Over the last few weeks our legal team has been working diligently on our action against the “spay plan” at the Confusion HMA filed on October 28. The BLM is set to commence the outlined operation on November 28. (WHE on file)

Today 58 members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary Bernhardt in opposition to BLM plan for the HMA. Letter-to-Bernhardt-re-Confusion-HMA

Congresswoman Dina Titus (D-NV) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) led the effort by Congress to pressure BLM to drop this ill-conceived plan. The letter states in part:

The Confusion HMA management plan also appears to constitute a decision to proceed with this surgical procedure in disregard of the fact that the public, including many equine veterinarians, consider it to be inhumane…

WHE have been working hard on this action in the courts and at the table. We want to point out that there have been many voices, yours included, reaching out to Congress. We thank Congress for taking action and including so many of points of action, but they missed one.

In addition to the experimental, extreme and cruel nature of the proposed procedure (and that they intend to move this forward without meaningful public access), the roundup plan is not a management plan.

Those paying attention would see that BLM dropped that word, management, from the document in response to early WHE interaction. We know it gets confusing and Congress hears from many people. The word “management” appears in the draft document, not in the plan BLM finalized. (here)

What BLM has presented at Confusion is connected to a directive from William Perry Pendley and pushes an agenda, not management.

The letter has been added to our court exhibit list. Actions in Congress have been used to support litigation (with letters) in the past such as those for the Sheldon mustangs and the battle against cruelty. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it does not. Most often the BLM simply ignores those letters and rarely responds in any form.

We are pushing forward with our legal action and filed additional briefs early this week and are working the next deadline today.

We will update you in more depth as soon as time allows.

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We are also working on setting up an attack against the BLM plan to decimate one of our last large herds at Pancake. (more here)

We are writing our opposition to the Ochoco plan where USFS has determined 12-57 wild horses is appropriate (more here)

For those of you following the Appropriations debate, the Senate version of the bill does not include language to continue to defund horse meat inspections, keeping horse slaughter plants out of the US. We will have an action item for you soon.

Fish Creek drama is rearing it’s head again. The pro-slaughter factions found a friendly journalist at the Washington Post to present a tortuous timeline and misrepresent Fish Creek today. We will have an update on Fish Creek soon. It is interesting that WaPost gave spaying a highlight piece after a lead in to Fish Creek. If you do not remember Fish Creek, you can jog your memory: “All The Pretty Horses Must Die, ” represents a very intense time. (click text to read)

Updates coming soon. Our teams are working hard!

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Help us stay in the fight.