Dear Friends of Wild Horses,

There are 3 Hours Left to Write California BLM your original letter opposing their cruel idea to round up some of America's last wild horse herds living on the Twin Peaks HMA near Susanville, California. 

Here's what I wrote:

July 1, 2019

BLM_CA_twinpeaksgather@blm.gov

VIA email

RE:  Environmental Assessment  DOI-BLM-CA-N050-2019-0011 EA                                                                                                         

Comments Against the Proposed Twin Peaks Herd Management Area Wild Horse and Burro Gather (California Roundup) Plan

Dear Taxpayer Funded Managers,

Kindly enter my comments into the formal record in support of ALTERNATIVE 4.  No action.  Defer gather (California Twin Peaks roundup) and removal. Stop the roundups and protect the Twin Peaks herd!

More than 116,639 people have signed the Defund to Stop the Wild Horse and Burro Roundups and Slaughter Petition: https://www.change.org/p/defund-and-stop-the-wild-horse-burro-roundups

This petition says:

Wild horses are a native species and must be saved!

Legal loopholes allow the BLM to sell thousands of wild horses to slaughter middlemen known as kill buyers to dispose of alleged "excess and unadoptable" American wild horses and this must stop now! Slaughter is cruel and inhumane.

This is what cruel roundups look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF49csCB9qM They are the first step towards slaughter.

Craig Downer published the peer-reviewed paper titled The Horse and Burro as Positively Contributing Returned Natives in North America. (http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo.aspx?journalid=118&doi=10.11648/j.ajls.20140201.12

According to a press release from National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released June 5, 2013, "The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) current practice of removing free-ranging horses from public lands promotes a high population growth rate, and maintaining them in long-term holding facilities is both economically unsustainable and incongruent with public expectations, says a new report by the National Research Council."

The NAS report states there is "no evidence" of overpopulation. Only tobacco science and spin backs up BLM's population claim to justify roundups and fertility control/sterilizations. . .

PZP is an EPA approved RESTRICTED-USE PESTICIDE that sterilizes wild horses after multiple-use so it's risky for long-term herd survival.  See information here: http://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/pending/fs_PC-176603_01-Jan-12.pdf

Giving PZP to wild mares also results in foals being born late in the fall or winter and dying because they are too little to make it through a harsh winter.

Fertility control research trials are big business. Left unchallenged, wild horses and burros will continue to be lab rats for human fertility control research. This exploitation must stop!

We request an immediate halt to roundups for scientific population studies and studies on holistic management before it's too late.

Wild horses are a returned-native species in America. Rounding up federally protected wild horses and burros has been documented as cruel. Warehousing them for decades is fiscally irresponsible. Sending wild horses to slaughter by selling them to middlemen is cruel and inhumane. Clearing wild horses and burros off public land--for industrialization, fracking, grazing, and the water grab--goes against the 1971 Free Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act put in place to protect the living legends of the American West. They must never go to slaughter.

We request you defund and stop the roundups immediately as well as reverse the Burns Amendment to stop unlimited sales of wild horses to slaughter.

There is no accurate census and the BLM figures do not add up. We request population studies for each herd management area (HMA) and each herd area (HA) because we are gravely concerned there are less than 18,000 wild horses and burros in the 10 western states combined. More roundups, fertility control/sterilizations and sales to slaughter will wipe them out because the majority are no longer genetically viable herds.

Wild horses are underpopulated despite spin from the forces that want to perform heinous sterilizations in the field. Humane fertility control could be looked at as an option only after scientific population studies have been conducted for each herd management area. The EPA approved restricted-use pesticides known as PZP and Gonacon have risks as do other drugs . . . Right now fertility control is premature, will destroy natural selection and could cause harm because wild horses are underpopulated in the West.

Field observers have noticed a worrisome decline in wild horse and burro populations since the BLM's rampant roundups from 2009 to this day.

Kindly allow returned-native wild horses and burros to reverse desertification, reduce the fuel for wildfires and create biodiversity on public land, live with their families and inspire us with their spirit.

So far 50,979 people have signed the petition to investigate the Wild Horse and Burro Count in Captivity and in Freedom: https://www.change.org/p/u-s-senate-investigate-the-wild-horse-burro-count-in-captivity-and-freedom The public wants to know the truth.

Fertility control is not even worth talking about until accurate head counts occur and are compared against livestock use on the close to 800,000 acre public land herd management area known as Twin Peaks near Susanville, California.

Right now there is no evidence of overpopulation, period.

It seems many rare wild palomino stallions from the 2010 Twin Peaks roundup of 1922 native wild horses were purchased from the BLM by Tom Davis for slaughter because the BLM wanted to “dispose” of them. This caused public uproar and it continues to cause public outrage.

#NeverAgain will American wild horses living in California end up at slaughter.

I am deeply inspired by America’s last Twin Peaks wild horses and along with millions of people, want to see them living forever wild and free on public land for future generations. . .

Indigenous wild horses need help to survive climate change while living in freedom—on their natural habitat—where they help reduce global warming, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires and fill their important ecological niche as an important wild species on the public’s wild lands.

Respectfully yours,
Anne Novak

(Photo by BLM in public domain)