The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has scheduled a long overdue meeting of the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board. A meeting originally planned for April is happening tomorrow and Thursday, Oct 18 and 19. The link to watch is always the same one, http://BLM.gov/live

NV roundup

In April the federal government closed all venues for the public to create any official record on a local basis, the Resource Advisory Councils (RACs). You can read more here about the RAC and where that closure led us at WHE. We ask that you please read: https://wildhorseeducation.org/2017/05/25/posttruth-3-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-foia-rac-and-litigation/

We are getting messages asking if we will be in attendance. No we wont. Wild Horse Education is a small non profit, not a million dollar org. The closure of local venues prohibited us from addressing this when it actually mattered, in the spring. We are focusing our resources on the issues outlined in the actions we are asking you to take on Appropriations.

The board meeting will be a circus drawing the emotion it intended to instill. We will not participate.

This week the Senate subcommittee will take action on the proposed fiscal year 2018 budget. In any “normal year” this budget would be a “done deal.” We ask that you stay focused on actions to address your Senators directly. You can take action here on Appropriations. https://wildhorseeducation.org/2017/10/13/a-personal-plea/ Congress makes the law, BLM is a regulatory agency. UPDATE: The Tuesday subcommittee hearing was postponed. At 3:30 pm ET they postpone the Thursday hearing. Vote still pending. Continue to take your actions).

If you attend do not fall into the “uniformed advocate soundbite” that has been used to keep advocates out of meetings with Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, like the proslaughter show in Utah this summer. (part of what proslaughter requires is that you act like a meme of social media:  https://wildhorseeducation.org/2017/09/18/the-wild-in-wild-horses-the-land-they-stand-on-public-land-seizure-movement-segment/)

If you speak, stay calm.

We have submitted comments. But our comments are the same as contained in an article penned BEFORE the announced budget to kill tens of thousands of wild horses. We knew this was coming last year… when the public was still screaming “STOP accelerated removals,” when in truth we did not have any acceleration of removals, we had a deceleration. From 2013-2016 we had a focus on land use planning, the largest reforms to the way our public lands are managed in decades, under sage grouse. But that did not really make the public (advocacy) sphere until this year, when it was almost too late.

An educated advocacy is needed more than ever, something we have been saying for years now.

You can take action here on Appropriations. https://wildhorseeducation.org/2017/10/13/a-personal-plea/

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This Land is Your Land, Except If You’re a Wild Horse Advocate (click title to read entire article, May 2017)

We can bring wild horses out of the realm of myth and into the realm of integrated use based on scientific review. We can slow population growth, gather data and integrate into the whole. But we can not do it if we keep getting ganged up on every time we try.

If you want your permitted use to be respected can you please begin to respect my right to have a resource protected? Nah, I didn’t think so. Let’s just keep talking about killing the wild horses, that seems to be the new placation conversation.

“This land is your land, this land is my land,” but not for one local voice, the wild horse advocate.

Some info from the article:

A few things to keep in mind as we discuss the myths used to perpetuate the prejudice:

* There is no fossil record of large open pit mines that span miles. There is no fossil record of ATV use. There is no fossil record of hunters with long guns. There is no fossil record of millions of European cows.

* There is a fossil record of wild horses.

* Not all ranchers point an AK at BLM employees.

* Not all ATV users go off trail and break thousands of beer bottles.

* Not all hunters kill out of season or shoot up refrigerators and TV’s on public land.

* Not all wild horse advocates are clueless to the law, the reality of the range, vegan and trying to take your right to own a purebred dog away.

* We have more than 500,000 elk in the western US.

* We have more than 600,00 pronghorn in the western US.

* We have around 500,000 mule deer in the western US (this is viewed as a troubling decline).

click here to read: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/23/this-land-is-your-land-except-if-youre-a-wild-horse-advocate/

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To help us stay in this fight