“May Day” brings to mind celebrations of Spring and large protests. Today thousand and thousands of Americans are taking to the streets to protest for women’s rights, labor and the environment.

Used as “Mayday” it is an international call of distress. The word appears to actually be an anglicization of the French m’aidez or m’aider, meaning “help me.”

Babies are being born on the range and in holding. All of our wild horses are in danger. We must answer the “mayday” call.

Today we celebrate, protest and call for help for our wild horses and public land.

This spring we finally are seeing our beautiful Western landscape in recovery from serious drought. For years we have worried about our wild ones making it through the first winter of any real snowpack. Our lowlands are in bad shape from over a century of battering by exploitation for profit.

In winter horses must paw through the snow upslope to find any left over growth (residual) or find forage in the lowland areas to get through winter. In the last few years we have seen some of our wild horses come out of winter in rough shape.  Our documentation is showing that our wild ones are so resilient and are rebounding fast this spring as the rangeland produces growth. We are not seeing as many foals as we have in years past, but the ones we are seeing are growing strong and there is still time. Celebrate!

The legislative landslide against our wild places and wild things has not stopped. The pressure is on now more than ever. We will have a legislative update and call report out for you soon. Make your voice heard!

In order to make our voices heard we need to raise those voices! Now is not the time to say “someone else can handle it.” Take our #4WildThings Challenge. We make it easy. Play the game and send a video or picture. If you don’t take the dare? Make the call to your legislators and send them the pamphlet and report loaded at the link. We even give you a link to find your legislators email. Better yet, pick up a phone and call. If you can’t do those, contribute so WHE can get louder! Get WILD #4WildThings! (We will feature some of what we were sent in an update later this week and in the final video we upload to YouTube after the challenge ends June 1). Click image below to go to challenge page.

photo copyright Marie Milliman for Wild Horse Education

WHE has changed policy. We have answered the call to address inhumane treatment and protect your voice. WHE dig deep into issues and help to expose slaughter connections like the one between Tom Davis and the former Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. WHE has been a party to legal actions against unfair practices in grazing decisions even where we have no wild horses because the precedent set can be used to hurt the places our wild horses need to survive. Our range documentation has stopped unjustified removals before they start. We must not give up now.

We are awaiting the BLM Advisory Board meeting. At the last meeting the board recommended BLM kill our wild horses in holding or sell them to slaughter. The BLM said they would answer the board in April at the next meeting. April is ver and no meeting is scheduled. We know that the new head of the Department of Interior (Zinke) carried pro horse slaughter legislation in his state of Montana. Mike Nedd and John Ruhs sitting side by side as acting as first and second in command of BLM makes “Bureau of Livestock and Mining” much more than a clever statement, it makes it a hard fact that cannot be ignored.

We must answer this ” mayday” call.  We have gathered a lot of information over the course of the last few years that we can use now to build the tools we need.

The truth is not a disposable item and neither is YOUR voice. Help us to raise it loud.