Yesterday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a statement that it is rejecting a national advisory board recommendation to kill up to 45,000 wild horses and burros. While the BLM has come to the right decision in rejecting this recommendation, the public will be watching carefully and will not be fooled. Actions speak louder than words, and every action this agency takes is geared toward one outcome: lifting the ban on killing or selling these national icons for slaughter. By manipulating the information presented to the advisory board and claiming ‘emergency’ conditions on and off the range, the BLM literally orchestrated the lethal recommendation it is now publicly backing away from. If there is any ‘emergency,’ it is one of the BLM’s own making. The BLM has failed to adequately reduce or eliminate private livestock grazing despite record drought conditions, and stubbornly refused to implement large-scale humane birth control programs for wild horse and burro population control, as recommended in 2013 by the National Academy of Sciences. If you are interested in staying up to date on this issue, please sign up for our eNews action alerts at KeepWildHorsesWild.org