April 22nd has been set aside every year to create awareness of the growing need to preserve and protect Earth’s natural resources. Since 1970, Earth Day has been celebrated worldwide. Denis Hayes, a 25-year-old student at Harvard Kennedy School in 1969  dropped out after a semester to become a principal organizer of a grass-roots nonprofit that planned a nationwide rally on April 22, 1970, Earth Day.

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Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring of 1962 ushered in and era of Environmental Ethics. Her best-selling book focused public attention on the problem of pesticide use and chemical pollution. The reverberation of growing awareness led to such landmark legislation as the U.S. Clean Water Act and the banning of DDT in many countries throughout the world.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed in 1969 and the term “environmental law” was formally coined. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that was created in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, is said to be directly related to the awareness brought through Silent Spring.

In the 1970s, Congress passed three of our most important environmental laws—the National Environmental Protection Act, Clean Air Act, and Endangered Species Act—with overwhelming bipartisan support.

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In 1971, Congress unanimously passed the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. Just as Rachel Carson drove awreness for the Environmental Movement, Velma Bronn Johnston (Wild Horse Annie) served driving the movement for our wild ones that carries on today.

Did you know that under law, wild horses and burros are a natural public resource. They are not designated a “use” like mining and livestock, but a “resource” the same as the grass and veins of gold and silver.

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The Act was part species protection and part the protection of heritage. Yet, as with all bills that pass into law, there was debate. During the debate the original intention was already being gutted. That debate is why wild horses and burros are managed inside boundary lines and not truly free-roaming. Socio-political concerns is why wild horses and bison are not treated like deer or elk. Both managed principally by the Department of Interior, historic conflicts primarily with livestock, the bison (protected under the ESA and declared the National Mammal in 2016) face many of the same threats as wild horses including genetic diversity.

Although bison and wild horses and burros do not share the same ranges (as they once did) there are many species that depend on the same wild places for survival. Sage grouse, pronghorn, mule deer, elk, mountain lions, badger, desert foxes, wild horses, etc., can still be found together in isolated pockets of the American West.

In practice our wild ones are treated like a nuisance in the way of expanding profit lines that exploit the land our wild things need to survive. Our wild horses and burros suffer along with every living thing that relies on wild places staying wild to survive.

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Today, the bedrock environmental laws are under assault by massive private profit driven interests.

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In the U.S. wild horses and burros are removed to suit other interests. 

That is not a statement born of rhetoric. The paperwork bears out that statement time and again. This is not a statement of attack, exaggeration or folly.

Wild horses and burros are not only disregarded as “integral” to the actual landscape, they are omitted entirely as part of the interlocking planning that is supposed to create a baseline of “multiple use” within the “system” of public lands. (Learn more)

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“This we know the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” – Chief Seattle 

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You can take action. There are proposed plans for wild horse roundups that have open comments: Rock Springs (WY) and Lahontan (NV). You can engage the site-specific plans through BLMs portal and create unique comments. You can also make one simple call to your lawmakers to make sure prohibitions against killing healthy wild horses and/or selling them without limits (slaughter) are maintained in the budget bill. Learn more HERE.

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WHE has been offered a $10,000. match challenge that spans from now, through Earth Day and ends on May 1. Every contribution will be matched dollar-for-dollar. A $5. donation becomes $10. A $25. contribution becomes $50. A $100. donation. becomes $200. Can you help us meet the challenge and expand our work from field to courtroom and back again to protect and preserve our wild ones?