***Urgent Request- - - The Heber Wild Horses need your voice***
Please call or email each of the below listed individuals and ask that they stop the Forest Service’s plan for the capture and removal of wild horses from the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest near Heber, Arizona, and that they declare the Heber Herd a “study herd” by an independent team of scientists and that the herd be studied for a minimum of 5 to 7 years.
• Secretary of Agriculture, the Honorable Tom Vilsack, Phone 202-720-3631 Email: agsec@usda.gov
• Natural Resources Committee, Phone 202-225-6065 The aide’s name that you will direct your message to is Brandon Bragato. Email: nrdems@mail.house.gov
• Please call your Senators - https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
• Please call your Representative - https://www.house.gov/representa.../find-your-representative
Here’s Why Your Involvement Is Urgently Needed:
The Forest Service released their draft “Plan” that calls for the capture and removal of approximately 400 wild horses from the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. The vast majority of these horses would more likely than not languish in long-term holding pens for years, or may go to slaughter. The “Plan” would leave only 50 horses on over 600,000 acres of public lands. Fifty horses is not sufficient to maintain a genetically viable herd, meaning the Forest Service’s “Plan” essentially calls for the total eradication of the Heber herd. Their “Plan” is outrageous!
We Must Act Fast, and here is where you come in. We urgently need your voice on behalf of these magnificent horses! We would like to see the Heber herd preserved as a “study herd”. The Heber Wild Horses are the last remaining herd of wild horses in the United States that has not been “legally” interfered with by humans, making them an ideal “study herd”. This herd has been subjected to “illegal” activity, but there have been no “legal” roundups, and there has been no use of birth control on the herd.
Making the Heber Wild Horses a “study herd” would entail a minimum 5 to 7-year study by an “independent” team of scientists, to include ecologists, behaviorists, and habitat specialists, to understand the horses essentially as a wildlife species. They are currently being managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as “livestock”. As “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West” (see The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, Public Law 92-195), our wild horses deserve better!
The 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (Public Law 92-195) states: “The Secretaries (Interior and Agriculture) are authorized and directed to undertake those studies of the habits of wild free roaming horses and burros that they may deem necessary in order to carry out the provisions of this Act.” As such, our request that the Heber herd be preserved and used as a “study herd” is in keeping with both the letter and the spirit of The Act.
Please, we urgently ask that you make these calls Today! Please share this post widely!
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