific reevaluation. The petition for a moratorium on roundups is here: https://www.change.org/p/john-garamendi-urgent-grant-a-10-year-moratorium-on-wild-horse-roundups-for-recovery-and-studies Please help send it out. Join the Walking Billboard Campaign to let people know what’s going on! Get your ’STOP THE ROUNDUPS ~ Nevada 2014” T-Shirts here: https://www.booster.com/protect-mustangs-nevada The goal is to get 500 shirts on people and we are getting close. Visit our website www.ProtectMustangs.org to learn more about the wild horse issue. Today we have a letter posted from a Ph.D. in equine immunology who slams the use of PZP on wild horses based on scientific fact. We’ve been told we need to get to 110K signatures for Congress to take the petition for shelter and shade seriously. We need your help to share and email it to everyone you know. It’s right here: http://www.change.org/p/bring-emergency-shelter-and-shade-to-captive-wild-horses-and-burros Thank you for taking action today for the wild horses and burros in America. Together we can turn this around. Many blessings, Anne Anne Novak Executive Director www.ProtectMustangs.org